Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here
and this is a video on the Google Home Mini and the Amazon Echo Dot
So this thing just came out, the Google Home Mini. It's 50 bucks
It's relatively inexpensive, but it's just so much cheaper
than its predecessor, that thing was 120 bucks
I think? This is like less than half price and...
it looks nice, right? But just because it's new and it looks a heck of a lot nicer than this...
It doesn't mean that's... inherently better than this, right?
I've been using this quite a bit, the Amazon Echo Dot and it's a very good product
But, depending what you do and what you don't do, one or the other, might be a better fit
So that's what this video is, it's going to talk about what these products are, what they aren't and...
I guess kind of a guide as to whether or not, any one of these are actually a good purchase for you
So I'm gonna focus on three things.
First, let's talk about using these things as media controllers
So they're both pretty good as media controllers. This thing, the Google Home
Two things kind of bugged me about it
It doesn't have an audio jack out
So if you have a pair of speakers that you want to connect it to like a hardwire
You can't do that.
And it also doesn't technically have Bluetooth, like it does
You can't just connect it to a Bluetooth enabled speaker, you need to connect
a Chromecast Audio, to some speakers and then now they can talk wirelessly
And I mean that's just a bit of a money grab from Google
And they're just basically trying to keep the Chromecast Audio product alive, and it's fair...
But... if you're looking for good audio,
and just like a simple audio with less wires and stuff like that...
It's gonna cost you a little bit more with this device
With the Amazon Echo Dot, it's got an audio out
So it's just, you plug it up and you're good to go
Both of them can be used as speakers.
The Google Home Mini's probably a little bit better sounding
It's not like, much better, because neither of them are very good
But does sound a little bit cleaner and just a little more depth to the audio
It does have upward firing speakers
I'm not sure if that's making a big difference, whereas
the Amazon Echo Dot has downward firing speakers, so when it's on a table
It's just the sound is projected off of the surface.
They both handled TV well. This thing needs Chromecast, this thing needs the Fire Stick
Um...
They both have their advantages inherently
just from the products of Fire Stick versus Chromecast, but... they both work
And I wouldn't say that one is like, massively better
than the other, in terms of their video playing capabilities
One thing I have noticed with the Google Home products, and it's not just with the Google Home Mini
It's with all of the Google home products
You can speak more naturally to them, whereas the Amazon products
You need to just hit those keywords for a bill to
trigger the command that you're trying to make it do.
"Hey Google, show me a video on YouTube about Overwatch."
"Alright, playing on YouTube about Overwatch videos from YouTube on office TV."
And because of that difference, I find it easier and just more enjoyable
to control my media using Google Home products.
The one big advantage with this though
And this probably won't apply to most people,
is that if you are an Audiobook user or just more particularly Audible, this thing can do
like, text-to-speech and it can just read out stories, which is super cool. It's so simple
I feel like this is something that Google Home's should be able to do,
but it doesn't. I use Audible and I like Audiobooks, so... yeah
The next thing I want to talk about is using these devices as an assistant
So either a home assistant, or a work assistant
or any kind of like voice operated assistant, and both of them are pretty good
Um, but the winner to me is the Google Home product.
This thing has just better connectivity for what I use
So everyone's gonna be different. I use a lot of Google services
Particularly Google Calendar, and this is excellent for that.
"Hey Google, what's my calendar like tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow, there are three things on your calendar.
The first one is at 12:30 a.m., and its title is 'Busy Stuff One'"
Google Home can distinguish between different voices
So if you have one device in a household
with different people in it, they can ask it with their own voice and
it'll react accordingly so if you have a different calendar from your wife, or your family members
It'll just,
read your calendar out to you and tell you your schedule
and same thing with like, making calls so if you say
or if I said, "Hey Google, call my mom," it would call my mom
But if my wife said the same thing, "call my mom,"
it would call her mom, because our voices are different.
"Calling Mom, mobile."
Now the Amazon Echo Dot is actually connected to even more services
In particular, Microsoft Outlook
So if you're an Outlook user, you got to go with this thing
It doesn't even work on the Google Home products. When it comes to asking it questions
And this is something that I don't use very frequently
I mean, it's very cool to kind of like trivial time,
but it's not something that I use regularly, Google Home crushes Echo
It's just not even close
I want to say it's like 1 to 10 in terms of the number of questions
that are answered. It's just so much more...
Um,
robust in terms of its knowledge base and
a large part of that comes from the data collection
Google has been collecting data forever and I feel like it'll be really hard for
Amazon to ever catch up in that regard.
"Hey Google, do you like Siri?"
"You know Siri? What a small world. Hope she's doing well."
Now the one assistant type feature that Amazon is just amazing at is...
shopping because of Amazon's e-commerce power. Right now
It's pretty good like if you need to refill something
You can just request it, and it shows up in your Amazon cart
But I think the future of Amazon's Echo products are going to revolve
entirely around the whole e-commerce thing and
that could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it
But I really do think that's the future of Amazon.
Now, in terms of using these products as home automation
I got to be completely honest.
I don't love home automation right now, because I live in a relatively small condo
It's like a small space. Home automation isn't that important to me
There's like one large living space.
All the cool stuff that you can do with home automated stuff
just is less appealing in such a small space, but I recently got a house
And I've been looking between these two to kind of see
which will be better from home automation, and surprisingly even though
This is called Google home
The Alexa products or the Echo products are just so much better
Just, they're able to connect to way more home automation stuff,
so if that's your jam, if you're looking for home automation
The Echo products are the way to go, but you can't go wrong with either of them
They're both really inexpensive if you're looking for something
that's aesthetically pleasing, the Google Home Mini looks nice,
and it's better at answering questions, making phone calls
It's just not great as an audio controller because it lacks connectivity
But the Amazon Echo Dot has a line out, so it might be a little bit cheaper, and better
For music controls, and it's gonna have better home automation connectivity
So everything I've talked about so far
is pertinent to right now, in late 2017 and
All it takes is Google or Amazon to just tweak
a little bit of their software and these things suddenly have new
functionality and new features, and you don't have to buy new hardware, right?
This is always gonna just have a speaker and a mic and
A power source and it can do all of the stuff that we've talked about
and it can do any future things that Google wants
these things to do like, doesn't do very much processing
So yeah, I mean these are so inexpensive, 50 bucks
You can definitely get into the game of whole home automation
or just smart stuff, and check it out!
Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video!
Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it! See you guys next time!