Amazon’s new Echo Spot is already half price for Prime Day

Like its predecessor, the new Spot is both a smart speaker and an alarm clock, but it ditches the camera that no one liked to put in their bedroom. It also now borrows its design from the Echo Pop, which Amazon says should give it better sound quality. And since it’s an Echo speaker, it of course supports Alexa voice commands to set your alarm for the morning, check the weather forecast, or read you the news. And if having a microphone in your bedroom still scares you, the top of the Spot has a dedicated button to turn it off.

Aside from practicality and functionality, keep in mind that any smart alarm clock becomes useless in the event of a power outage, as there is no battery backup.

By the way, here’s a quick aside on some internal baseball (a disclosure, if you will): We don’t typically cover product deals. The edge I haven’t tested it yet, unless we have personal experience with them. Since the Echo Spot is just out, I reached out to our smart home tester Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, who has started testing the new Spot for her upcoming review. Jen’s early impressions are mostly positive, and she thinks the new Spot should be a great value at $45 — but maybe less so at its full price of $80. Keep an eye out for the full review along with her final assessment. For now, if you’re a Prime member and don’t mind being an early adopter, this deal might be worth it.