Amazon Echo Dot Max review

The fiercely tribal world of smart speakers offers a window into the wider battle for tech giant supremacy. All of the major titans, be it Google, Apple or in this case Amazon, send their smart speakers out to bat, with each one, driven by its AI-powered voice assistant, requiring a pledge of fealty to a well-defined ecosystem.

Amazon’s latest Echo speaker lineup is here to tempt you over to its idyllic shores. Consisting of four new models – the Echo Studio, the Echo Show 8, the Echo Show 11 and the Echo Dot Max – Amazon promises this new range features its most advanced models to date.

The last Amazon smart speaker we reviewed, the charming Echo Dot (5th Generation), impressed us deeply with its combination of Alexa smarts and spritely sound for a reasonable price, and we were rather hoping that this new line, represented here by the Echo Dot Max, had taken that tasty recipe to the next level in a bid to welcome users over to Amazon’s tech jungle.

Build & design

If you’re familiar with Amazon’s established range of Echo Dots, little about the new Echo Dot Max will particularly surprise you. If anything, this particular model looks rather similar to Apple’s HomePod Mini (£99 / $99 / AU$149), albeit with a larger size and on-unit buttons instead of a touch-capacitive glass top.

The Max speaker is essentially a small orb, a bit larger than your standard hockey ball, with a cut-off bottom for stability and a flattened exterior face onto which are mounted a small collection of control buttons.

There are fewer buttons on the Max than there are on the five-star, cheaper Echo Dot (5th Generation) (£55 / $50 / AU$79). The older model houses four – volume up, volume down, microphone off and an action button for things like Alexa control and pairing – but this newer iteration has ditched that action toggle for the sake of removing a bit of on-unit clutter.

We imagine that will prove divisive among users, as we hardly found the fifth-gen’s control panel’s four-button array to be particularly hard to manage. That action button was a useful addition when you didn’t want to go digging around the Alexa app, after all, even if most users will just use voice control for the majority of their time with the Max.

The Echo Dot Max is still made to a high standard elsewhere. Being a bigger unit, the soft, chunky cloth mesh puts us in mind of the rival HomePod Mini, clinging tightly to the frame without noticeable bulges or blemishes. The new-gen speaker also remains stable wherever we place it thanks to its non-slip rubberised underside, so you needn’t fear it tumbling off its precarious perch when an unruly puppy knocks into your wobbly side table.

Features

Before we get to the Max’s underwhelming sonic performance, it’s only right to acknowledge that, as a smart device, it’s an impressive operator.

If you’re planning on integrating this smart speaker into a wider ecosystem, you’ll naturally find that it plays ball far more readily with other Amazon-branded products. You can tell your Echo Dot Max speaker to turn off your smart lights or check who’s at the door, for example, but those tasks are generally only going to be available if you’re using Amazon smart lights and/or a Ring camera respectively.

When it comes to streaming music, though, the Echo Dot Max is surprisingly open-minded regarding which services it will cater to. Most of Amazon’s rival, third-party services are supported alongside its own Amazon Music, so you can still make song requests if you happen to be a dyed-in-the-wool Spotify, Deezer or Apple Music user.

Sadly, as was the case with the Echo Dot (5th Generation), Tidal still isn’t supported, nor is its hi-res cohort Qobuz, so if you want to use those services, you’ll have to do so via traditional (and lossy) Bluetooth.

These setbacks aside, the Max is an easy piece of kit to set up and use. Integrating streaming services is easily done via the Alexa app, meaning you can simply switch to your chosen preference via a one-stop shop of platforms, while actually getting your smart speaker up and running is the work of mere moments.

Alexa voice control is, of course, at its heart, and it’s as good as it has ever been courtesy of Amazon’s new ‘Alexa+’ iteration. Amazon’s smart assistant, frankly, can often make Siri seem a little backward, and the wide range of voice-activated functions and features it can perform is deeply impressive.

Interactions are generally responsive and natural, and while we’re not at the spooky point at which you could be forgiven for thinking that your AI assistant was replicating a natural conversation with a real person, there are glimpses that this once-impossible-seeming future doesn’t seem like such a way off.

The usual tricks and Easter eggs are all there to enjoy. You can still profess your love to Alexa, whereupon you’ll be treated to a peppy number in which it earnestly thanks you for the sentiment.

You can also still play a ‘choose your own adventure’ version of Bethesda’s classic video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, wherein you fight dragons, traverse icy passes and search for lost treasure with Alexa as your guide. It’s still nothing more than a fun novelty, but as fun novelties go, it’s one of the best.

There are some new weapons in the arsenal, too. Alongside stereo pairing between twin devices of the same generation, the Echo Dot Max also supports Alexa Home Theatre, allowing users to connect up to five units with compatible Fire TV devices to create a smart surround system.

Plug your various current-gen Dots in and Alexa will automatically set things up and tune your speakers to the room in question, although as we’ll see, the Max’s sonic performance may dissuade you from using it as part of a cinema set-up.

Sound

This marks the first time Amazon has engineered an Echo Dot with a two-way speaker system, integrating a single 20mm tweeter and a 6cm woofer for what Amazon describes as a “room-filling sound”. The new model also makes use of room adaptation technology, whereby the speaker uses a dedicated microphone to automatically adjust its sonic output to match the size of the room it’s in.

This all sounds positive on paper, so we’re rather baffled, not to say disappointed, to discover that this newer, pricier Max is a clear sonic downgrade compared with the older Echo Dot (5th Generation). When you consider the fact that the older Echo Dot is half the price of this newer iteration, that has serious alarm bells ringing.

Regardless of the streaming service we choose, the music we select or the room in which we play it, the Max has lost much of the sharpness that made many previous Echo Dots such a fun listen. It may be bigger and go louder than many of its antecedents, but it’s also rather muffled and vague-sounding, losing the crispness and definition that we previously had so admired in the fifth-gen Dot.

Melding a lack of clarity with a poor sense of cohesion and frustratingly modest levels of audio resolution doesn’t exactly make for the most rewarding of listens. The Max sounds muddled as well as muffled, with textural details coming across as vague and lacking in sharpness or authenticity. Songs and the instruments often sound like synthetic reproductions – rarely do they come close to what we would recognise as “the real thing”.

Rhythms are poorly reproduced, and certainly lacking in the kind of fizz that would get your toes tapping to, say, Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal. It’s all so lumpen and lead-footed, and while we want to get swept up in the tune’s irrepressible energy, the speaker feels as though its engine is forever spluttering as it tries to rev itself into life. Switch over to the HomePod Mini (which costs roughly the same price), and it’s Apple’s smart speaker that gets the job done with far greater zip and effervescence than the Max provides.

All told, Amazon’s orb offers a frustratingly flat and uninspired delivery. We don’t discern any great dynamic swells or drops when we play Hans Zimmer’s swashbuckling Up Is Down, while the low-level nuances on Bill Withers’ Ain’t No Sunshine are all but lost to the ether.

It’s hard not to be disappointed by such a bland approach, especially when we find that our iPhone 15’s built-in speakers will do a better job of capturing your music’s drama and emotional impact.

There are some vague bright spots amid what is, ultimately, a disappointing product. Although it’s still quite a small speaker, it’s capable of going pretty loud – in fact, it’s where the Max sounds more comfortable, when pumping out simple, robust tunes at higher volumes.

Further, there’s a good deal of sonic muscle for a speaker of this type, and again, that’s something our test unit is capable of showcasing when the volume dial gets cranked towards the red zone. Björk’s Army Of Me is made reasonably full and muscular, supported by an impressively weighty bass that, while not particularly agile or refined, gives the song some decent lower-end clout.

It’s not enough to save the Echo Dot Max or make it worthy of a recommendation over the superb HomePod Mini, but it is at least something.

Verdict

We were hoping that this new addition to Amazon’s established roster of Echo smart speakers would take things to the next level and even – say it quietly – see this pricier Max competing with the Apple HomePod Mini. In reality, it’s nowhere near.

Alexa integration is as great as ever, and there’s no question that this is a user-friendly, intuitively designed piece of kit that does the ‘smart’ aspect of its product description very well. As a speaker, however, it’s a major step backwards.

If musical performance matters to you as much as smart features, you’d be better off getting the cheaper Echo Dot (5th Gen), or else jumping ship entirely and pledging your loyalty to the Apple HomePod Mini.

Review published: 19th November 2025

SCORES

• Sound 2
• Build 4
• Features 4

MORE:

Read our review of the Amazon Echo Dot (5th Generation)

Also consider the Apple HomePod Mini

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