SPHERE GOING TO BE FRIENDS

Amazon Echo Studio (2025)

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It's a lot smaller than its predecessor, but Amazon's well-rounded new Echo Studio has big plans.

Amazon's Echo Studio has spent the past five years as something of an outlier. When the rest of the lineup went spherical in 2020, the Studio's barrel shape and thin bass port cutout made it look like the black sheep of the family, but now it finally matches the rest of the voice-controlled flock. Its new chassis is only about the size of a cabbage, but it still has three 1.5in full-range drivers and a 3.75in woofer inside. And as with the new Echo Dot Max (see right), the flat panel that houses the controls makes it look a bit like a Magic 8 Ball.