Amazon Echo Plus (2nd Gen) review: Good sound, plus a Zigbee smart-home hub for the win

Amazon released the first Echo Plus smart speaker/smart-home hub in 2017, and this second generation arrived a year later. What makes it "Plus" is simple: A built-in Zigbee radio. That eliminates the need to also have something like a Samsung SmartThings or a Hubitat Elevation on your network--at least to control other smart home devices that use Zigbee. We'll get deeper into that in a bit. The second-generation Echo Plus has one other minor new addition: An ambient temperature sensor, so you can ask Alexa what the temperature in the room is, in addition to getting a weather report that includes the current temperature outside.