Pump Up the Jam: How to Connect Your Amazon Echo to an External Speaker

The Amazon Echo and the Echo Studio offer great sound quality at a reasonable price. The Echo Dot and Echo Pop, meanwhile, are much cheaper but don't offer the same superior audio. While the more recent generation Echo Dots have improved the speaker, the Pop is still quieter and has a weaker bass.

If you're unhappy with the audio on your Amazon smart speaker, you can easily connect it to an external speaker to give the sound a boost. Here's how to connect your Echo device to another speaker.

Connect a Speaker With a Wired Connection

If you want to plug a speaker in to your Echo, you'll need a standard 3.5mm audio cable with male connections on both ends and a compatible device. Unfortunately, the Echo Dot (5th Gen)—with or without the clock—and the Echo Pop don't have audio output jacks.

For all other models (Echo Studio only has an input option), plug one end of your audio cable into your speaker's Aux In connection and the other end into the Echo's Aux Out connection, right next to the power cable's connection. Now, when you power on your connected speaker, the audio will be redirected to it instead of going through your Echo.

Pair Your Echo Device with a Bluetooth Speaker

Don't want to futz around with cables? You can instead stream the sound from your Echo to a Bluetooth speaker. Amazon certifies compatible speakers with the Works With Alexa label, so you know which devices to buy. Once you have a Bluetooth speaker, put it in pairing mode.

Open the Alexa app, head to Devices, and then choose the Alexa device you want to connect to your speaker. Select Connect a device under the Bluetooth Connections section to make the app search for nearby Bluetooth devices to pair with your Echo. Tap the name of your speaker when it pops up.

After the pairing is successful, the speaker will show up in the Alexa app as a Bluetooth connection for that Echo device. Alexa also announces the successful pairing. You can now ask Alexa to play music and perform other tasks, and the sound is piped through your Bluetooth speaker.

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If you wish to disconnect the speaker, select the device's name in the Alexa app and tap Disconnect. You can also say "Alexa, disconnect." Alexa tells you that your Echo is now disconnected from your speaker. To re-establish the connection, say "Alexa, connect" to connect your Echo to the last connected Bluetooth device.

You can permanently remove the entry for your speaker by tapping its name in the Alexa app and selecting Forget Device. You'll then need to go through the pairing process again to reconnect it.