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Amazon’s Prime Day is less than a week away, and alongside early deals on its smart home devices, Amazon has started selling the days-old Echo Spot for $44.99 ($35 off), exclusively for Prime members.
Like its predecessor, the new Spot is a combination smart speaker and alarm clock, but it drops the camera that nobody liked putting in their bedroom. It also now borrows its design from the Echo Pop, which Amazon claims should give it better sound quality. And being an Echo speaker, it of course supports Alexa voice commands to set your alarm for the morning, call up a weather forecast, or have news updates read to you. And if having a microphone in your bedroom still feels creepy, the top of the Spot has a dedicated button to turn it off.
Handiness and functionality aside, keep in mind that any smart alarm clock becomes useless if the power goes out since there’s no battery backup.
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Amazon’s new Echo Spot smart speaker / alarm clock has a 2.83-inch squared-off display for showing the time, weather, music playback, and other bits of info you may want at your bedside. Unlike the original Spot, there’s no camera to worry about having in your bedroom — though it does have a mutable microphone for Alexa voice controls.
By the way, here’s a quick aside on some inside baseball (a disclosure, if you will): we don’t usually cover deals on products The Verge has not reviewed unless we have personal experience with them. Since the Echo Spot only just came out, I checked in with our resident smart home reviewer Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, who has started testing the new Spot for her upcoming review. Jen’s early impressions are mostly positive, and she thinks the new Spot should be an excellent value at $45 — but possibly less so at its full price of $80. Keep an eye out for the full review with her final assessment. For now, if you’re a Prime subscriber and don’t mind being an early adopter, this deal could be worthwhile.
Some notable non-Prime Day deals going on right now (open to all)
- Woot is offering sizable discounts on a handful of wired Keychron mechanical keyboards through July 12th. The selection of deals includes the 65 percent layout Keychron Q2 for $79.99 ($120 off) and the tenkeyless Q3 for $84.99 (also $120 off). Woot’s offerings include varying colors and switch options for some of the boards (though the Q3 only has clicky blue switches left in stock). These are some great prices on quality keyboards, especially if you’re buying your first mech and want something ready to go out of the box — and you don’t mind it being wired. Read our buying guide.
- The Sennheiser Momentum Sport wireless earbuds are $280.50 (about $49 off) at Amazon. These fitness buds offer good sound quality and heart rate tracking, which can be very helpful for anyone averse to wearing a smartwatch or who has wrist tattoos that block the sensors in them. Read our review.
- Apple’s 13-inch M2 MacBook Air is selling for $799 ($200 off) at Best Buy. This base-model configuration from 2022 comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, which is a little light but should be serviceable for everyday productivity tasks. The M2 model has a MagSafe port that helpfully frees its two USB-C ports from charging duty, and its battery life is some of the best you’ll find in most laptops today. Read our review.