Amazon is discontinuing my favorite Echo — the one with a dot-matrix clock

I have six Amazon Echo smart speakers in my house, and I’ve tested more, but my favorite is the Echo Dot with Clock. I love how the fabric-covered LED dot-matrix display makes time unobtrusively accessible, beaming its gentle white light from my dresser across my blackout-curtained dark bedroom. (It definitely beats asking Alexa the time.)

So I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news: Amazon has discontinued the Dot with Clock in favor of a more expensive, less eye-pleasing model.

Amazon didn’t tell us why it’s going away. At first, I mistakenly thought it might be due to hidden defects — my own Echo Dot with Clock began mysteriously freezing a few weeks back, completely unresponsive to voice commands and with images stuck on its display. Multiple resets didn’t help.

But after I successfully argued for Amazon to credit me for a replacement Echo, it began working again. (I had to hard-reset it, then go through the setup process multiple times in the Alexa app to get it working.)

When I went looking for a replacement $60 Echo Dot with Clock, I was surprised to find Amazon didn’t stock it anymore — only refurbished models were available when I checked, even though the blue model is available again at Amazon and Target today. So instead, I took a chance on the company’s spiritual successor: the $80 Echo Spot, which replaces the dot-matrix display with a screen.

But despite being more expensive, I’m finding the Spot inferior for my purposes. While its screen isn’t too bright for a dim bedroom, it’s not what I’d call visually pleasing. It never lets me forget I’m staring at a cheap screen. Plus, the whole screen is tilted upward, presumably for nightstand use, not my tall dresser. I have no nightstands in my bedroom.

My colleague Jennifer Pattison Tuohy is currently working on a full review of the Echo Spot, and she likes it a good bit better than I do!

But she says it doesn’t sound quite as good as the Dot, either (though audio’s more directional), and it still doesn’t let you do anything as basic as setting an alarm with touch like you can with other smart displays. The main benefits are music playback controls and the ability to display time, date, temperature, and the weather simultaneously.

Now that my Echo Dot with Clock is working again, I’ll be returning the Spot — and the money that Amazon credited me.