Carry on amping
With sleek styling and a Sonos-slapping pricetag, you’d think Amazon could do no wrong with a connected amp… wouldn’t you?
£290 / stuff.tv/EchoLinkAmp
■ Yep, Amazon really has made an old-school hi-fi amplifier… albeit one with Alexa voice control and multiroom capabilities. It’s a small, black, unbranded box, with just a volume control and 3.5mm headphone socket on its fascia.
■ On the inside, there’s Class D amplification rated at 60 Watts per channel into a standard 8-ohm speaker load. The onboard DAC is 24-bit/192kHz-capable, so hi-res audio is on the menu, and there’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity as well as an array of hardware inputs round the back.