Sound quality: Amazon's Echo had good overall sound quality. Bass has decent defintion but has so-so impact and deep bass is lacking. Midrange is fairly clear, but is a bit thin, grainy, metallic, and processed sounding. Treble is dry and smeared. This model doesn't do a good job recovering room ambience--a sense of the acoustic space where the recording was made--and is somewhat congested and lacks detail. We found no significant difference whether a Bluetooth or WiFi connection was used. This model provides a decent volume level in a medium-sized room but gets harsh sounding at louder volumes.
Ease of use: We found the system's ease of use to be good overall. The Amazon Echo WiFi setup is fairly easy thanks to its verbal prompts to follow the app instructions. Once you download the Echo app, you sign in to your Amazon account; if you don't have one you'll need to do that before you can proceed. The instructions have an intuitive walkthrough for selecting a wireless network and entering the network password, and there's a video tutorial that shows how to use the Echo. However, the Bluetooth setup instructions are buried in the Echo app help section and a verbal command for an important setup step is mixed in with other phrases on the "Try Saying" card. The volume controls are prominent though unlabeled, with graphic volume level indicators which fade away once they've been displayed. You can also verbally state a volume level between 1 through 10. Switching between WiFi audio sources is easy using either verbal commands or the Echo app, but switching to Bluetooth source can't be done using the app. The provided remote control is good, with high-contrast control buttons and an intuitive layout, but there's no indication when the mute button is engaged, and the skip buttons are mislabeled as fast forward/reverse control buttons.
