The Best Alexa For Music: A Look At Amazon Echo Sound Quality

Here is a quick look at the three phenomenal picks.

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Image	Product	Price	Prime	Buy
Top	Echo Studio - High-fidelity smart speaker with 3D audio and Alexa		PrimeEligible	View On Amazon
	Bose Home Speaker 500: Smart Bluetooth Speaker with Alexa Voice Control Built-in, Black		PrimeEligible	View On Amazon
	Sonos One (Gen 2) - Voice Controlled Smart Speaker with Amazon Alexa Built-in - White		PrimeEligible	View On Amazon

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While these aren’t all Amazon brand speakers, they all have Alexa built-in. The Amazon Echo Studio (detailed in the following section) delivers the best quality sound for music out of all the Alexa speakers I’ve found. Amazon has several different models that integrate its digital assistant. They have also partnered with a few quality 3rd party manufacturers to include Alexa in their products. This brings us to Bose and Sonos.

If you’re purchasing one speaker by itself, you should probably get the Echo Studio for music. If you’re going to get a pair for left and right stereo sound, the Sonos One (Gen 2) would then be your best bet. The Bose Home Speaker 500 is a great speaker compared to most competitors but falls in 3rd place when up against the Echo Studio and Sonos One.

Amazon Echo Studio

A sound that might Echo through eternity

Enter the Amazon Echo Studio. Showcasing 5 speakers, 3D Sound, and a solid enclosure, you can tell that much thought was put into the quality of this speaker. Featuring Dolby Atmos technology to fill the room, you can expect a fully immersed listening experience.

Hands down, this is Amazon’s best Alexa speaker for music or entertainment. If you’re willing to spend the money, you could even maximize your experience with a second Echo studio to pair in stereo. Not enough bass? add an Echo Sub (current price here on Amazon).

The Hardware Specifications

The Echo Studio is outfitted with five strategically placed speakers to achieve optimal sound. A 1-inch tweeter that is directed straight at the listener, paired up with three 2-inch mid-range drivers (panned one to the left, the second to the right, and the third firing straight up), and then there is a solid 5.25-inch woofer firing downwards that is mounted just above a slotted bass aperture.

The combination of these five drivers powered by a Class D amplifier delivers a remarkable frequency range of 30Hz to 24kHz of sound with a peak power of 330 watts.

The diver configuration might seem a little odd. However, the direction of each driver has been configured to make the sound waves bounce off your room’s ceiling and walls to give you a more immersive experience (rather than blasting it all at you in the same direction).

Echo Studio As A Smart Home Hub

The near-perfect experience of high-fidelity sound is what makes this the best Alexa for music. The Echo Studio only starts there though. It’s also a virtual assistant and smart home powerhouse. What separates this from other versions though? It has its own built-in smart hub.

This was one of the first Echo models fitted with a Zigbee receiver. Zigbee is a very popular smart home protocol. You can use the Echo Studio to directly control smart home devices which are also compatible Zigbee. This can be done without enabling a third-party skill or downloading extra apps.

Of course, if the devices are Alexa compatible but don’t have Zigbee compatibility, you can still connect to the device through another smart home app via your router.

While we’re on the smart home subject, it’s important to add that the Echo Studio (as well as any other Alexa device) is compatible with Spotify Connect. This is a huge convenience for your multi-room home audio set-up.

Amazon Echo Studio – My Verdict

Amazon’s push toward better sound quality and its adoption of hi-res audio has made life much better for Alexa fans who love listening to music. They’ve also added flexibility in terms of what it can do to improve your sound experience. For instance, the Studio model will even tune its sound for your room’s acoustics by firing out a few test tones and adjusting the output to provide you with the best possible sound.

The Amazon Echo Studio would be one of the best speakers on the market, even without a digital assistant. The integration of Alexa into this remarkable machine makes it one speaker that is worth every penny and more.

Bose Home Speaker 500 with Alexa

Bose already has a long history of creating speakers with high-quality audio. While they have several other models, the launch of the Bose Home Speaker 500 demonstrates they are in the smart speaker industry for the long hull. With a seamless elliptical shape, anodized aluminum casing, compact size and color LCD display, this speaker is also possibly the sleekest in its class.

One unique selling point for the Home Speaker 500 is its use of Bose’s eight microphone array designed for near and far listening. The microphones are really adept at picking up voices from far away, even with music playing. You can more accurately interact with the speaker from the other side of the room. Combine that with Alexa’s voice recognition technology, and you get one of the best Alexa speakers in the market.

Bose is known for producing high-quality sound, and the Home Speaker 500 doesn’t disappoint. It has two custom drivers delivering sound left and right to deliver good stereo separation even though it’s a single unit. Remarkably, the speaker could still deliver various frequencies of music without the lowest frequencies bleeding into the trebles and mids. It’s a testament to Bose’s dedication to providing a quality music listening experience.

Like the next speaker on our list, the Bose Home Speaker 500 is also compatible with Apple AirPlay and Spotify Connect.

There is a lot to love about this speaker, but it might not be my first choice when compared with the other two on our list.

Note: This smart speaker also has Google Assistant built in.

Sonos One (Gen 2) with Alexa

Sonos is a groundbreaking pioneer in broke in multiroom audio and smart speaker technology. Their Sonos One (Gen 2) model definitely had to make the list for best Alexa speaker if we’re talking about music and sound quality.

While it may not be much to look at, its performance trumps its aesthetic design. It comes with touch-sensitive controls, two Class-D digital amplifiers, one tweeter, and one mid-woofer. The sound is fairly bassy, immersive, and creates an excellent soundscape in just about any room.

The Sonos One can also get pretty loud, considering its size. It can even outshine some larger speakers for the most part, but the Amazon Echo Studio beats it when it comes to really low frequencies. The Sonos One produces a respectable sub-bass rumble, but the lower notes can slightly bleed into the mids at greater volumes. You can eliminate the problem by dialing down the volume a notch.

The Sonos One is definitely an upgrade from its predecessors. Additionally, it can give you the benefit of choice when it comes to choosing your digital assistant. You can stick with Alexa (because Alexa is simply amazing), but it also has Google Assistant built-in. Google Assistant is the brains behind Google Home/Google Nest.

Priced around the same as the Amazon Echo Studio at the time of this publication, the Sonos One is a worthy contender when it comes to smart speakers with integrated Alex. However, the Amazon Echo Studio edges past the Sonos One in my opinion – except for one very notable detail. Clarity.

When it comes to crystal clear sound at a reasonable volume, the Sonos outshines the others on the list. These volumes are also more likely the levels you will use most, since people rarely crank their speaker to 10. I’ll also say that pairing a second Sonos One as a stereo Left and Right really sounds incredible.

For added bass, you could add the Sonos Sub (found here on Amazon) to your system. It’s a bit pricy, but a pair of Sonos One Gen 3s with a Sonos Sub would pretty much be the pinnacle of superior sounding music in an Alexa speaker system.

As a final note, this smart speaker also supports Apple Airplay 2 and Spotify Connect. This will be especially valuable for you iOS users.