The Amazon Echo Dot Max is positioned as a step up from the standard Amazon Echo Dot Gen 4, aiming to combine stronger audio performance with expanded smart home capabilities. It introduces a larger two-way speaker system, built-in smart home hub support, and new sensors designed to enable more contextual Alexa features.
Our Verdict
The Amazon Echo Dot Max offers acceptable performance for listening to music. It's a small speaker, so it can't produce much thump or rumble, but the slight boost in high bass keeps disco basslines audible. Its size also prevents it from getting very loud, but it's well-suited for smaller rooms. However, since your audio is downmixed to mono, it doesn't feel particularly wide or spacious. On the plus side, its spherical design means your audio sounds similar regardless of your listening angle. You get basic bass and treble controls, but the companion app lacks the flexibility of a full graphic EQ.
Balanced mid-range reproduces voices accurately.
Audio sounds similar regardless of your listening angle.
Downmixes your audio to mono.
Wired design means you can't carry it around with you.
The Amazon Echo Dot Max is disappointing for watching videos. It's fairly balanced mids and treble ensure voices and instruments sound accurate, but there's very little low-bass on offer here, so explosion effects feel thin. And since it downmixes your audio to mono, expansive soundtrack scores feel lacking in depth. On the plus side, it can be paired with other Echo Dot Max devices for stereo playback or configured for use as part of an Alexa Home Theater setup. Latency is also fairly high on both Android and iOS, so you may run into lip-sync issues, but different apps and devices compensate for latency in different ways.
Balanced mid-range reproduces voices accurately.
Audio sounds similar regardless of your listening angle.
Downmixes your audio to mono.
Fairly high latency with both Android and iOS.
Doesn't get very loud.
The Amazon Echo Dot Max is passable for listening to podcasts. Spoken voices come through clearly thanks to accurate mid-range reproduction. Your favorite hosts will sound like themselves, without any honk or harshness. But since the speaker doesn't have a built-in battery, it's not easy to carry with you from room to room. And its small size means it can't get very loud, so it's best used in medium and smaller-sized rooms. That said, its sound dispersion is consistent enough that your listening angle doesn't negatively impact the sound you hear.
Balanced mid-range reproduces voices accurately.
Audio sounds similar regardless of your listening angle.
Doesn't get very loud.
Wired design means you can't carry it around with you.
The Amazon Echo Dot Max is amazing for voice assistant use. The speaker’s microphone does an excellent job picking up your voice from far away or in noisy environments. The speaker is clearly designed to integrate into Amazon's broader Alexa ecosystem. It even supports Alexa+, which enables more advanced, AI-driven interactions, though we weren't able to activate this feature during testing.
Mic does an excellent job picking up voice commands.
Balanced mid-range reproduces voices accurately.
Audio sounds similar regardless of your listening angle.
Wired design means you can't carry it around with you.
The Amazon Echo Dot Max doesn't include an internal battery and requires a constant power connection. As a result, it's not really suited to use outdoors.
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
The Amazon Echo Dot Max comes in three color variants: 'Graphite', 'Glacier White', and 'Amethyst'. We bought and tested the 'Amethyst' variant, and this is its label.
If you encounter another variant of this speaker, please let us know in the comments.
Popular Speaker Comparisons
The Amazon Echo Dot Max sits in the middle of Amazon's Alexa-equipped home speaker lineup. Compared to its predecessors, it's a little larger than the Amazon Echo Dot Gen 4 and, as a result, puts out more bass. And it's a little smaller than the Amazon Echo Gen 4, which gets louder and offers a punchier bass. If you're choosing between speakers from Amazon's 2025 refresh, consider the Echo Dot Max and Amazon Echo Studio 2025 as the smaller and larger versions of the same speaker. The Studio 2025 is over twice the weight, and gets louder with more low-end. On the other hand, the smaller Echo Dot Max is much cheaper and offers the same superb voice assistant support as its larger cousin.
None of the Amazon speakers listed above have built-in batteries. If you'd prefer a more portable home speaker, consider the Sony LinkBuds Speaker, which weighs about the same as the Echo Dot Max and runs for 15 hours on its built-in battery, making it useful if you like to carry your speaker around your home. The Sony doesn't have built-in Alexa support like the Amazon offerings, but it can use your phone's Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant.
For more, check out our recommendations for the best home speakers, the best Bluetooth speakers, and the best small Bluetooth speakers.
The Amazon Echo Dot Max is a little larger than the older Amazon Echo Dot Gen 4, and as a result, is able to put out more bass and get a touch louder. Other than that, the speakers are very similar. In practical terms, perhaps the main reason to choose the Echo Dot Max is that you can use the physical controls to skip tracks and answer the phone. The newer Dot Max is also designed to work with newer technology like Alexa+ and Alexa Home Theater, which might be important to you if you like to future-proof your devices.
The Amazon Echo Studio 2025 and Amazon Echo Dot Max are both part of Amazon's 2025 speaker refresh. They both offer superb built-in support for Alexa and compatibility with Amazon's newest technologies, like Alexa Home Theater and Alexa+. The speakers are mainly differentiated by size and price. The larger Studio 2025 costs and weighs about twice as much as the Dot Max, but as a result, it gets louder and puts out more bass.
The Amazon Echo Dot Max is larger than the Amazon Echo Gen 4. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the Echo Gen 4 gets louder and puts out more bass. Beyond that, there's little to choose between these speakers. If you want to future-proof your device, the newer Dot Max is perhaps the better choice, as it supports next-gen Alexa features like Alexa Home Theater. The Echo Dot Max also has easier-to-use physical controls, but there's not much to it.
The Amazon Echo Dot Max and the Sony LinkBuds Speaker are similarly-sized small home speakers with slightly different strengths. If you already subscribe to Amazon services or use Alexa, it's the no-brainer pick. But it's a wired speaker, which can limit its usefulness around the house. The LinkBuds Speaker has a built-in carrying loop and a battery that lasts 15 hours off a single charge, making it easy to take with you from room to room. It also charges on a small, stylish docking station. The Sony doesn't works with your phone's Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant, but isn't as good at the Amazon at picking up voice commands from a distance. Perhaps another reason to keep it close to you?
Test Results
The Amazon Echo Dot Max has a compact, spherical design similar to the Amazon Echo Studio 2025, but in a smaller form factor. The speaker's wrapped in a cloth-mesh fabric, with a flat, rubberized base that helps prevent slipping on surfaces. A shallow plastic dimple on the front houses the control panel, which includes microphone mute and volume controls. An LED light ring surrounds the control panel and illuminates in different colors to indicate Alexa activity and other speaker functions.
The Amazon Echo Dot Max isn't very portable because it doesn't have a built-in battery and runs only on AC power. That said, it's small enough to carry in one hand, so it's not too challenging to move it around your home.
The Amazon Echo Dot Max has a passable build quality. It's mostly made of hard plastic and covered in durable woven mesh. The bottom surface is flat and rubberized to improve stability. The control buttons are located on the front of the speaker inside a shallow dimple, while a single AC port on the back supplies power. Although there's no official rating for water, dust, or impact resistance, the speaker feels solid and reasonably well-made. It feels strong enough for its intended use indoors.
The controls are very good. You get physical buttons for microphone mute and volume up/down, all located on the front control panel, inside a shallow dimple. Unlike older Echo Dot models, it no longer includes a dedicated Action button, so play, pause, and call controls rely on the Tap Gesture instead. The Tap Gesture control also requires firmly tapping the top of the speaker with your palm and can feel less reliable than a physical button, making voice commands the more consistent way to control playback.
That said, the speaker's physical buttons are clicky and textured, providing clear tactile feedback. The microphone mute button includes a red indicator light when the mic is disabled, and the speaker provides audio cues for volume changes, device connection or disconnection, and voice responses. The LED light ring serves multiple functions: indicating Alexa activity, Bluetooth pairing status, and volume level. However, there's no visual or audio feedback when using the Tap Gesture control, and the physical buttons are not backlit aside from the microphone mute indicator.
- Amazon Echo Dot Max
- Power adaptor with cord (1.5 m / 4.5 ft)
- Alexa+ Booklet
- Safety information booklet
- Quick start guide
The Amazon Echo Dot Max has okay frequency response accuracy. It's a fairly small device, so it can't reproduce much low or mid-bass. As a result, kick drums in techno tracks sound thin and lack thump. On the plus side, a small boost in the high-bass compensates for this somewhat, so basslines in songs like Daft Punk's Get Lucky still sound present. The mid-range and treble are also well-balanced, so voices and instruments sound accurate and true-to-life.
We tested the speaker with its room correction enabled. The correction process re-runs every 15 minutes, adjusting the speaker's sound to its environment. This graph shows how the speaker's sound evolved over a 20-minute period.
This speaker's soundstage is disappointing, largely because it can't play back stereo audio (unless paired with another unit). Instead, everything is mixed down to mono. On the plus side, its spherical design means your audio sounds fairly similar, regardless of your listening angle.
The speaker's dynamics performance is poor. This speaker doesn't get very loud, which is to be expected given its small size. But it also compresses your audio quite a lot at max volume, so the little bass that is present in the mix can lose definition and punch.
This speaker doesn't have a battery. Still, it will enter a power-saving mode when idle.
This speaker has superb voice assistant support. The built-in microphone does an excellent job picking up voice commands, even if you're far away or in a noisy environment.
The speaker is also compatible with Alexa+, but we couldn't enable it using the "Alexa, upgrade" voice command that has worked for some users. We were instead placed on an early access waitlist, meaning we were unable to test the feature. It's worth noting that our current voice assistant testing does not fully account for the expanded AI capabilities of Alexa+, such as handling more complex requests and multi-step tasks.
The Amazon Alexa app is outstanding. Check out this video to see for yourself. It offers a wide range of controls, including speaker-specific options like Drop In for broadcasting audio from a connected phone, a do-not-disturb mode, an alarm, temperature monitoring, and device status information. You can also adjust the speaker's volume, manage Wi-Fi network settings, pair the stereo with another Dot Max unit, or add a subwoofer. There's also a basic bass/treble EQ on offer for customizing the sound to your taste. Finally, the app also lets you configure Alexa Home Theater, allowing you to link up to five Echo Dot Max units, along with a subwoofer, for surround sound playback when used with a Fire TV device.
Other than its AC input, this speaker doesn't offer any ports for wired connections to your other devices.
The Bluetooth performance is alright. It uses Bluetooth 5.3, and while the range is good, there's no multi-device pairing on offer. Latency is also fairly high on both Android and iOS devices, though different apps and devices handle it differently.
This speaker is compatible with Wi-Fi. It uses Wi-Fi 6 and supports both 2.5GHz and 5GHz frequency bands. But there's no support for Apple AirPlay or Google Chromecast.