Yep, phone speakers, even in a lot of expensive smartphones, tend to be lackluster. The Dot has a surprisingly good speaker. I would never try to rock out with it, but for music where you can keep the volume down to 70% or less and for voice sounds it is more than adequate.

I initially hardwired my living room Dot into my Sony sound base system that is connected to my TV, Blu-Ray player, and Fire TV. That was awesome sound because it was using the Sony sound base system, but I quickly realized that having the Dot sit inches away from the sound system produced a huge amount of awakenings. Every few minutes the Dot would light up the blue ring and mutter something. And that brought to my attention another issue with my set up. I had hardwired the Dot into the AUX port of my sound system. Unless the AUX input was selected, I could not hear the Dot. So when watching TV, a Blu-Ray disc, or the Fire TV, the sound of the Dot was muted because each device is own a separate input. This rendered the Dot usable only when the AUX input was selected, which was rare. I rarely sit in the living room to listen to music or talk to my Dot. I usually have the TV, Blu-Ray player, or Fire TV on instead. Since the Fire TV also plays my music, having the Dot attached to the same sound system was a waste of a good Dot. So I soon unplugged the Dot from the sound base and moved her over to the lamp table next to my recliner where I could talk to her and use her to answer questions, control home devices, etc.

BTW, I've only had the wake word set to "Computer" for one evening now, but it does seem to have lessened the number of times Dot gets awakened. If I had to rate the wake words from most false awakenings to least, I would list them like this:

1. Alexa
2. Echo
3. Amazon
4. Computer

YMMV of course, as not all Dos are installed near a TV or stereo system.