I purchased the Echo Studio to improved the sound quality in our dining room, which it effectively accomplished. First, I tested out some streaming music. Compared to other Alexa devices I've possessed, it has significantly more bass and clarity. Next, I connected it via Bluetooth to our dining room turntable. In this set up, it felt inferior to having a complete setup, but this may be due to the fact that there is only one speaker, and the high expectations of listening to vinyl. I have not had the chance to listen to it with two Studios as left and right, and Echo subwoofer, though I'm very curious to know what that would sound like. Nevertheless, this is an excellent speaker for streaming, as it is powerful, bassy, and distortion-free when turned all the way up. It is more than adequate for the room, which is typically used for cooking and cleaning, as well as dinner parties and game nights. With the exception of the hi-fi stereo in the family room, this is the best-sounding speaker in the home. In addition to connecting a Bluetooth turntable to it, I grouped it with my kitchen Echo Input, which connects to my ceiling speakers. The Echo Studio is a stark reminder of how inadequate and depressing my ceiling speakers are. The Studio is by far superior. However, they work together perfectly, allowing the Amazon music to broadcast seamlessly between the kitchen and dining room. This is really the selling point, isn't it? We have plenty of choices to stream music, but perhaps integration is what makes it different from the others. Audiophiles will likely continue to prefer a more conventional setup. I did not attempt to connect the turntable directly to the speaker (I believe it has a 1/8 auxiliary input), so audiophiles would already be cringing at the Bluetooth. I'm pleased with the Studio; its sound is superior to all of the other speakers in the house besides the conventional stereo. And while I may not have been impressed at the quality listening to records (which I had high expecations), I'm usually too lazy to put on a record or CD, so having a great-sounding speaker to stream on is definitely worthwhile.  If I want to hear the record in all its glory, I can simply walk into the family room and listen to the other turntable with the hi-fi receiver, amplifier, and speaker pairs. For daily streaming, which is 90% of what we listen to, this is a great purchase and the integration and speaker groups feature that Amazon has makes it worthwhile.

I'm stupid for music and have as hard a time deciding on my setup as I do choosing medicare plans. Yeah I'm old. There's plenty of videos out there discussing the virtues of all devices and you would do well to watch first. So...I have a M series Vizio 5.1 sound bar, subwoofer and satellites in the house. It sounds great. If I was smart I'd just stick with it. Outside there's a V series Vizio and it also sounds good but it a bit dated. Still the sound is adequate, but I'm looking for more and not ready to spend $700.00 for a new 5.1.2. Maybe someday. I have 2 echos 4th gen with a subwoofer and set them up outside in the perfect spots and was pretty impressed. If you're not a weirdo like me this will be fine. If you want to be minimalist 1 would be fine. Not a lot of room, echo 4th would be fine. 2 together with subwoofer is far better. So now I have a refurbished studio that I've been staring at for a year in the Amazon app. One day it went on sale so I got it for a price that wouldn't hurt my feelings if it didn't turn out ok. Setup was generally without issue. There was a small problem pairing with subwoofer, but that was eventually resolved by making sure both were on 2.4 network and resetting the sub. First go I listened to smooth jazz, yacht rock, classical and there was something missing. Asked it to play spacial playlist and Ed Sheeran came out Chrystal clear. Very nice, but not really my genre. This morning I started out with BBC News and NPR and was not impressed. Same with smooth jazz. So I went into setting and tweaked the equalizer and turned off spacial, which is set to on default out of box. The difference is significant and there are YouTube experts that tell you to do this. Another thing. I set the studio up on a higher shelf and found when I spoke, it didn't hear me but the echo 4th gen in the house did. I pulled the studio down to a table and the microphones pick up everything fine. Spacial is a limited catalogue in Amazon and you can tell Studio to play that genre, but for me, not to interested. You can listen to Dolby Atmos etc without spacial. So keep in mind this is not stereo system for audiophiles. It's a Bluetooth/streaming device and it works great for that. In most circumstances this is all normal people would need. I see myself getting another when the price comes back down, maybe black Friday. I expect to change this to 5 stars when I have 2 paired with a sub. In the past I've tried pairing with Firestick and the results were nowhere as good as 5.1 and had issues. These are great devices for specific things and a good choice for most circumstances. My friend was just here and blown away, but he's not a weirdo like me. December 3 2023 update I took the punge and purchased another refurbed unit at black friday sales price I couldn't pass up. Pairing the new one with the existing studio and sub was not seamless, but took about 15 minutes. J I like it a great deal. The volume is far more than I can do without annoying the neighborhood. The music is clear and there are no connectivity issues. As always certified by Amazon products are just fine and at $60.00 savings I can't go wrong. As a test I streamed music from Amazon music app on firestick 4k on Vizio 5.1 V series on the patio that is about 400 square feet. Sounds good. Then I streamed from the studios and sounded great. I had my neighbor come over to get his opinion and he liked studio sound better than Vizio. No doubt there are differences in what the stick can do that the studio can do better. A comparable sound bar setup would cost between $500-$1000. I'm just not willing to do that yet. In the house I have a vizio 5.1 M series and I like it a lot. Echo show 10 for casual listening. The thing that would make the studio amazing is surround speakers, still as it is I'm pretty happy. Changing 5 stars.

This thing is amazing. Great booming sound without a sub. Dont need a sub with this speaker, IMHO! Very quick and easy to integrate with my fire stick max. Thought about getting a 2 one, but decided I dont need another one. This has wonderful sound and clarity with music and home theater. These Echo devices have greatly improved since they first came out years ago. Just hope they last long!

I've had a Sonos system for years, so I'm very familiar with the sound quality and the value they offer. When it came time to add a high quality speaker to our second house, I was torn about whether to go with Sonos, or something else. I still recommend Sonos for those who want multi-room sound in a number of rooms. But the Alexa integration can be finicky. And Sonos is expensive if you want their models that are stereo (the least expensive ones are mono-only). So, for this other house, I decided to try going the Echo route. The biggest plus for the Echo Studio is the faultless Alexa integration. It works perfectly and hears our commands without issue 99% of the time (the only issue is when the volume is cranked up). This speaker can go very loud by the way (but of course Alexa won't hear you when it's cranked). We also like that the Echo Studio is reasonably sized (similar in size to Sonos Era 100, but bigger than a Sonos One), and importantly has stereo sound in one box. (Era 100 is stereo, but the One is mono, which I consider a big negative.) While the Studio is stereo, the stereo effect is limited based on distance from the speaker. From 6 feet away, you can hear stereo ambience very nicely. But from 12 or more feet away, the stereo effects decays quickly. But I still think it provides enough improvement over mono to be worth the money. Amazon includes a sound ambience improvement effect that utilizes the top speaker. This improvement is subtle but noticeable and very worthwhile. But I think the top speaker should actually be even louder. As I've said the Echo is "stereo" but it doesn't have stereo tweeters (there's just one tweeter on the front). In my opinion, the Studio is lacking treble. I have set the bass and treble to -1 and +1 respectively and I think the speaker sounds way better this way. The bass is definitely not bass that you feel, but it provides a nice bottom end that no other Echo device has. If you're a bass head and have the budget, you can add an Echo Sub. Bottom line: We are keeping the Echo Studio for our second home and not going with Sonos.

It is truly the best echo ever. The sound is awesome. However size is big. Almost as big as the sub. On the down side, it is with the Alexa app. I wish they would expand the home theater part of the alexa app so you could have two paired sets of echos along with echo sub. But the sound quality depend on the source.

We use this for all our music listening now in the house. The sound quality is amazing and. It is small in size comparable to a coffee can for those of you that understand that reference. Totally worth what I paid for it.

Read a lot of bad reviews for the sub and instead opted for this. The bass is clean. Thought the 4th gen echo was nice. But this is much much nicer. Them paired together is a thing of beauty

This stand alone unit is of high quality and offers exceptional sound quality when used for regular Alexa functions like podcasts, music, smart home things, etc. What does not work well at all is the home theater function. I use a Fire TV 4k Stick and a Fire TV Stick Max. I own and use a number if Echo devices and an usually a very satisfied customer. However, I have been struggling with the home theater for six months and have now finally given up. The system is not at all reliable. I have had to delete and reset the home theater function at least 30 times. The home theater function will not play audio reliably from my ReCast. It is jumbled and quirky. The system will periodically for no obvious reason just quit working, requiring the user to unpair the theater in the alexa app. Many times the Echo Sub and Echo Studio units will have to be reset from scratch (wiped and restarted) in order to re-establish the home theater. Amazon support has been involved numerous times and been unable to change the outcomes. Please don’t waste your money on these units if you are planning a home theater use. Completely unreliable. I think the root cause of the failure of the concept is too complex - too many moving parts to reliably function. The moving parts are your internet ISP, Amazon’s network, your wifi router and set up, device compatibility issues and the constantly changing audio formats. So anyway, the system just doesn’t work reliably - fair warning.

I upgraded from a 2nd gen Echo. The sound quality in the Echo Studio is superior to other Echo devices. The music fills up a 20x40 room without distortion. This won't replace a home entertainment center, but this is a perfect option if you want good sound without a large footprint. If you have an Alexa ecosystem, this unit integrates nicely with other speakers when you add it to Groups. Limitations: The Home Theater mode needs more improvement. Besides, the Echo Studio in the family room, I have two Studios plus the sub in Home Theater mode in my parlor. 1. Setting up the Home Theater mode in Alexa can take some patience, even for techies. After several attempts to set up Home Theater mode through Alexa, I finally had to call tech support (Very responsive, so thank you). Tech support informed me that Home Theater mode is only supported on the Amazon Firestick, not Fire TV's from 3rd party brands. After using a Firestick on a FireTV (yes, really), Home Theater mode worked. I highly recommend reading up on how Home Theater mode works. In a nushell, the sound from the movie/show is sent to the Amazon cloud (internet), then it is sent back to the devices. Therefore, you MUST have a steady internet connection and devices MUST be on the same band (I use the same 5G band for all of my Alexa devices). This architecture can cause some A/V mismatch, so thankfully Amazon has included a Lip Sync setting that allows the use to adjust A/V delay. Recommendation - work with 3rd party Fire TV manufacturers to upgrade the TV firmware for Home Theater mode. 2. If you designate the Studio Speakers and sub as a Home Theater, you cannot use the speakers for other devices. For example, while in Home Theater mode I can't pair the two Studio speakers to a record player for stereo sound. I don't think this can be fixed with an upgrade because of the unusual way in which the sound must travel from the source to the cloud and then back to the speakers. 3. Home Theater mode is maxed out at 3 devices - 2 Studios and the Echo sub. A final recommendation - Upgrade the Home Theater setup to allow pairing more Echo devices. I would love to have the ability to use two Echo Dots as rear speakers for true surround sound.

I have purchased five of these, one as a gift. I use my four as two pairs of stereo speakers, and the default on 3D sound stuff should be turned off. I also have the highly recommended subwoofer. Seldom discussed or reviewed is the extreme quality at low listening levels. As near as I can tell, and I have 'tech supported' two households, don't try to do more than advertised with these speakers. Amazon Music Unlimited Family Plan is perfection with these speakers. That Family Plan has one plus five family member slots, I think. The slots each have their own library, playlists, recent, recommendations ... ... We are using three slots, and those are at highest quality. The sweet spot begins with two slots used, and after that it's like getting the additional slots free. Weather notices are configured. A lesser Echo has an indoor temperature, which the Echo Studio does not have. The Echo Studio with Amazon Music Unlimited is fabulous for a dorm room. Furthermore, all the Echo speakers can be deregistered and reported to Amazon as stolen. That does not brick the speaker, anyone thief registering it with Amazon is an idiot. However, Amazon does not do policing and the corporation needs court orders to release information. Echo speakers can be intercoms, and "Drop In" can be configured as a VOIP. Moms might love that, and young adult daughters, not so much. Echos can also assist the elderly, which is DIY and also services are developing. Echo Show and Echo Smart Doorbells and all Echo Speakers are all on duh network. Echo speakers need power and Internet for it all to work, although a speaker can sometimes be patched to an audio out on another device.