Amazon, like its competitors, profits immeasurably from people using their devices, talking to Alexa, teaching their technology and providing vast amounts of private data for free. With this continual impressiveness, though, does come the trade-off of privacy. Using a Dot, as with any Echo device, requires you to use an Amazon account, which means agreeing to the company's terms and conditions. This is the problem of voice technology, and it remains mostly unchanged with this new Dot. I've written extensively about the problems of this structure, both for market competition and for Classic Books individual privacy.

So what's the difference? And Alexa -- who will answer questions, facilitate voice calls, control smart home devices, monitor your home for break-ins and plenty more -- performs identically on each speaker. In fact, the Dot does almost exactly what its earlier iteration does.



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Ditto setting up surround sound for your home theater. Two Echo Dots can still be paired for stereo sound, but I can't imagine recommending this over buying a better quality $100 speaker, like the Nest Audio or 2020 Echo.

And the $50 price tag remains intact for Classic Books this fourth generation. Along with the footprint, the niche the Dot seeks to fill hasn't changed: it's an entry point to smart speakers, the route to try Alexa without breaking the bank.

2018's third-gen Echo Dot has been one of the best smart speakers in the short history of smart speakers. Its combination of a clever voice assistant and impressive hardware packed into a tiny device with an even tinier price made it wildly and understandably popular (in sheer number of buyer reviews, it dwarfs every other Echo device on Amazon's online store).

This year's Kids Dot adds a fun tiger- or panda-themed design and genuinely interesting kid-facing content that you won't get on other Echo devices without a subscription (the Kids Dot comes with a free year of Amazon Kids+, which normally costs $3/month). They feel more sensitive to customer needs. These alternative Dots use the exact same basic hardware, but they're more exciting products in part because they represent something beyond simple iterative improvement. Last year's Dot with Clock was a great device, adding a small-but-useful upgrade to the Dot.

He argued that his generation is capable for greatness if given the necessary support systems Cooper (pictured) attributes much of his success to unschooling and the support he has received from his parents.



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If you listen to trap music or hip-hop, it simply won't sound very full on the new Echo Dot -- and Lil Wayne is much less enjoyable when his higher pitched rasp isn't counterbalanced by booming bass. The bass, which has never been strong in small speakers like Echo Dots and Nest Minis, remains particularly weak here.

Even below the high volumes, the track loses distinction, becoming fairly muddy behind the clean vocals. Playing a song like "This Life," by Vampire Weekend, with distinct bass, guitar, vocal and drum tracks, quickly falls into messy noise at any volume above 80%. Of course, everything is relative.

Waiting for Go(Dot) The 2020 Echo Dot is a solid device. It improves the sound of 2018's Echo Dot, and the new design is fresh, if not revelatory. But Amazon seems to have saved its true innovations for other devices this generation -- adding better smart home control to the full-size Echo and more interesting features to the Kids Edition. 

A spokesperson for the family has refuted claims the boys had been trying to knock each other out of their kayaks. She alleged witnesses who reported horseplay to authorities were likely 'mistaken in what they saw or heard happening in the water.'