Amazon's fourth-generation Echo Alexa smart speaker is a complete redesign in form and audio, with the popular device transformed into a ball of sound. The Echo costs £89.99 and is Amazon's mid-range speaker, sitting above the £49.99 Echo Dot and below the £189.99 The first smart speaker on the market, the original Echo set the standard in 2014 with a tall cylinder shape and 360-degree audio – resembling a Pringles can with a speaker in it. Six years later and on its fourth generation, Amazon has now broken the mould with a new spherical shape and directional audio. The plastic and mesh fabric ball has one woofer and two tweeter speakers producing directional, stereo sound – and is designed to sit in the corner of a room rather than the centre of it.

Getting a review unit late, as is the case with the Google Home Max, gives me the benefit of reading a lot of people's opinions of a product before I formulate my own. And reviewing a lot of similar speakers before I evaluate the one at hand gives me a broad base of experience upon which to formulate mine. Based on those two fronts, the Google Home Max has been praised just a wee bit overenthusiastically. That said, the Google Home Max is the best smart speaker I've heard. Amazon certainly has nothing close to it in terms of audio performance, and neither do any of the manufacturers building Echo clones.

When Sonos released the Play:5 speaker in late 2015, the Amazon Echo was still an unproven tech curiosity. But since then, Alexa and the Echo have grown rapidly in both popularity and functionality, inspiring competition from the likes of Google and Apple. Talking to a speaker is totally normal now -- but Sonos users haven't been able to that. They've instead had to choose between the convenience of products like the Echo and Google Home and the superior audio quality that Sonos speakers offer. Sonos has known for some time that this is a problem.