Amazon wants to make it easier to add its voice-controlled assistant, Alexa, to any room in the home by offering a pair of new, smaller versions of Amazon Echo , the original tabletop Bluetooth speaker inhabited by Alexa. Echo Dot and Amazon Tap are both smaller than the original Echo and Tap is even portable, but was too much sacrificed in the design to keep them from being the next go-to digital assistant? Echo Dot really is just a smaller version of the original Echo with the same ability to hear voice commands from across the room and perform an expanding array of tasks like playing music, controlling smart home devices, reading news and answering questions.