I currently have mostly Sonos speakers and echo dots in my house. I am interested in getting a couple of small speakers (not as big as sonos 1) but that have good sound to put in places like the bathrooms. I would like them to also have Alexa capabilities and be able to be used with HE. Any suggestions? I was excited to see a new echo input that would make any speaker an Alexa speaker as I thought I could make my sonos speakers Alexa speakers except only the Play5 has audio in.
Nothing smaller than a play:1 is going to have good sound. Might as well just get an echo Dot and make your life easy.
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Are the 3rd gen echo dots better sounding than the 2nd gen ones?
Not really. At least in my opinion.
But I have yet to hear anything that was half the size/smaller of the play1 that sounded any good. Just different forms of bad.
I have two of the Inputs. They are OK when connected up to decent sounding speakers. You could try something like the JBL Link10 (which sounds good in small spaces) and plug an Input into it.
The other thing to do is go on eBay and see if you can find some Echo Taps.
Are Echo Taps a good sounding speaker? Are they very big?
I believe the Sonos One has Alexa capability, I didn't think the Play:1 has it.
The tap actually sounds really good, but it's discontinued by Amazon (which is DUMB). It's battery powered, has an aux in and works just like a regular Echo.
Correct.
Here's a size comparison to a Sonos Play-1.
Hmm this is interesting. It is just battery powered? You say it sounds pretty good? Better than the dot I presume? Compared to sonos?
Is there a speaker without Alexa or Google integration that will work with Hubitat? I don't really want something in the house that is listening to me all the time. Not that I am doing anything bad, but I just dislike the notion of a device listening and that data going to Google, Amazon, or anyone else.
There is the regular Sonos.
$149 for a speaker (Best Buy web site price) is a bit excessive. I would hope to find something much less expensive.
Is the Amazon echo 2nd gen a very good sounding speaker?
Depends what you’re trying to do. Which use cases did you have in mind?
Depends on how discerning your ear is. I think they’re ok, but adding an echo sub in my living room really helped fill in the sound. But there are also audiophiles out there that would never consider listening to music on any configuration of echo speakers.
Edit: just re-read the OP and noticed you mentioned adding speakers to bathrooms. In a small space like that (vs. the living room), I think the 2nd gen echo sounds fine.
Just trying to get some simple event sounds. Something like play a "chime" when a door is opened, announce system armed or disarmed, things like that.
For simple things like that, any android tablet and Bluetooth speaker can get the job done cheaply.
Wouldn't it be easier to just get an echo dot? I wanted something better than a dot because I wanted to listen to music on it. But for TTS, echo dot would probably do.
Totally agree with you, but @StephenH was looking for an option without Alexa built-in.
Oh, sorry, I didn't see that part.
