I spent the last week with Amazon's new Echo Buds, and although the sound is mediocre I'm convinced that they have a crucial advantage over Apple's AirPods

How they look and feel

Amazon's Echo Buds come in black with a blue accent near the tip that goes in your ear — the signature blue that's reminiscent of the Echo's glowing ring. Their shape is similar to that of Samsung's Galaxy Buds, except Samsung's earbuds are slightly smaller and lighter than Amazon's.

The case for the Echo Buds is also noticeably larger than that of Apple's AirPods and Samsung's Galaxy Buds, which could make them less comfortable to squeeze into your pocket or a small purse. However, I did notice that I didn't have to charge the case at all during my first week of using them, so it may be worth putting up with the bulk.

But battery life will always vary depending on how you use them. I primarily used the Echo Buds to stream music from Spotify on my way to work for about 40 minutes roughly three days during the week, and also used them for about an hour during two separate workouts.

On most occasions, the Echo Buds remained snug and secure in my ears during my workouts and daily commutes. But in one scenario, one earbud did almost slip out during a run — an issue I rarely if ever have with AirPods. Amazon does include ear tips in small, medium, and large sizes in the box so that you can adjust the earbuds' fit.

Overall, however, I still much prefer the way Apple's AirPods fit in my ears compared to the Echo. They're lighter and I don't ever really find myself having to adjust them.

Using them

The are a couple of different ways you can interact with the Echo Buds: by speaking out loud to summon Alexa, or by tapping or pressing in the buds while they're in your ears.

Both input methods worked well during my experience; the earbuds were just as quick to pick up on the "Alexa" trigger word as the company's smart home speakers. And when you utter "Alexa," the earbuds make the same familiar chime sound to let you know that they're listening, just like the Echo. Apple's second-generation AirPods, comparatively, do not have an audio indicator that lets you know Siri is listening.

A quick double tap on either bud also lets you switch between Bose Active Noise Cancellation and Passthrough mode, the latter of which allows you to hear sounds from your surrounding environment as the name implies.

Pressing and holding down on either the left or right headphone will let you summon the native digital assistant on your phone: Siri if you're using an iPhone or the Google Assistant if you're on Android. This gesture took a little more effort in order to get it to work, and sometimes required more than one attempt. In general, I find the press-and-hold gesture for earbuds to be uncomfortable to begin with, so I didn't use it all that much.

You can also customize these gestures within the Alexa app, with the options including activating active noise reduction and passthrough, triggering Siri or Alexa, muting the earbud's microphones, and controlling music.

Alexa on the go

But the Echo Buds' headlining feature, of course, is the fact that they enable you to access Alexa on the go.

The Echo Buds aren't the first pair of headphones that make it possible to access Alexa hands-free. Jabra's Elite Active 65t, for example, allows you to access Amazon's voice assistant, as do Sony's WF-1000XM3 wireless earbuds.

But as it's introducing the Echo Buds, Amazon is encouraging developers to optimize skills for new use cases outside the home — and is introducing one of it's own. Later this year, you'll be able to use the Echo Buds to see if your local Whole Foods supermarket has the product you're looking for, and if so, which department it would be located in.

It's a minor addition, and unfortunately it hasn't launched yet so I wasn't able to test it. But it demonstrates the types of use cases Amazon envisions for Alexa beyond the home.

Otherwise, Alexa works the same way on the Echo Buds as it does elsewhere — you can ask it to play music, retrieve news or the weather, add items to your shopping list, and make calls among other tasks. When summoning Alexa while listening to a playlist on Spotify, the Echo Buds would lower the music just enough so that I could hear Alexa's response — similar to the way Siri handles requests on the second-generation AirPods while you're listening to music.

Amazon's dominance in the online shopping and smart home industries gives Alexa the potential to be vastly more useful on-the-go than Siri. During my time with the Echo Buds, I occasionally asked Alexa to add items to my Amazon cart as I was out and about during the day — a task that Siri couldn't handle when I asked. You can also use the Echo Buds to communicate with other Echo devices in the home through a feature called Drop In — a feature that Apple can't really compete with considering it doesn't have a smart home device that's as prevalent as the Echo.

Sound quality

The Echo Buds offer sound quality that's satisfactory enough to serve as a reliable pair of everyday headphones for casual listening. I was able to distinctly hear elements like the bass when listening to tunes across different genres, and music and phone calls seemed crisp enough. The audio quality didn't blow me away by any means, but it was adequate for listening to music on-the-go.

The biggest difference between the Echo Buds and AirPods, however, was in their volume. Amazon's earbuds didn't seem quite as loud as Apple's AirPods, and I often found myself cranking up the volume more often than usual.

While I generally prefer the way Apple's AirPods fit in my ears over the Echo Buds, I did come to appreciate the Echo Buds' active noise reduction. Although AirPods felt louder, this feature made it much easier to drown out sounds like the screeching of the subway coming to a halt during my commute and the humming of the treadmill during my run.

That has made the Echo Buds a bit more useful during my morning commute than the second-generation AirPods I had been using. However, Apple did just unveil a new pair of earbuds called the AirPods Pro on Monday, which support active noise cancellation. That could give the Echo Buds some serious competition, although Apple's new headphones will be significantly more expensive at $250.

Overall thoughts

Amazon's new Echo Buds offer decent sound quality and features like active noise reduction at a cheaper price than rivals like Apple and Jabra.

But the launch of the Echo Bus is less about the earbuds themselves and more about Amazon encouraging you to take Alexa with you everywhere you go. As such, it wouldn't be surprising to see developers take this into account when developing and updating new skills for Alexa moving forward. By releasing the new feature that allows Alexa to help you find products at your local Whole Foods, Amazon may be setting an example that it hopes other app makers will follow.

Amazon's Echo Buds are far from being the only headphones that make it possible to access voice assistants hands-free. But Amazon has an inherent advantage in the fact that we're already used to talking to Alexa-enabled gadgets in our homes, by uttering phrases like "Alexa, what's the weather?" or "Alexa, turn off the kitchen lights." That makes it feel much more natural to speak to Alexa on-the-go compared to rivals like Siri, which I rarely use for such tasks.

It's a critical move for Amazon as it seeks to expand its Alexa digital helper outside of the home and into other corners of our lives.