Amazon Echo Link Amp

Amazon courts the hi-fi crowd with this just-addspeakers streamer – but does the Echo Link Amp cut it on sound quality?

‘Proper’ hi-fi has suddenly become cool again, with tech giants now courting hi-fi fans more than ever. Having started out with Echo smart speakers that prioritised smarts, Amazon is now focusing on sound quality for its latest generation. It also now has two ‘hi-fi’ components: the Echo Link, and the Echo Link Amp.

The Link Amp has a compelling case – it’s less than half the price of the Sonos Amp, and more than £100 cheaper than Sonos’s Connect:amp. There’s just one problem: it sounds really poor.

The Echo Link Amp is strikingly unstriking – there isn’t even an Amazon logo. The matt black finish is broken up only by a volume knob and a 3.5mm headphone socket. The top panel has holes to allow air to escape, and the rear houses a host of connections.

It’s an odd move for Amazon to launch such a nondescript product – this device certainly won’t inspire the same interest and admiration as its Echo devices do.

Limited access

The Link Amp approaches music streaming in the same way as Amazon’s Echo speakers. Initial set-up is handled by the Alexa app, but for streaming it is rather limited and unintuitive. There’s no way to search for music across multiple services, for example, and no way to add tracks to an on-the-fly queue.

If you have Spotify, that’s no problem, you can use the Spotify app and select the Echo Link Amp as the destination. Amazon Music users will find the app useful too, though it lacks the ability to create on-the-fly music queues when the Link Amp is the destination.

Subscribers to other services are out of luck. The Echo Link Amp supports Apple Music, but can’t be selected as a playback device due to a lack of Airplay support. Services such as Tidal and Qobuz are unsupported. Internet radio is available, via Tunein, and Deezer is on board. The Link Amp doesn’t have any built-in microphones, so isn’t an Alexa device in its own right. It can easily be incorporated in an Alexa set-up, though, by installing it along with an Echo Dot, with the Link Amp as the output device. Issue an instruction, such as “Alexa, play David Bowie”, and music will play from speakers connected to the Link Amp.

The Link Amp has a good selection of connections, with coaxial, optical and RCA analogue inputs and outputs, plus a headphone-out and a pair of speaker terminals for connecting passive speakers. It supports Bluetooth too, though Amazon won’t reveal the format.

There are slight problems around the Link Amp’s usability, then, but the real issues begin when you listen to it. From the off, it is a dull and cluttered delivery with little in the way of dynamics, even at the bigger end and certainly not in the subtler, more nuanced parts of a track.

Horse play

We play The Funeral by Band Of Horses and the Link Amp struggles to deliver the ethereal quality of the vocal. There’s a lack of width and spaciousness to the soundstage – the track doesn’t kick in when it should – and the combination of poor timing, a lack of weight and almost non-existent dynamics robs the music of drama and excitement.

Switch to No Captain by Lane 8 and the lack of body in vocals is noticeable. The degree to which they sound thin and lifeless is striking – like someone whispering loudly rather than speaking normally. When listening to music via the Echo Link Amp, there’s a nagging feeling you’re missing out on something, whether that’s rhythmic punch, dynamic excitement or atmospheric spaciousness.

The best you can say about the sound it is that it isn’t offensive – it’s not harsh, bright or annoying – but in many ways the limp delivery is offensive in itself.

It might seem that we’re being overly critical of a product that appears to be good value for money, but components at any price should have a basic grasp of music, a core understanding of rhythm, tone and dynamics. Plenty of sub-£100 Bluetooth speakers manage it, but not the Amazon Echo Link Amp.

This is a product possessing a rare lack of talent, and the fact that it’s made by a company as huge and wealthy as Amazon is little short of baffling.