Design

Compared with the older Echo, the new one is somewhat squat. The previous version was like a tall glass of water, while this year's is more like a beer mug. It's shorter, it's wider and it has a fabric covering instead of a plastic exterior with a metallic finish. Amazon offers six interchangeable shells for the new Echo, including a lighter fabric, light and dark wood veneers and a shiny silver one. You can pick any of these as your Echo's primary cover, instead of having to buy a separate shell. I'm not a fan of my review unit's black cloth cover, but at least there are attractive alternatives.

There's not much else to say about the design -- you'll still find the same light ring near the top that indicates when it's listening and the volume level. A new auxiliary jack should please those who want to connect the Echo to other speakers with a cable. Buttons at the top let you toggle volume or the microphone by hand if you can't or don't want to speak.

In use

"Alexa, are you smarter than the Google Assistant?" While she'll give you a politically correct answer ("I like all AIs"), the actual answer is yes.

I've had both a Google Home and the new Echo side by side in my apartment for a few days, and in general Alexa is better at understanding my commands. Case in point: I like to have my "Chill at Home" playlist in the background when I'm preparing dinner or getting ready for work, but I get sick of hearing the same few songs in the same order all the time. To shuffle songs and skip to the next track after I put the playlist on, I usually have to tell Google to shuffle and skip in two separate commands. With Alexa, I just have to say "Alexa, shuffle and skip," or, "Alexa, play my Chill at Home playlist on shuffle." I can't even get Google to shuffle my playlist from the get -- it has to be a separate command.

Also, Alexa is better at dredging up songs I haven't recently heard from my 400-track playlist than the Google, which seems to just pick from the same 25 songs in the collection. Both speakers are doing so via Spotify, and it's hard to determine whether it's the music streaming service or the assistants that are causing the problem. A Spotify spokesperson told Engadget that "there are subtle differences between how Amazon Echo and Google Home work with Spotify. This may result in slightly different playback experiences in certain circumstances."

Amazon talks a big game about the Echo's audio quality, saying the speaker uses Dolby processing to pump "crisp vocals and dynamic bass" out of its 2.5-inch woofer and 0.6-inch tweeter. That sounds great on paper, but in reality it sounds limp. Vocals are indeed crisp, but music lacks bass, and instruments tend to get lost in the mix. As much as I prefer Alexa as a DJ, I find myself playing music through the Home instead -- it just sounds much richer.

The new Echo has seven microphones and noise cancellation to better hear you. I was most impressed by how the speaker can discern what I'm saying over the music it's playing -- something the Google Home struggles with. Amazon's speaker can also understand me from a distance, even when I'm in another room, facing away from it.

As an assistant, Alexa is very capable. Not only can she control smart home devices like my lamps, but she can take notes, make shopping lists, buy stuff on Amazon and more. I particularly appreciate its ability to answer follow-up questions, as if we're carrying on a real conversation. When I asked for movie suggestions in my area, she not only told me what movies were playing but also asked me what theaters and showtimes I preferred.