How to Pair Your Amazon Echo to Bluetooth Speakers for Bigger Sound

Author: Jason Fitzpatrick / Source: howtogeek.com

Although both the full size Echo and the Echo Dot have respectable sound for their given sizes, compared to much bigger tabletop Bluetooth speakers (or a full home theater system with Bluetooth support), they’re pretty anemic. Let’s look at how you can link them to bigger and more robust speakers.

What You Need for Bluetooth Pairing

This is not a tutorial on how to use Bluetooth to send music to your Echo (e.g. to play music from your phone)—this is a tutorial on how to send the audio from the Echo to bigger speakers. If you’re interested in using your Echo as a Bluetooth speaker, please check out our tutorial here instead.

To achieve an Echo-to-speaker configuration, you’ll need a few things. First, you’ll need the Echo device (obviously). Second, you’ll need some sort of Bluetooth speaker system to connect to it. Although your speaker choice can be as simple and compact as a beefy tabletop Bluetooth unit (like the Nyne Bass we showcased in our guide to buying a portable Bluetooth speaker), truly anything that offers Bluetooth connectivity and good speakers is a potential candidate.

If you have a sound bar with Bluetooth connectivity, for example—a feature we highlighted in our sound bar buying guide—you can link your Echo to your sound bar. In fact, even if you have an old but still great sounding test of floor speakers, you can connect your Echo to them via Bluetooth with a simple Bluetooth-to-analog adapter, like the one we use in our guide to adding Bluetooth headphones to your HDTV. It’s worth noting, however, that the Echo Dot has a physical audio out jack, whereas the full size Echo does not—if you’re happy putting the Echo Dot right near the speakers and want to skip jumping through the Bluetooth hoop, you can simply use a male-to-male 3.

5mm headphone cable to link the Dot to your speakers. (This will result in better quality, too, as Bluetooth does sadly degrade audio quality somewhat.) Full-size Echo users must use Bluetooth.