Skip to content 
Yes, and it's live at retail rather than only in one place. Best Buy is running Labor Day pricing with the Echo Dot at $54.99 for $25 off, the Echo Spot at $69.99 for $40 off and the Echo Pop Kids at $29.99. Staples has the Echo Pop at $36.99 and the Dot at $52.99. Prime Day still goes deeper on these than any other week, so if you can wait until October, wait.
The thing that changed this year is Alexa+, and it changes the math on the whole range. The full Alexa+ experience is included at no extra cost for Prime members, across every Alexa device, the app and Alexa.com, for the whole household. Everyone else gets a limited text-based version free, or pays $19.99 a month for unlimited access. So if you already pay for Prime, the smart assistant on these speakers is the version you'd otherwise be subscribing to, and if you don't, that's a real running cost to weigh against the hardware price.
Shop Echo Speakers
The range splits by room rather than by generation. The Dot is the cheap one that goes anywhere and sounds fine for a bedside table or a bathroom. The Dot Max and the standard Echo add real bass and are the point where music starts sounding like music. The Studio is the proper speaker of the family, and the Spot is a small clock-radio-shaped one for a nightstand. Buy for where it'll sit, not for the newest number.
When Echo Devices Actually Go On Sale
These are first-party devices, so the discount calendar is set by one company and it barely moves from year to year.
| When | What to expect |
|---|---|
| Prime Day, July and October | The deepest cuts of the year, without exception. Echo devices are the loss leader of the whole event and routinely land at half list or below on the older generations. |
| Black Friday through Christmas | Nearly as deep and better for bundles, because this is when a Dot gets paired with a smart bulb or a plug for barely more than the speaker alone. |
| Right now, over Labor Day | Genuinely active at the retailers rather than only at source. Best Buy has $25 to $40 off several models and Staples is discounting the Pop and the Dot. Worth taking if you want one this month. |
| When a new generation lands, usually autumn | The outgoing model drops hard and loses nothing, because almost everything that matters about an Echo is software that updates anyway. The best value in the range, every time. |
| Back to school and dorm season | Aimed at the small speakers and the Fire TV sticks. Not the deepest window, but reliable on exactly the cheap devices people buy several of. |
| Launch week | A new Echo holds list price and there's no reason to be early, since the assistant is the same on every device in the range regardless of when it was made. |
What Actually Counts as a Good Echo Deal
List prices here are fixed and the discounts are steep, so the bar for a real deal is higher than in most categories.
- Echo Dot under $35. It gets there on Prime Day most years. Best Buy has the 5th-gen at $54.99 this weekend, and Staples at $52.99, which is a fair holiday price rather than an annual low.
- Echo Pop under $30. The cheapest way into the ecosystem and the one to buy several of. eBay has it new at $29.99 and Staples at $36.99.
- Echo Show 5 under $50. The kitchen and nightstand display. Best Buy has the Spot at $69.99 for $40 off, and the Show 5 lands in this band during the bigger events.
- Echo Show 8 under $90. The size most people actually want in a kitchen. An open-box unit sits around $79.95 on the secondary market.
- Smart plug under $15 each. Bought in twos and fours. This is the accessory that makes a speaker useful, and the third-party ones do the same job as the first-party version.
Shop Echo Show Smart Displays
A screen changes what the device is for. Timers you can see, recipes that stay up, a video call while your hands are busy and a camera feed from the front door without reaching for a phone. The sizes matter more than the generations: the 5 is a nightstand clock, the 8 is the kitchen one most people should buy, and the 15 and 21 are wall-mounted family boards rather than speakers. All of them have a physical shutter for the camera, which is worth knowing before you put one in a bedroom.
Shop Alexa Smart Bulbs
The other half of a working setup, and the one people underestimate. A smart bulb screws into a fixture you already own and gives you voice control, schedules and dimming without touching a wire, which matters in rooms where the lamp is the light. Color bulbs are the ones worth buying even if you never use the colors, because warm-to-cool tuning is genuinely useful in the evening. Buy multipacks, check the socket size, and remember the wall switch has to stay on for any of it to work.
Shop Fire TV Sticks
The cheapest useful upgrade for any television, including a smart TV that has become slow. The tiers are simple: the HD model is fine for a bedroom set, the 4K is the one most people should buy, and the 4K Max adds a faster processor and Wi-Fi 6E for a house with heavy network traffic. All of them include a voice remote, which means the TV joins the same voice setup as the speakers without a separate device.
Shop Alexa Smart Plugs
The accessory that turns a speaker from a novelty into something you use daily. A smart plug makes any lamp, fan or coffee machine voice-controllable and schedulable for the price of a sandwich, with no wiring and nothing to install. Buy them in multipacks, check the amperage if you're switching something with a motor, and look for energy monitoring if you want to find out what the old fridge in the garage actually costs you. Third-party plugs work identically to the first-party ones here.
Where to Shop Smart Speakers
Worth checking beyond Amazon, because the retailers run their own holiday pricing on these and the open-box route is cheaper than any of them.
How to Pick the Right Echo
Buy for the room, not for the generation. A Dot on a nightstand, a Show 8 in the kitchen where you'll read recipes off it, a Studio where you actually listen to music. The assistant is identical across the whole range, so the only real differences are the speaker and whether there's a screen. Choosing by model year is how people end up with an expensive speaker in a hallway.
Work out whether Alexa+ is already yours. Prime members get the full experience at no extra cost across every device and the whole household. Everyone else gets a limited free text version or pays $19.99 a month for unlimited. That single fact is worth more than any hardware discount on this page if you were planning to subscribe.
Start with two cheap ones rather than one good one. These devices get useful when you can talk to one from wherever you happen to be, and two Pops in the rooms you actually use beat one Studio in a room you pass through. Add the better speaker later once you know where it belongs.
Budget for plugs, not for the speaker. A voice assistant with nothing to control is a kitchen timer. Two or three smart plugs on the lamps and fans you switch daily is what makes the thing worth owning, and they cost very little in multipacks.
Check the camera shutter before a bedroom. Every Echo Show has a physical cover for the camera and a microphone mute button that cuts the mics electronically. If a screen in a bedroom is the sticking point, the shutter is the answer, and a screenless Dot is the simpler one.
Echo and Alexa Sale FAQ
The Bottom Line
Check whether Alexa+ is already included with your Prime membership before you spend anything, because that's worth more than every discount on this page put together. Then buy for the room rather than the model year, since the assistant is identical across the range and you're really only choosing a speaker and a screen. Two cheap ones in rooms you use beat one expensive one in a room you walk through, and a handful of smart plugs is what turns any of it from a novelty into something you touch daily. This weekend is genuinely active at Best Buy and Staples, though Prime Day in October will go deeper.
