Earlier this year, Amazon revealed the Echo Pop, a new smart speaker with Alexa designed to offer more directional and clear sound than the regular Echo Dot and Echo. It has gone on sale a few times since then, and now you can buy one for $25 — a savings of $15 or 38% from the usual price.
Unlike Amazon’s other circular smart speakers, the Echo Pop has a front-facing directional speaker, so your music, alerts, Alexa responses, and everything else is pointed in one direction. It’s primarily recommended for bedrooms and small spaces — larger rooms might need the more powerful Echo or a completely different speaker setup. The Echo Pop is completely featureless from the front, save for a light indicator on the top, and all the controls like mute and volume are on the back. Sadly, there’s no 3.5mm jack for playing audio from a connected wired device, but you can connect to it as a Bluetooth speaker from a phone, tablet, laptop, or other device that supports Bluetooth audio output.
Besides the unique design, this is pretty much your average Alexa smart speaker, with all the same software features as Amazon’s other Echo speakers. You can ask Alexa to play music, audiobooks, and podcasts from supported platforms (like Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, and so on), set up and control smart home devices like thermostats and smart plugs, and use Alexa skills. Some of that setup involves using the poorly-designed Alexa app, unfortunately.
According to the price tracking service Keepa, this is the second time the Echo Pop has been available for $25. The only other recorded sale that was lower was a “Lightning Deal” for $18 that lasted a few days. With how often Amazon puts its hardware on sale, it’s generally not a great idea to buy Echo devices at the original MSRP, and the Echo Pop makes more sense at a $25 price point.
You can buy the Echo Pop from Amazon. As of the time of writing, it’s in stock at the sale price in multiple colors: Charcoal, Lavender Bloom, Glacier White, and Midnight Teal.
