Amazon Echo Pop Kids (newest model), Enjoy age-appropriate audiobooks, sleep routines and Alexa+ experiences to create and learn, Marvel's Avengers design

Why it's worth it

The Echo Pop Kids is the least expensive way to add Alexa to a room, and the kid features are genuinely good — filtered music, bedtime routines and story games. Adults get full voice control of the same smart home.

The simplest way to make a smart home feel finished is to add another place to talk to it. Voice control from the bedroom, the bathroom, the hallway — that's what makes the whole setup feel present rather than confined to one room. The Echo Pop is small, cheap and does that job as well as any bigger speaker.

The kids' angle isn't a gimmick. Explicit lyrics get filtered from Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify and Pandora requests. Sleep Studio provides wind-down playlists from Calm, Headspace and Moshi, and parents set the schedule from the Kids Parent Dashboard. Parents in owner feedback describe timers for tooth-brushing and alarms as the everyday uses that stick.

From our review of 7 smart home devices, by Ben Carter, Tech Editor

What we like

• +The simplest way to make a smart home feel finished is to add another place to talk to it
• +The kids' angle isn't a gimmick
• +Buy this one first if you're not sure smart home is for you
• +The Marvel and Disney designs matter more than an adult would guess

What to know

• –The kid features lean on Amazon Kids+, and the audiobook and ad-free podcast library is a subscription
• –Sound quality is adequate, not good
• –It's an Avengers-branded speaker