Echo Dot & Data Consumption.

Smart speakers such as Google Home, Amazon Echo, Apple HomePod are some of the popular devices among all other connected home gadgets and Amazon Alexa is the most used among them.

According to some statistics, almost 70% of smart speaker users in the US used Amazon Echo in 2020, Amazon Echo had over 40 million users in the United States in 2018, and 130 million Amazon Echo speakers are expected to be shipped globally by 2025.

These numbers are not purely coincidental, but because of the features that this device offers to users.

Echo Dot is a voice command device integrated with a virtual assistant its name is “Alexa”, this gadget may answer all your questions and you can use it to get information about the traffic or weather, or even listen to your audio-books.

Many people use this device to manage their smart home appliances, for example asking Alexa to turn on the lights, adjust the room temperature, lock and unlock the door and much more.

This gadget relies on the internet, without an internet connection the device will be useless.

So many users are asking how much data the Amazon Echo dot use? and we’re going to answer this question in detail in this article.

How much data does Echo Dot use?

Some people will tell you that Alexa uses 1GB while others will tell you it uses 1.5GB, to me there’s not an exact answer for this question because the amount of data that this device uses varies depending on two things.

The first is for which purpose you use this gadget and the second is how often you’re using it?

If your internet service provider enforces data caps it’s important to know how much data you’ll expect from the Echo Dot to use so you can determine that based on the following factors:

• Audio Streaming: If you’re one of those people who prefer to lie down on the sofa and close their eyes and listen to their favorite books or listen to podcasts.
  
  I can tell you that you’re lucky because Echo Dot can do that, but how much data it will consume to enjoy you’re favorite book or podcast.
  
  On average, audiobook files are 28 MB per hour, and most audiobooks run for approximately 10 hours so you can count 280 MB per book.
  
  While low audio quality podcasts use 43.2MB of your allowance every hour, while medium-quality uses up to 72MB/hour and high quality consume around 115.2MB per hour.
  
  The audio streaming activities are considered the highest bandwidth consumer among all other kinds of tasks you can do on your Echo Dot.
  

• Smart Home commands: It’s very common that people use Amazon Echo to control many things inside the house.
  
  For example, you can demand from Alexa to adjust the room temperature or turn on and off lights or change the lighting color, and many more things like that.
  
  To integrate the Echo Dot with other devices like thermostats, lights, and door locks these gadgets need to be compatible with Alexa then program them in order to control them from your smart speaker.
  
  These commands will usually use around 5 KB of data for each command you use so if you do two hundred commands per month you’ll use around 1MB per month which is considered low.
  
• Asking a question: When we want to ask a simple question it’s better to ask Echo Dot rather than type it into PC or smartphone, here I am talking about questions like the weather forecast or best places to visit in your city or you can ask a question like “who is the first man on the moon?” and so on.
  
  Asking Echo Dot several questions a day it’s very common fortunately that these kinds of queries don’t use too much data.
  
  For example, Asking about the weather may use around 138 KB, while asking other kinds of questions will consume up to 240 KB, so you can count your monthly usage based on these numbers.
  
• Data usage while idle: even if the Echo Dot needs a wake word to work the device is permanently connected to your internet connection, so should you worry about the data usage when your smart speaker is idle?
  
  The answer is no because when your Amazon Echo is idle it didn’t use too much data (You will hardly be using 5MB of data over 24 hours) this number will not have a big effect and it is not convenient to plug and unplug the device every time you want to use it.
  
• Updates: In order for your Echo device to receive newly released features, it often requires an update to its firmware, if you’re not a techie person, firmware is software installed in the gadget by the manufacturer in order to run the device, without it your Echo Dot will not work.
  
  It’s important to update this software because updates will fix possible bugs and security holes to prevent hackers from accessing your connected gadgets and cleaning up outdated software that may slow down your device.
  
  The Echo Dot will make updates automatically, it may consume a few hundred MBs (100 to 300 MBs) fortunately that they are not frequent so you shouldn’t worry about that.

Average consumption.

I hate to talk about how much data is consumed in a month because I think it depends on each person’s usage and the gap can be big between one person and another.

But let me give you an example of monthly usage and you can count your expected usage based on this example:

Echo Dot Command	Data usage
Audiobook. ( 2 books per month + four hours of medium quality podcasts)	848 MB
Smart home commands. (200 monthly voice commands)	1MB
Asked Questions. (100 questions per month)	21MB
Data usage while idle.	150MB
Update.	200MB
Total data usage per month.	1.22 GB

How much internet speed does Echo Dot require?

Same as all of your connected devices like your smartphone, tablets, or smartwatch, the Echo Dot requires minimum internet speed to stream content.

Amazon suggests an internet connection with speeds of at least 0.51 Mbps, this amount of speed will be enough to stream content through Alexa.

The device is connected to an internet connection through an active Wi-Fi connection through a router and must obtain reliable Wi-Fi signals to function properly.

Can Amazon Echo Dot slow down your Wifi?

Generally speaking, Amazon Alexa doesn’t use too much internet speed, but when you have a bad internet plan and have multiple Echo Dots on your house working at the same time with other smart devices, of course, you will notice an impact on your internet connection.

Final words.

Don’t worry a lot about your Amazon Echo data usage because it won’t use a lot of your monthly data as your smartphone and computer do.

But if you don’t want to think about data usage when running your Echo dot, we recommend that you go for an unlimited data plan.