Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Bought this as a gift for my wife and it sounds just as good as the full blown Echo we have in our bedroom. Haven't experienced any of the USB plug issues others commented on, but it stays plugged in all the time so we haven't been trying to recharge the internal battery. So far so good. Knocking it down to one star, should have known better reading the other one star reviews. Had it for about 3 months, now the power light just blinks blue/pink and shuts down. Won’t even work just plugged into the wall. If I can find a way into this thing I’ll see if I can bypass the internal charger and just wire it straight to the 5v output to the Echo and speaker amp. Opening up the bottom I found the problem. Apparently there was a last minute addition to the design of this and an SMD diode was just barely tacked onto the 5v output that goes up the the Dot. After a few months of use, this poor solder joint fails, voltage regulator tries to compensate for the drop from the increased current demand, and BAM, another one of the ICs in the switch mode supply fails. Markings are so badly gone I can’t make out what the part was. The input power jack heats up because of the two reverse polarity protection diodes next to the USB connector are probably marginal for normal operation, and just burn up if there’s a short or other intermittent connection internally. All this boils down to poor QC. This product should not have been allowed to go to production with a component tacked onto a board like that. If it was decided that it was necessary, then the PCB should have been redesigned. I really would welcome the manufacturer reaching out to me to discuss a replacement/refund and how they are going to resolve this problem. If you have one that works now, you probably are just running on borrowed time, because this WILL fail at some point. Update: I contacted the manufacturer, and apparently they have found the same issue as I have and have supposedly made a change to the design/construction of the PCB to eliminate the tacked on part. A replacement with the update is on its way, I will take a look at the replacement and see if it has indeed changed, and if so, update my review.