If there's one feature I've really appreciated about the Amazon Echo range of smart speakers over the years, it's the way they play so well together.

The ability to group several different Echoes, or assign them to the same room meant suddenly you didn't have to run cables all through the house to achieve a decent multi-room sound system.

Frustratingly, this is also the part of dealing with Alexa and its associated speakers that I've found to be the most glitchy. Nothing worse than going to the trouble of naming your speakers, linking them to whichever room they're in, creating groups etcetera, only for some of them not to respond when they're supposed to.

But in recent times, Amazon has obviously done a lot of work in this area and lately, my groups and rooms have been much more reliable.

Now, with the introduction of several new speakers with new chips in them late last year, Amazon has taken this interoperability to another level again.

First, the speakers. I reviewed the Echo Show 11 recently and was very impressed - both with its fabulous screen and overall sound quality. As part of the same launch, Amazon released a smaller, 8-inch version of the Show and two other new speakers, the Echo Dot Max and the Echo Studio.

The Dot Max isn't just a little bigger than the 5 generations of Dot that came before it, it now has a forward-facing control panel and includes a totally redesigned internal speaker architecture, including a high-excursion woofer capable of producing bass frequencies so warm, powerful and distortion-free, you'd think this speaker was four times the size.

If you're wondering if a single speaker, not much larger than a grapefruit, can full a room with rich, full-spectrum sound, the answer is, yes, most definitely. And as we've already established, you also have to option of teaming up with other Echoes or pairing with another Dot Max to create a stereo pair.

Meanwhile, the Echo Studio, although it looks pretty much identical - except bigger - is a whole other proposition. Confusingly, there's already been an Echo Studio back in 2019. The original was a fairly large, heavy cylinder with a slot at the bottom for the woofer to do its thing.

And do its thing it certainly did - while other Echoes at the time may have come up a little short in the lower frequency ranges, the Studio more than made up for that shortfall, working as a kind of powerhouse speaker and legitimate subwoofer all in one. Since then, I've usually ended up grouping any new Echo with the Studio to add a bit more oomph to my listening sessions.

So, despite not even adding a "2" to the name, the 2025 version of the Echo Studio falls roughly into the same category. In terms of sheer wattage, it may not quite match the technical output of the original but there's still a lot going on in there, including a new chip, three full-range drivers and a high-excursion woofer, all packed into a much more subtle and compact form factor.

The new Studio is about a lot more than brute force bass and volume to spare though. A bit like the performance of the Dot Max - and indeed the Echo Show 11 from last week's review - this is a true evolution in sound reproduction for the Echo range. Everything is somehow more precise - yet richer and warmer too.

Obviously both these speakers are adept at carrying out any spoken commands you have for Alexa and just as with the Echo Show 11, lights turn on pretty much instantly, weather forecasts are delivered right away and there's a wide choice of voices and wake words to choose from.

But by far, the new feature I was most excited about was Alexa Home Theatre; being able to pair these new speakers with a late model Fire TV device to create a genuine, immersive cinematic experience. I didn't know much about how this worked, other than I'd read you could now add up to five of the new speakers to your Fire TV, eliminating the need for a soundbar or similar setup.

I started with two Echo Studios for front left and right. To set up, all you have to do is bring up the audio settings on your Fire TV (in my case, a Fire TV Stick 4K Max) and Alexa Home Theatre is the first setting on the menu. Select it, and the TV automatically scans for any compatible Echoes on the same home network. Then it's simply a matter of checking which ones you want to add to the system. 

What I didn't know then is there are only certain viable configurations.

Once I selected my new Echo Studios, I wasn't surprised to see all my other, older Echoes greyed out. However, I wasn't expecting not to be able to add any Echo Dot Max speakers either. I thought they'd make the perfect rear surround option but for some reason, your fandangled new system has to consist entirely of identical speakers, which seems bizarre.

Even weirder still, the one exception is the Amazon Echo Sub - which actually dates right back to 2018. Inexplicably, you can add one of these to your multi-Studio setup, but not the new Dot Max.

Maybe this is something that will change in a future firmware update. I sure hope so. In the meantime, as I only had a couple of new Studios, I forged on, resigned to a slightly less 3D array.

Once you've added your speakers the next step is a short, automated calibration. Alexa plays a bunch of weird noises out of each speaker (including from your TV), using the available mics to get a feeling for your room and where the speakers are in it. It was at this point the whole process just stopped. Not freezing, exactly - but not continuing either.

I spent quite some time repeating the exercise - including all the weird noises - until eventually I tried teaming the two Studios up in a stereo pair before adding them to the Alexa Home Theatre. This, mysteriously, finally worked and sure enough, I now had control of the speakers with my Fire TV remote and they turned on and off in sync with my TV.

The result was... well... quite stunning actually. So good, in fact, I'm sure glad I didn't rush out and buy two (or even three) more Studios to complete my initial quadraphonic plan. Now it was finally up and running, the sound from these two small orbs compared extremely favourably with other wireless surround systems I've tried, usually made up of a soundbar, separate subwoofer and a pair of rear speakers.

Gunfights were loud and punchy, explosions and dancey soundtracks were big and bassy and dialouge managed to cut through it all. If you have some form of Fire TV, this is the audio upgrade you may have been waiting for.

Just make sure you don't try to mix up your speakers.

Click here for more information and pricing on the Amazon Echo Dot Max.

Click here for more information and pricing on the Amazon Echo Studio (2025).