If you’re embracing the smart-home future and populating every room of your dwelling with devices, Amazon has a specialized device for your wee ones’ bedrooms or play spaces—the 5th generation Echo Dot Kids.
This is a reskin of the latest, 2022 iteration of Alexa-enabled smart-home devices, essentially dressing up a smart speaker as either an owl or a friendly dragon to suit your child’s taste in creatures. The designs look better than the previous generation’s panda and tiger, enhancing your child’s decor and giving a little sense of personality to the Alexa voice. (Although the selection of creatures could be wider—where’s the kitten or puppy?)
The Echo Dot Kids has a surprisingly potent sound for a smart-home device. I’ve used an older, puck-style Dot in a bedroom for a while, and the rounded design is a big improvement in sound.
Most small speakers I’ve encountered skimp on the bass, but even at its default EQ settings the new Dot impressed me with its low range. Its volume range is also remarkable, from the background murmur you might want for lullabies to a mighty roar that could fill a massive living room.
There’s a small ring of light near the Echo Dot Kids’ base that glows when Alexa is in use, but this also illuminated a real missed opportunity for these kid-centric devices.
The 5th generation Dot lineup also includes a base model for $70 and a variant with an LED clock for $80. Having that LED clock in the child version would have been a slam dunk for kids in grades 1-3—that age where parents want their progeny to learn when it’s too early to start rousing the whole house. For where my oldest kid is right now, I think I’d rather pay $80 for a clock than a paint job and work on her sense of time. (Sure, you can ask Alexa what time it is, but it’s not quite the same as learning to read even a digital clock.)
“The Echo Dot Kids has a surprisingly potent sound for a smart-home device.”
Sometimes it would be handy to have some form of nightlight in such a device too. Even if it just means lighting up the simple ring that’s already installed, this could help reduce electronic clutter in the everyday chaos of a child’s room.
Those oversights aside, the Echo Dot Kids is a pretty solid device from a design standpoint. However the true sticking point of any smart-home or Alexa device is usually its functionality, and how well it performs those tasks.
The Dot I’d been using previously was particularly stubborn about sleep timers. I’d often check on my daughter to find the Dot was still playing music several hours later, or she’d complain that the music had shut off minutes after we’d left her room. This hasn’t been an issue with the 5th generation iteration (knock on wood), and it’s more receptive to commands in general.
“As it stands, the 5th generation Echo Dot Kids is a step in the right direction for child-centric tech and smart speakers alike.”
Alexa’s infrastructure beyond the device still remains unnecessarily complicated, however. The Echo Dot Kids recognizes my voice as the account holder and parent if I disable the Kids mode temporarily, but when the mode is turned back on, it claims it doesn’t recognize me, and tells me to get a grownup to help.
I appreciate any electronic device that strays on the side of caution when it comes to allowing kids access to restricted things, sure. Yet on the other hand, it’s somewhat ridiculous that I can’t override a setting quickly without fetching my phone and tediously altering settings, when I clearly am the grownup. I’m sometimes left wondering how many parents are actually involved in developing Amazon’s child-centric initiatives.
Amazon boasts some other kid-centric features on the Echo Dot Kids’ page, like the ability to make Alexa act like either an owl or dragon and lean into the device’s paint job. This feature simply didn’t work for us—the given command “act like an owl” only prompts our Dot to tell us what sound an owl makes.
However, there are some neat extensions of the Amazon Kids platform available: kids can have a bedtime story read to them, or just ask Alexa for a definition or a bit of trivia. Invest a little time in exploring the more unique skills available, like the Science Quiz or Story Blanks, and you can show your kids some fun exercises that start to make the Echo Dot Kids more than just a smart speaker.
As it stands, the 5th generation Echo Dot Kids is a step in the right direction for child-centric tech and smart speakers alike. For me, however, this step brings Amazon’s product line back to where I thought it should be when I first invested in its previous generation.
I’d still recommend this device as an extension of either the playroom or your child’s bedtime routine, but with my usual caveat for smart-home tech: it’s not as versatile if it’s the sole piece of Alexa-equipped tech in your home, or the only place where you use Alexa at all.
