This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, October 29th, 2025.

We tell you what you need to know, follow up the context of those stories and help each other understand.

Today we are talking speakers, home automation, and how AI is changing that landscape.

That's right. I'm Jason Howell.

And I'm Sarah Lane.

Let's start with what you need to know with a big story.

The Echo Dot, there we go.

The Echo Dot Max was first announced back in March along with the Alexa Plus Early Access Program.

Now we're starting to see reviews of the device.

Those are starting to hit.

And I was kind of reading through the verge and thought this would be kind of interesting to talk about.

There's a few things that are related to this.

So the verge review shares that the device has some strong points.

It delivers good sound quality, stronger bass. It's very capable as far as being a smart hub with support for matter, thread, Zigby, all that stuff that you want in a smart

home. And I mean, I like it. It's got a very attractive purple fabric finish, very eye-catching.

I mean, it definitely stands out. I don't know if you have any other purple technology in your house that it would like match to, but it certainly

stands out. It's appealing. Yeah, yeah. It's definitely a statement. It's a statement. Although,

you know, in a small package. So it's not like you've got, you know, your whole media wall is now purple.

No, although, you know, I wouldn't hate that.

That would be fine.

But the review does take it to task for Alexa Plus, which is, you know, another big part of this kind of release, the performance features related

to Alexa Plus, not always performing the way they expect, noticeably slow delays on certain

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