Amazon Echo Dot review (2016): Forget the Echo. Buy this instead.

The robot assistants we were promised as children are finally ready for the home. Instead of walking, talking humanoid automatons like Rosie from The Jetsons and Robby the Robot from Lost in Space, our well-spoken helpers are housed in plastic and sit on tables. They answer our questions, control our homes and sometimes tell us a story. The most ubiquitous assistant so far has been Alexa, an Amazon-powered attendant that has made the jump from a 180 tower to the 50 Dot, which isn't much bigger than a hockey puck. That sort of drop in size usually results in a loss of features.