Get Amazon’s New Echo Spot 2nd-Gen Smart Alarm Clock for Just $45 [CNET]

Amazon just released an ‘all-new’ Echo Spot. In advance to Prime Day, it’s on sale for $45 — $35 off its list price of $80.

Amazon Prime Day doesn’t start until July 16 and runs for two days instead of one, but Amazon already has an early Prime Day deal on its just-announced 2nd-gen Echo Spot smart alarm clock. Available in black, glacier white and ocean blue, it lists for $80, but Prime members can get it for $45 through July 17 while supplies last. Non-Prime members can join or start a free Prime trial to get the discounted offer.

Like its predecessor, the new Echo Spot has a touchscreen and displays a variety of custom-designed clock faces. It’s also Alex-enabled, allowing you to use your voice to set alarms, access the weather, play music tracks and issue commands to your Alexa smart home products. Amazon says the new Echo Spot “builds on what our customers loved most about the original product — like the semi-spherical shape, access to Alexa, and the compact and vibrant display — and reimagines it with even better visuals and improved audio quality.”

When the original Echo Spot came out in 2017, former CNET editor Ry Crist described it as “the love child of Amazon’s most expensive Echo gadget, the touchscreen-equipped Echo Show, and its least expensive Alexa gadget, the pint-sized Echo Dot.” With a launching price of $130, the original had its plusses, but wasn’t quite as compelling as we hoped. 

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The screen on the new Echo Spot has a bigger diameter with no bezel around it. But it’s more of a semicircle rather than the fully circular screen found on the original. It’s unclear if the display is sharper than the original, but we’ll confirm that as soon as we get our hands on a review sample.

This new model has a 1.73-inch front-firing directional speaker that Amazon says offers upgraded sound from the original, with “clear vocals and deep bass.” Other features include the ability to have Alexa “call loved ones, make household announcements, audibly drop in on other Alexa-enabled devices in your household, or get alerts and audio from your compatible smart doorbell.”

Unlike Amazon’s Echo Show products, the screen is designed to display rudimentary animations, not full-scale video. Also, there’s no integrated camera, so you can’t make video calls (the original had a camera). That’s probably a good thing if you’re concerned about privacy issues. 

On that front, like other Alexa-enabled products, Amazon says the new Echo Spot is equipped with privacy controls, including a mic-off button, the ability to view and delete your voice recordings, and more. 

As I said, we’ll have a full review once we get our hands on the new Echo Spot in the coming days. But, if you’re looking for a smart alarm clock with audio capabilities, this appears to be a pretty good value at $45. Note that right now, the Echo Show 5 (3rd-gen) is selling for $90, but could very well be on sale for Prime Day. It has been discounted to less than $50 during previous Prime Day events. We’ll see which device sounds better.