Amazon Echo: Which Alexa smart speaker is right for you?

So you've decided to bring Alexa into your life. Now comes the hard part: Which Amazon Echo is right for you? We'll go over all the models, including the brand-new second-generation Echo, Echo Plus, and Echo Spot that Amazon just announced. Amazon pioneered the concept of a smart speaker, an audio device with a voice-activated digital assistant that can do everything from play music (from Amazon Music or Spotify, Pandora, and certain other services if you're a subscriber), to recite the day's news, deliver weather and traffic updates, and--perhaps most importantly--control virtually every element of your smart home. More recently, Amazon made it possible to make outgoing calls from an Echo to any phone number in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.