Echo Dot Kids owl design: Alexa speaker for kids' rooms with parental controls

The Echo Dot Kids comes in a shell with an owl face; inside it uses the same tech as the regular current-generation Echo Dot: a front-firing 44 mm speaker, dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The difference is the software. The device runs a kid profile and Alexa answers in a child-friendly way.

Day to day it helps kids become more independent: they set their own alarms, have a bedtime story read to them, listen to music or play calming sounds to fall asleep. On compatible music services such as Amazon Music, Apple Music or Spotify, songs with explicit lyrics are filtered out automatically; the services themselves may require a separate subscription.

One year of Amazon Kids+ is included, with child-friendly audiobooks, audio plays, knowledge content and learning games. After that the membership renews for a fee but can be cancelled at any time in the Parent Dashboard. That is also where parents see what their child listened to and asked, and decide who the child may call.

The Echo Dot Kids also comes as a set with a Tapo smart colour bulb (E27), so your child can switch the room light by voice or dim it to a favourite colour as a night light.

Worth knowing: parents set the device up via the Alexa app and an Amazon account. Remember to review the Amazon Kids+ renewal after the first year. The Echo Dot Kids has no display, so it is deliberately an audio-only device.