A complete guide to the Amazon Echo family, the smart speakers that will change your home forever (AMZN)

Shutterstock

• Amazon currently sells several Echo devices. 
• If you're considering buying one, it can be hard to decide between them.
• Here's a guide to the Echo family, and which device to buy depending on your lifestyle. 

These days, it's hard to keep all the Amazon Echo devices straight.

Amazon offers six Echo devices total, and they're available from $50 all the way up to $230. With so many different options and price points, it's hard to tell which device might be right for you. 

So whether you're looking to buy your first Echo, upgrade to a new device, or add to your smart speaker collection, here is a comprehensive guide to Amazon's Echo family to help you find the device that's right for you:

The Echo Dot is Amazon's gateway smart speaker. It's tiny, easy to use, and only costs $50 (and it's often on sale for even less than that). Amazon revamped the Echo Dot this past September, and it's better-looking than ever before.

The Dot can do many standard smart speaker tasks, like play music, make calls, order products from Amazon, and control your smart home devices. 

But the Dot doesn't have a very powerful speaker, so it's not a great solution if you're just looking for a solid Bluetooth speaker.

And while it can easily be a standalone device, it also works great when combined with a full-size Amazon Echo — you can have your Echo live in one room, and place Echo Dots in other rooms throughout your house. 

The Echo is the first mainstream — and arguably most successful — smart speaker you can buy. The device launched in 2014, and has since helped Amazon dominate the smart-speaker game — as of September 2017, analysts estimated that Amazon owned 76% of the smart-home market. 

Three years after launch, the Echo was due for an upgrade. So in September, Amazon revamped the original Echo, introducing a second-generation version with new finishes and a reduced price tag of $100. 

The new Echo has dual speakers, so it's a good option for playing music. With the new device, Amazon introduced multi-room audio, so you can play music from several Echo devices at once across rooms. The new Echo also has a powerful built-in Alexa, so it can also make calls, check the weather and traffic, request an Uber, or turn down the heat.

The original Echo does it all, and it's likely the best option for most people. 

With more and more smart-home products coming online, it can be overwhelming to try to control them all. Enter the Amazon Echo Plus, which acts as a smart-home hub.

Amazon redesigned the Echo Plus in September, giving it the same fabric-coated exterior as the standard Echo. The Plus, as its name denotes, is more powerful than the standard Echo, and costs $50 more at $150. But it can do many of the same things, like play music, send messages, and give you a daily news briefing. 

What sets the Plus apart is its ability to control other "smart" devices. You can say, "Alexa, discover my devices," and it will find anything else online, like smart light bulbs or locks, and set them up for you. Plus, you'll be able to give the device a single voice command to control multiple actions from multiple devices at once. And if the internet goes down, the Echo Plus can still control your smart home devices using a feature called local voice control. 

Other Echo devices control your smart home, too, but the Echo Plus lets you integrate everything into one place with no need to download any of the "skills" you'd need to operate those features on the standard Echo. 

And if you're in the market for a better speaker for playing music, the Echo Plus may be a good option. Amazon improved the speakers on the new device to provide crisper vocals and better bass. 

The Echo Look is an Alexa-enabled camera that can take full-length photos or videos of you, help you build a "personal lookbook," and give a second opinion on your outfit.

By saying, "Alexa, take a picture" or "Alexa, take a video," the device uses its depth-sensing camera and LED lighting to capture your look and create a lookbook of all your outfits. Amazon even built in "computer vision-based background blur" to make your outfit photos look more high-quality.

The device's app also has a feature called Style Check, which uses machine learning and a team of "fashion specialists" to help you compare two looks and decide which one is better. 

The Echo Look can do many of the things a standard Echo can do, too. It can check your calendar, set timers, play music, control your smart home, and more. 

The device was Amazon's first specialized device, and it's pretty clear that the Look isn't for everyone — it began as an invitation-only device, but it's now available for anyone to buy for $100.

The $230 Echo Show is the most high-end Amazon device on the market, mainly because it can do it all.

The Echo Show debuted in 2017, but it got a face-lift last September — now, it has a bigger screen and better speakers. 

Like the Echo and Echo Plus, the Show has a full-service Alexa built in, smart-home controls, and music streaming. 

But the Echo Show also has a seven-inch screen, which means you can watch videos and make video calls using the the device. You can also access a lot of popular Echo features in video form, like video flash briefings, on-screen music lyrics while you're streaming music, and visual weather forecasts and to-do lists.

You can also use the Echo Show to display your photos or see feeds from your security cameras or baby monitors. Like the Plus, the Show can serve a smart home hub. 

There's one major limitation of the Echo Show, unfortunately: Due to the standoff between Amazon and Google, you can't watch YouTube videos on the device. 

See Also:

• 5 major tech companies, from Amazon to Apple, are trying to make the 'Netflix of gaming' — here’s how the competition stacks up
• IoT Report: How Internet of Things technology growth is reaching mainstream companies and consumers
• Here are the computers, gadgets, and accessories I'm using on a personal basis in 2019 — and which ones I'd recommend

SEE ALSO: I spent a week wearing Bose's $350 noise-canceling headphones nonstop — and they're 100% worth their high price tag