Amazon Echo Buds (2023) earbuds review

About the Amazon Echo Buds (2023)

Here’s a look at the earbuds we tested:

• Price: $49.99
• Battery life: Up to 5 hours, up to 20 hours total with case
• Drivers: Two 12mm drivers
• Wireless charging: No
• Colors: Black, White
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.2
• Audio codecs: AAC, AptX, SBC
• Water-resistance: IPX2
• Ear tips: N/A
• Weight: Earbuds, 5 grams; case, 36 grams

What we like

They’re lightweight and comfortable

Out of the case, the new Echo Buds are surprisingly lightweight. Sporting a golf-tee design—a significant departure from the shape of the previous two generations of Echo Buds—the new Amazon buds are inherently small earbuds. That said, I wasn’t expecting them to be quite as light as they were. Thanks to that, I didn’t run into any issues related to ear fatigue despite multiple, extended listening sessions.

A caveat of many lightweight earbuds tends to be their fit: in other words, if your earbuds are particularly light, they don’t always make good earbuds for working out. I auditioned the new Echo Buds on several runs and trips to the gym, and they fared far better than I anticipated. They weren’t necessarily perfect, but they did a solid job of staying in place when faced with periods of excessive movement. For how lightweight and comfy they are, their ability to stay in your ears is exceptional.

They sound good for the price

Before you read further, heed this warning. The new Echo Buds don’t sound as good as the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 3. Or the JBL Tour Pro 2. Or even the second-generation Echo Buds. These new buds don’t match up with any of those selections in terms of sound quality. But they’re not really supposed to.

The new Echo Buds are meant to be good-sounding earbuds for $50. And boy, are they. The audio quality can be a little genre dependent; the Echo Buds’s 12mm drivers try admirably, but they can’t always keep up with tracks featuring deep, low-frequency bass. But they can be plenty punchy, and shine especially bright with mids and highs. Plus, talented vocalists like Chris Stapleton or George Ezra sounded great blasting through the Echo Buds.

Amazon’s latest listenables are a step behind higher priced alternatives when it comes to definition and detail. But the bottom line is, the Echo Buds sound better than most other cheap earbuds I’ve tested. And that’s certainly part of Amazon’s strategy here. When your contenders in the space are options like the Raycon Everyday Earbuds, you’re going to sound excellent by comparison.

They play perfectly with Alexa

Plain and simple, the new Echo Buds are like having a personal Echo Dot in your ears. Whatever your opinion may be on voice assistants and the like, it’s undeniably convenient to be able to call up Alexa to change music, play podcasts, or make phone calls, especially when you’re on the go.

And, for a smart home geek like myself, it was quite neat to control different smart home equipment through my earbuds. I could set the temperature on my Ecobee thermostat, or turn on lights in the living room with ease. Amazon had already been at the center of my smart home environment, anyway. The new Echo Buds took that a step further, providing the closest experience to being Tony Stark asking Jarvis for help inside his Iron Man suit. I just, y’know, didn’t look quite as cool doing it.

What we don’t like

Specs are average at best

At the dawn of true wireless earbuds, merely providing specifications of any kind for $50 would be a feat. Times have changed dramatically, however, and expectations have skyrocketed. Earbuds like the JLab Go Air Pop, for instance, offer an IPX4 weather resistance rating and 8 hours of battery life per charge for just $25.

Other options, like the Skullcandy Grind Fuel (IP55, 9 hours of playback), or Anker Soundcore Liberty 2 (IPX5, 7 hours) have similarly impressive specs on the cheap. Comparatively, the new Echo Buds just don’t make the cut. They carry an IPX2 rating, which means they’re only able to resist water that hits them at a 15-degree angle or less. Worse, they offer five hours of playback per charge, and 20 hours total with the case. And finally, while active noise cancellation isn’t (yet) a standard under $100, the new Echo Buds’ semi-in ear design means they lack any real passive noise cancellation to speak of.

Features like Amazon Alexa onboard and the ability to pair to and switch between two different devices helps even things out slightly. But the Echo Buds miss the mark when it comes to standard specs and features, and that’s a disappointment even for the savings they promise.

No charging cable

The most outlandish thing about the new Echo Buds is that they aren’t shipped with a USB-C charging cable. What’s worse, if you want a cable included, you have to pay the “bundle” price of $59.99. That’s an extra $10 for a cable that’s included with essentially every other pair of true wireless earbuds available. Not including a charging brick has been a bad enough trend in recent years. Now, it seems we’re moving towards not including any tools to charge your earbuds whatsoever. It’s a bad sign, and it’s a bad move that Amazon is seemingly leading the way.

Controls can lag a little

The Echo Buds have tap controls that are fully customizable within the Alexa app. While that is nice, the buds had occasional lag when carrying out commands. For example, tapping the earbuds to pause music would take longer than expected, which would cause me to tap them again before the action actually happened. That first tap would finally work, but the second tap would barge in and cancel out my first command. I learned to purposefully wait to see if my taps worked before trying an additional tap, but it was an ongoing annoyance during testing.

Should you buy the Amazon Echo Buds (2023)?

Maybe, if you want Amazon Alexa on a budget

By far, the best selling points of the new Amazon Echo Buds are their stellar sound quality, their ability to put Alexa in your ears, and their affordable price point. In those categories, and those categories exclusively, they knock things out of the park.

If you don’t need Alexa, there are plenty of earbuds in the same price range that offer significantly better features. The Anker Soundcore Liberty 2 stand out as a great alternative, with Skullcandy’s Grind Fuel being a less attractive, but still better-specced secondary option. And, if you’re open to spending just a few more dollars, both the Soundcore Space A40 and Soundcore Liberty 4 NC are superior earbuds in just about every way, including the addition of active noise cancellation.

There is a place for the newest Echo Buds in the true wireless ecosystem. That space is just more of a niche environment, reserved for folks who need Alexa in their ears and don’t want to spend much to do it. If you’re such a folk, the Echo Buds are the best option out there. If you aren’t, you can do better.