Best Speakers to Use with Your Amazon Echo Dot in 2018

• Best overall
• Best for simplicity
• Best for portability
• Best for sound quality

Best Overall

Sonos Play:1

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The Sonos Play:1 isn’t a Bluetooth speaker — it’s much more than that. As part of a whole-home sound system, the Sonos Play:1 is a small and powerful musical conduit that can fill rooms with lush sound. But that’s an investment.

On its own, connected via 3.5mm jack or over Bluetooth, the Sonos Play:1 connects to Alexa, allowing an Echo Dot, either in the same room or another, to send it music commands. The setup is easy thanks to work from both Amazon and Sonos — it just involves hooking the systems together using an Alexa Skill — and it works flawlessly. Plus, at $149, it’s cheaper than some Bluetooth speakers and sounds much, much better.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for the absolute best sound in a small form factor, connect the Sonos Play:1 to your Echo Dot.

One more thing: If you’d rather go Echo-free, the Sonos One has Alexa built right in.

Why the Sonos Play:1 is the best

Sonos makes great-sounding speakers. Always has, likely always will. The beauty of Sonos’s collaboration with Amazon is that a speaker like the Play:1, which may already be part of a dedicated Sonos system, can work independently with any Echo, including the tiny Echo Dot.

That means you can hide the Dot somewhere in a room and have it always listening for commands. “Alexa, play The Beatles,” takes just a second to say, but with a Sonos Play:1 in the room, the two gadgets become more than the sum of their parts. The beauty is that you aren’t connecting the Sonos to the Echo via Bluetooth, so sound coming out of the Play:1 sounds just as good as if you were using the dedicated Sonos app (which you can still do if you want).

Best for simplicity

Bose SoundLink Color II

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While it’s designed to be a Bluetooth speaker to connect your phone, the design and audio quality from the Bose SoundLink Color II speaker makes it perfect for filling most rooms with sound.

You can connect your Amazon Echo Dot to this speaker and leave it forever as a better Amazon Echo, or you can take the $130 Bose Soundlink Color II with you when leaving the house thanks to its internal battery. It’s a great flexible option for just about every occasion and looks nice enough that it can sit in a room without standing out or taking up too much space.

Bottom line: This speaker will turn your Amazon Echo Dot into something better than an Amazon Echo, and does a whole lot more.

One more thing: You can pick up the Bose SoundLink II in either black or white to match your Echo Dot.

Best for portability

VAUX speaker for Echo Dot

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Why bother with buying multiple Amazon Echo Dots when you can buy a speaker that powers your single Echo Dot so it can come with you wherever you are in the house? VAUX is one of several speaker designers clever enough to make the body of the speaker something that can actually hold the Echo Dot while in use, so it not only powers the brains of the operation but makes the whole system a single portable unit.

This $50 speaker promises six hours of portable runtime, and the dual 52mm drivers will certainly make this little Echo Dot fill a room with sound. Best of all, you don’t need a different power cord to charge this combined unit. The charger you used to power the Echo Dot is also capable of charging this speaker.

Bottom line: If portability is your goal, this is a great place to start.

Best Audio Quality

B&O Play Beoplay A6

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The speaker on a taller Amazon Echo is fine, but in larger rooms, it frequently feels a little flat. If your goal is high audio quality so you can stream across an entire house and really rattle the windows, you either want a complete standalone stereo system or you want a Beoplay A6.

Bang & Olufsen is the champion of high-quality audio in portable form, but you pay for the privilege. These speakers are not cheap, but the audio difference couldn’t be more clear when compared to other standalone speakers. While the Beoplay series does come in other, smaller formats that do a good job filling a room with sound, the $799 Beoplay A6 speakers are built for style and room-filling audio. It’s a strange looking speaker for sure, but one of those experiences where you don’t know you can listen to anything else after listening to this.

One more thing: These speakers are available in a bunch of different color fabric options, but tracking something down outside of the standard off-white or textured grey (sorry, Light Gray and Oxidized Brass) isn’t easy.

Conclusion

There are a lot of great options for speakers to add to an Amazon Echo Dot. The Sonos Play:1 is the best of all worlds, since it can exist as a dedicated Echo Dot speaker or as part of a larger Sonos system. The Bose SoundLink Color II is simple — it’s a fantastic Bluetooth speaker that has a 3.5mm input. If your goal is portability over all else, the VAUX is your speaker. And if audio quality is the most important thing to you, grab a B&O Play Beoplay A6 and have a blast.

Best Overall

Sonos Play:1

See at Amazon

The Sonos Play:1 isn’t a Bluetooth speaker — it’s much more than that. As part of a whole-home sound system, the Sonos Play:1 is a small and powerful musical conduit that can fill rooms with lush sound. But that’s an investment.

On its own, connected via 3.5mm jack or over Bluetooth, the Sonos Play:1 connects to Alexa, allowing an Echo Dot, either in the same room or another, to send it music commands. The setup is easy thanks to work from both Amazon and Sonos — it just involves hooking the systems together using an Alexa Skill — and it works flawlessly. Plus, at $149, it’s cheaper than some Bluetooth speakers and sounds much, much better.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for the absolute best sound in a small form factor, connect the Sonos Play:1 to your Echo Dot.

One more thing: If you’d rather go Echo-free, the Sonos One has Alexa built right in.

Update, July 2018: The Sonos Play:1 is our new pick for the best speaker for your Echo Dot, and we’ve replaced the Bose SoundLink II with the cheaper, more portable Bose SoundLink Color II. Happy listening!

Apple Revises Plans for Contentious Federation Square Store in Australia

Apple today submitted revised blueprints for its planned Federation Square retail store location in Melbourne, Australia, according to the Federation Square website.

Apple first announced the new flagship store in December, set to be built at Federation Square, a shopping center, public square, and mixed-used space in the heart of Melbourne.

The new Federation Square design
The construction of the new store calls for the demolition of the well-known Yarra building, which has infuriated Melbourne residents and led to major protests suggesting the public space should not be given over to a corporation.

Melbourne’s City Council in February backed a motion to lobby for a new store design due to both the backlash and the dissatisfaction with Apple’s planned store design, which has been described as a “Pizza Hut pagoda.”

Another angle of the new store design
The new design plan, created following a series of design workshops that included Federation Square Management, the Victorian Government, the Melbourne City Council, and Apple, features a building with a simpler, more streamlined look that better fits in with the Federation Square aesthetic.

The original Federation Square design proposed by Apple
The pagoda-style roof has been abandoned in favor of a flatter design that will house solar panels. The design offers 500 square meters of new public space, more outdoor shading, a better connection to the Yarra river, and plans for cultural events.

Apple’s revamped design is part of a “broader reimagining” of Federation Square, which includes the new Digital Facade on the Transport Building and the new Melbourne Metro Train Station entrance.

According to Federation Square CEO Jonathan Tribe, the new store design is “consistent with Federations Square’s Civic and Cultural Charter, which recognises Melbourne’s pre-eminence as a centre for creativity and innovation.” The Federation Square leadership expects the Apple Store to boost visitor numbers, bringing an additional two million people to Federation Square each year.

Current plans continue to call for the destruction of the Yarra building, so it’s not clear if Melbourne residents will be satisfied with Apple’s planned changes. At the very least, the new design is less intrusive, which could win acceptance from protestors.

Related Roundup: Apple Stores
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