Despite what the headline says, I come not to bury Amazon’s Echo speakers – I rather liked the Echo Studio.
But it did have a ceiling to its audio performance, so while myself and many have called it the best-sounding wireless speaker in the Echo line-up, there are speakers from the likes of Audio Pro, JBL, Apple and others that offer a better sound. Much like Google, Amazon gets the basics right, but there’s something of an identity that’s missing from their speakers.
New look but same experience?
Amazon’s hardware events are also a little strange. While the likes of Apple go for the glam and razzmatazz, Amazon is more low-key and honestly, I’d completely forgotten there was an Amazon event happening this week. I wasn’t even expecting new Echo studios for this year, although it has been a while since the last revamp.
But we got a new Echo Dot Max and an Echo Studio, and my focus will be on the latter. It’s a different form factor, sharing more of a resemblance with the rest of the Echo line-up instead of looking like the helmet from Tony Stark’s Mk I Iron Man suit.
It does seem to have a reference to another film series, with the aesthetics of the Echo Studio closely resembling the Death Star from the Star Wars series.
I can’t quite tell how big it is from the pictures, but Amazon says it’s 40% smaller, and I do wonder if it’s able to get a better sound from a wireless speaker that doesn’t look particularly big. The woofer, for instance, is smaller – reduced from 133mm to 95mm (if my maths is correct).
A smaller cabinet enclosure means less room, therefore smaller drivers, which leads me to think the new Echo Studio will be more reliant on digital signal processing (DSP) trickery for audio.
It also supports spatial audio and Dolby Atmos, but there are few speakers where I’ve heard a truly good immersive performance from a single-box speaker. The Sonos Era 300 is the one speaker that I’ve felt can create a huge sound, but that’s also dependent on the room the speaker is in. Some rooms are more conducive to spatial sound than others, but audio brands are still persisting in making spatial audio a thing, and I don’t think we’re there yet.
Are smart speakers still in vogue?
Another issue about the Echo Studio and speakers of its ilk, is that I don’t believe they are as popular as they were before.
I don’t have any sales data to back this opinion up, so this is just based on real-world experience and the direction audio brands have taken; but fewer seem interested in adding smart assistants to their feature-set.
In some cases, such as the award-winning Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Pro, they’ve removed Alexa support because no one was using it. The same goes for the Bang & Olufsen A1 Gen 3, which dismissed Alexa support. Ouch.
There was a surge in smart speakers, but there aren’t as many in the market as before. It’s now viewed as an optional extra, while some audio brands have created their own voice control, but more simply in the sense of hands-free control or queuing up a track, like the voice control Sonos and Sony have introduced to their devices.
There’s not as much appetite for smart home control as there used to be. For Amazon, smart functionality is its raison d’être.
The question that I think Amazon is facing is whether anyone wants to pay for a higher-quality audio experience. If the smarts are essentially the same across the Echo line-up, the appeal for going to the Echo Studio is only if you’re in the Amazon ecosystem and want sound as a priority. I’m not sure I see as many people coming at the Echo Studio from that angle.
While being the best-sounding Echo speaker is fine, that’s not a high bar to jump over. It has to be better than the competition, which is wide, diverse and – so far – better than Amazon’s previous attempts.
Amazon really needs to pull its finger out, and offer more ambition with the new Echo Studio. More of the same and it’ll be a rather ho-hum rebirth of the Echo Studio.
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