The Amazon Echo Pop was unveiled just a few months ago with a crisp £44.99 price tag – but the big question is, how does it compare to the Amazon Echo Dot?
Amazon has a plethora of smart speakers on the market, with the Echo Pop, Echo Dot and Echo, just to name a few. The Echo Pop is the company’s latest entry-level speaker, which comes in a wide array of colours that will surely add a pop of colour to your home.
Since we have reviewed both the Echo Pop and the Echo Dot (5th Generation), we wanted to put these speakers through the wringer and decide once and for all which one is worth investing in.
Keep reading to find all the critical differences between these speakers so you can decide which is truly worth the upgrade.
Echo Dot comes with tap-touch controls
The Echo Dot comes with tap-touch controls. If an alarm goes off, a quick tap can silence the speaker and put it into snooze mode. It can also be used to play and pause music, a great alternative if you don’t always want to use voice controls.
The Echo Pop skipped out on the tap-touch feature. We found this to have a larger impact on those who want to use the Echo Pop as an alarm clock since it’s a lot more cumbersome to control and doesn’t have the same quick and handy features as the Echo Dot.
Echo Pop does not come with an LCD display
Further pushing the narrative that the Echo Pop is not an ideal bedside companion, it does not come with an LCD screen. If you want to check the time you will need to ask Alexa or use another device completely, like a mobile phone, with our review outright claiming, “If you want an Echo for an alarm clock, the Echo Dot with Clock (5th Generation) is a superior product because you can tap to snooze, and it has an LCD display showing the current time”.
The Echo Dot does come with an LCD display which shows the current time. This makes it better equipped as a bedside clock and is what we at Trusted Reviews would recommend.
Echo Pop comes with bolder colour options
As the name suggests, the Amazon Echo Pop really pops in terms of its colourways. It can be found in Charcoal, Glacier White, Lavender Bloom and Midnight Teal. The last two options look very vibrant, and ideal for anyone who wants a pop of colour in their lounge or bedroom.
The Echo Dot comes in three colourways, including Charcoal, Glacier White and Deep Sea Blue. These options are more muted and would be a better fit for those who want their smart home devices to blend into the background of their home.
Echo Dot is more expensive
The Echo Dot was released in 2022 and sports a £54.99/$49.99 price tag. However, since it’s been on the market for almost a year the price does fluctuate often, meaning that you will be able to snatch it up at a discounted price depending on when you check the Amazon website.
The Echo Pop launched with a £44.99/$39.99 price tag. This makes it £10/$10 cheaper than the Echo Dot and it’s likely that it will be treated to the same discounted trend as its older sibling over its lifetime. Overall, while the Echo Pop is cheaper, you won’t be breaking the bank with either of these smart speakers.
Echo Pop has a larger speaker, but doesn’t sound as good
The Echo Pop comes with a 1.95-inch front-firing speaker, slightly larger than the 1.73-inch driver found in the Echo Dot.
In our testing, we found the Echo Pop to lack a lot of the warmth and bass found in the Echo Dot. Bass-heavy tracks lacked low-frequency impact, while a lot of high-end tracks sounded harsh and muddled. It lacked the range of the Echo Dot but was loud enough to fill a regular-sized room.
We found the Echo Dot to have a lot of dynamic range with big improvements over the Echo Dot (4th Generation). It also struggled with bass-heavy tracks but overall, the vast majority of songs sounded very good.
Echo Dot includes a temperature sensor
One of the upgrades to the Echo Dot 5th generation was the inclusion of a built-in temperature sensor. This can be used to create Alexa Routines that automatically run according to the temperature, such as switching on the heaters when it’s cold or turning on a smart fan when it’s too hot.
Our review notes that the lack of a temperature and motion sensor makes the Echo Pop less functional, as it cannot be used to trigger Routines in the same way as the Echo Dot can. Our Echo Dot review notes “Overall, I wouldn’t bother with the Pop and would buy the Echo Dot any day”, suggesting that the Echo Pop isn’t nearly as practical as its older sibling.
