Should You Use an Echo Dot as an Eero Extender?

Your smart speaker can now be part of a mesh WiFi network

One neat trick that wireless routers picked up a few years ago was figuring out how to work together with other nearby routers to create one great big blanket of WiFi goodness.

These routers, known as mesh routers, which are usually sold in packs of two or three, instantly solved the biggest problem consumers, especially those in larger homes, regularly faced with traditional, single-unit routers: Spotty WiFi coverage that could cause Zoom calls to stutter, Netflix videos to buffer, and large downloads to take forever and a day to complete.

Rich Fisco, who oversees electronics testing for Consumer Reports, has referred to mesh routers as a "silver bullet" when it comes to solving your WiFi woes: Simply plug the main unit into your modem, and then place the other units, known as satellites or beacons, strategically around your home to maximize WiFi coverage.

The once-lofty price of mesh routers has come down in recent years, and we now regularly recommend models that cost less than $250, but they’re still not cheap. And one exciting development may help drive the cost down further, putting mesh networks into more hands. Companies are now starting to stuff mesh technology into inexpensive devices you may be planning to buy anyway.

One such device? The Amazon Echo Dot smart speaker sitting in my home office.

First introduced in 2016, the Echo Dot is Amazon's entry-level wireless smart speaker. It usually costs around $50, and Amazon frequently puts it on sale for less.

Smart speakers are neat little devices useful for carrying out simple tasks like asking what the weather will be like tomorrow, getting the latest sports scores, setting timers while cooking, and turning on and off smart appliances like lights and thermostats—all with the sound of your voice.

Of course, being speakers, these devices can also be used to play music from streaming services like Spotify and Sirius XM, though some devices are better suited to playing music than others.

So, what do smart speakers have to do with mesh routers?

Just a few months ago, Amazon released a new version of the Echo Dot that functions as a beacon for the company's Eero mesh routers.

Suddenly, a device you might have simply bought to listen to podcasts while cooking could serve as a critical component of your home WiFi network.

Sounded good to me. I recently moved from New York to Arizona, and while I was planning how to set up my home WiFi network I figured, Why not get an Eero and then use the Echo Dots as beacons?

I was sure to buy at least one Echo Dot anyway (and let's be real, probably more than one), so why not extract even more value out of these devices by relying on their newfound mesh WiFi capabilities? That the Echo Dot is roughly $30 less expensive than an Eero beacon only sweetened the deal.

One cross-country move later, I was ready to see how all of this works in practice.

I decided to go with the Eero Pro 6E (a two-pack mesh system) as my wireless router. This, alongside a couple of Echo Dots I had purchased, would make up my home WiFi network in the Sonoran Desert. I pay roughly $80 per month for a 1 gigabit connection from Xfinity (Comcast).

We hadn't reviewed the Pro 6E when I bought it at the end of 2022 (though we’ve since given it a good overall score), but I figured it was a reasonably safe bet because Eero wireless routers usually do pretty well in our wireless router ratings.

As for getting the Echo Dot to function as a beacon, the process wasn't too difficult.

I first had to set up the Eero itself by plugging it into my Xfinity modem and basically tapping "next" a bunch of times from within the Eero iPhone app. Presto, my WiFi was up and running. Next I had to set up the Echo Dot, which similarly was a matter of plugging it into the wall and following the instructions in the Alexa iPhone app. Again, mostly tapping "next" a bunch of times.

Once the Eero and Echo Dot were up and running individually, I returned to the Eero app. One neat thing about this app is the wealth of information and options it makes available to you, including showing what devices are connected to your network and displaying how much data you’ve downloaded and uploaded over the past week. More options, including advanced parental controls, are available in the app if you pay for Eero Plus.

Anyway, inside the Home section of the Eero app there's a list of all the devices connected to your WiFi network. Among these devices was my Echo Dot, which was labeled "Eero Built-in Compatible." I simply tapped the Echo Dot and on the next screen tapped "Enable to extend WiFi."

Boom! My Echo Dot, purchased primarily to do smart speaker-y things, was now a full-fledged Eero beacon.

Now, you might be wondering how well the Echo Dot actually performs as an Eero beacon.

Pretty well, though depending on what devices you usually have connected to your home WiFi network you may run into a snag or two.

First, the good.

I typically work from a spare bedroom that I’ve fashioned into a home office. Usually I’m hardwired, via a 50-foot Ethernet cable, to the main Eero unit that's connected to my cable modem in the living room. It looks ridiculous having a wire crawling from one room to another, but I want to have as solid of an internet connection as possible since I work from home. The wired connection reduces the chance of my connection dropping while I’m on an important video call.

So for the purposes of this article I disconnected the Ethernet cable, plopped the Echo Dot on my desk and connected my computer to the mesh network it created. The resulting experience went so smoothly it felt almost anti-climactic.

I used my PC as I normally do during the workday, which primarily consists of fairly routine activities like handling email, writing inside of Google Docs, and participating in video calls. I probably have a tab or two open to various bits of sports news, and I usually have, at least while writing, a YouTube video on the background playing some sort of old video game music. I may have even streamed soccer once or twice during this little experiment...

At no point during any of this did my connection drop or otherwise slow down. At no point did a video freeze or stutter. At no point did Google Docs do that little "trying to connect" thing that indicates a network problem.

That may not necessarily be surprising to some people, but if you’re an ordinary consumer looking to do ordinary consumer things, and you don't know offhand whether or not any given router is sufficient for your needs—well, if your day looks anything like mine then the Echo Dot should serve you well.

That is not to say that it's as fast as my hard-wired connection, of course.

Running an informal speed test from Measurement Lab while hardwired showed I had a connection speed of roughly 700 mbps. That's fast enough to download a large Xbox game (to be specific, "Mortal Kombat XL," which weighs in at 42GB and was on sale for $5 during this little experiment) in roughly 8 minutes. Connected to the Echo Dot, meanwhile, I clocked in at more like 400 mbps, which implies a download time of more like 15 minutes.

Am I going to split hairs over that sort of difference? Perhaps not, but you might want to reserve very large downloads for when you’re hardwired to the Eero. Of course, unless you’re a gamer like me, I can't think of too many times where you’d encounter multi-gig downloads nowadays, given the shift to streaming content.

Overall, then? The idea of getting a single Eero unit and letting a couple of cheap Echo Dots pull double duty as smart speakers and mesh beacons feels pretty solid.

There are a handful of very minor caveats to be aware of, however—emphasis on minor.

One is that the Echo Dot functions as a WiFi 5 device. As you may already know, WiFi 6 is the current WiFi standard, and WiFi 6E is a sort of extension that's been bolted onto that standard to improve performance in dense areas. (Heck, we even saw the first WiFi 7 devices announced just a few weeks ago at CES.)

Does this matter all that much when you’re participating in a video call, or streaming something from ESPN+, or messing around with ChatGPT? Eh, probably not—and you could always replace those Dots with Eero beacons compatible with WiFi 6/6E down the line if and when you decide you need to.

There's one other very small irritation: the lack of a built-in Ethernet or USB port.

I’ve already mentioned that a hardwire connection is going to be faster than WiFi, but a free Ethernet or USB port may also be useful for connecting devices like printers, shared hard drives, or smart home bridges to a satellite unit in your mesh network. And this, mind you, is a problem that can only partially be solved by adding another Eero unit to the mesh network: Eero units don't have any built-in USB ports, either.

Still, those minor, almost edge case concerns don't warrant chucking out the idea of an Eero-plus-Echo Dot mesh network—at least not in my mind. That system will be less expensive than outfitting your home entirely with Eeros; it provides a fast enough network to work seamlessly through the day; and opens up the ability to do useful, smart speaker-y things that you would not be able to do with an Eero-only mesh network.

Nicholas De Leon

Nicholas De Leon is a senior reporter for Consumer Reports, covering laptops, wireless routers, tablets, and more. He has been at CR since 2017. He previously covered tech for Vice, News Corp, and TechCrunch. He lives in Tucson, Ariz. Follow him on Twitter for all things tech and soccer @nicholasadeleon.