Amazon's spherical smart speaker offers entertainment in the round

We're having a ball with the new Amazon Echo sporting a brand new futuristic spherical look. This is the fourth generation Amazon Echo, and we're reviewing it right now. This is the smart speaker of the future and you know that because it's shapeless, feared spheres in the shape of the future Look, it's a new design. It's fine, a little bulky actually. So yeah, we might not be as blown away by the great and all powerful sphere as we're supposed to be. But here's the good news. Everything else about this gadget makes it one of the best smart speakers we've ever tested. Honestly, it's great. The sound quality is great. It makes Smart Home stuff super easy. So should you drop everything and race out and buy it? Maybe this is the hundred dollar fourth generation Amazon Echo It comes in three colors charcoal, glacier white and Twilight blue. It has a ZigBee receiver built in so you can do away with excess Smart Home hubs. It works as a bridge for Amazon's new sidewalk protocol to extend the range of your devices and it packs in some adaptive audio tech. Basically, Amazon packed in a lot of the features they used to say for their moorings. Expensive echo plus with the ZigBee hub and the better sound, and it still only costs 100 bucks. So right off the bat, whether you like spheres or not, this device is pretty appealing. Aside from the new physical features, you're gonna be stunned to hear this. You can still give a variety of voice commands to this guy. And will respond. Mind blown. So yeah, pretty much the same stuff you've been able to do on any of Amazon smart speakers forever. That said Amazon updates his assistant all the time it's assistant is really good. But one of our issues with this device is that it's a safe upgrade. Amazon didn't reinvent the wheel here. It's shaped like a sphere, not a wheel. They're different. So the difference comes down to hardware and let's take a closer look at that, starting with sound quality. The new echo has a three inch woofer dual firing tweeters, and uses Dolby processing to Try to deliver great sound quality when it's time to play some music and rock out. That's more smart and an extra tweeter over the last gen echo. Google just released $100 Smart speaker called the nest audio as well. And that was also promises to have really good sound quality. So here is a side by side comparison starting with [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [SOUND] [MUSIC] Okay, keep that one in mind. But before you leap to any conclusions, let's listen to an acoustic track as well. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Both honestly sound great even with more complex tracks, both keep the parts of the music fairly distinct, so you get much less muddy sound than previous generations of smart speakers. The echo in particular is a big step up even over the last generation echo. My coworker Dave said that he had much more fun. Listening to hip hop on the echo than on the nest audio. Can I trust Dave on that he's way cooler than me. on acoustic I'm give the nest audio a slight edge. I think it's just a little bit clear at the mid range. But the echo is distinctly more powerful. It's distinctly louder at just about every volume at max volume. The echo can sound a little bit muddy, but nest audio tops off way earlier. So when you're at that comparable top off point, the echo still sounds great. The verdict the new echo wins this one and has great sound quality. Especially for $100 Smart speaker. You can even pair two of them together for stereo sound or pair it with a fire TV Streamer and use it to play your TV's audio. Finally, the smart home. I mentioned the ZigBee hub. That means your Echo can talk to low power. Smart home devices like light bulbs and door sensors without needing an intermediary hub. Your echo can also be used to set up those devices. Honestly, it's great. It's super fast. It's a cool feature and there's Sidewalk. That means your Echo will take a portion of your Wi Fi signal and turn it into low power Bluetooth and radio frequencies that it can send further than Wi Fi So that your outdoor Smart Home gadgets can still connect to the cloud without needing to be close to your router. So like I said, the new hardware is great. If you've been curious about smart speakers, this is a good device to kickstart your Smart home. Keep in mind you still get the same assistant with the new $50 [UNKNOWN]. So if you're hesitant, it's fine start thick. But overall I really like the new Echo, and it's $100 price means it's well worth a purchase. Our new sci fi [UNKNOWN] overlord is here. Here are four. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed the video, please hit that thumbs up button and Subscribe to cnet's YouTube channel for more. Speaking of spheres, have you ever seen the Michael Crichton movie sphere? Yeah, this has this has nothing to do with that. I mean the names the same.