What's happening YouTube, Josh Teder here for 6 Months Later and today
we'll be taking a look at the Google Home Mini. Now we've already done a first
impressions video of the Google Home Mini six months ago, so this video will
focus on the device after six months of use. Google first unveiled the Google
Home Mini in the fall of 2017 to compete head-to-head with the Amazon Echo Dot, a
$40.00 mini speaker that allows you to interact with Alexa, Amazon's smart
assistant. The Echo Dot was a game changer because of its price point, it
allowed people to have multiple Alexa enabled devices and place them in all
different types of rooms in their homes. This as well as the fact that Amazon was
first to market with their original Echo device, helped Amazon just dominate the
smart speaker space for years. Even today, they still hold a 52% market share,
according to estimates by the Loup Group, while Google currently holds a 32%
market share, which is thanks in part to this little guy, the Google Home Mini. The
Google Home Mini is a small and mighty speaker that is powered by the Google
Assistant. The Google Assistant is the entire reason why this device is so
great, as with all other Google Home devices. Now here at 6 Months Later we
do these product reviews after six months because you really can't tell
just within a few weeks of using a device if it is going to significantly
impact your day-to-day living or routines, and when it comes to the Google
Home Mini, I can say without a doubt it has significantly impacted my day-to-day
routines after six months of use and it's impacted them for the better.
Setting up the Google Home Mini is a breeze as with every other Google home
device. You simply set up the device using the Google Home app, which is
available to download for iOS or Android. The app will take you step-by-step
through the setup process which takes less than five minutes and then you are
good to go and you can start using your Google Home
Mini. There is just so much you can do with a Google Home Mini as well as with
other Google Home devices thanks to the Google Assistant. You can ask your Google
Home Mini all sorts of questions like who is Elon Musk. Me: "Who is Elon Musk?" Google Home Mini "According
to Wikipedia, Elon Reeve musk is a South African born, American business magnate
investor and engineer." Or tell it phrases like these violent delights have violent
ends. Google Home Mini: "The maze wasn't meant for you. Just kidding,
mazes are fun for everyone." You can use your Google Home Mini to set alarms and
reminders, get the news, ask about your commute to work, make phone calls, control
your smart home devices, like your lights or your thermostat. Google Home Mini: "You got it, turning
off four lights." and if you have a Chromecast TV and a newer TV that
supports HDMI CEC, you can even have your Google Home Mini turn on and off your
television. Me: "Turn on the TV." Me: Play Google Home six months later review on YouTube,
on chromecast TV." Now my personal favorite feature of the Google Home
devices, including the Google Home Mini, is music and media playback. You can hook
up a lot of your streaming service accounts to your Google Home Mini, such
as Spotify, Google Play Music, Netflix, Pandora, and of course YouTube, and many
other services. Now I actually went with Google Play
Music for my music subscription service with all of my Google Home devices
simply because Google bundled the music service with no ads on YouTube. I
actually really like that service because you're paying the $9.99 you
would for something like Spotify but then you're also getting no ads on
YouTube, which if you're watching this, you're obviously watching it on YouTube
and if you don't want ads on YouTube, that's a pretty great bundle of services
right there. So I really enjoy using that. If you don't have any
streaming services, typically when you buy a lot of these devices there's a free
trial that comes with it, especially if you buy a Google Home device during the
holidays. Google has run a lot of different promotions when you buy this
device, so even Spotify I think had a promotion last Christmas, so I do
recommend checking out a music streaming service if you don't already subscribe
to one and you bought one of these devices, because it just makes listening
to music so much better on these devices. I've used the Google Play Music service
so much that what will happen now is it already learned like all of my habits.
I'll tell it to play one song and then when it's almost finished playing that
song, I'll think of another song in my head I want it to play and before I can
even ask it to play the song I'm thinking of, it'll already just start
playing it. It's weird, it's like it read my mind and the reason for that is, if
you use the service enough the algorithms are going to start figuring
out the patterns of music that you like to listen to depending on time of day,
what day it is, what season it is, and then it can already kind of determine
what type of music you're going to want to listen to next based on what you've
asked it to play. And the amount of times it's actually done this and played the
song I was thinking of in my head is crazy. These algorithms that companies
like Spotify and Google usee for their music streaming services make using the
Google Home devices just so much better for music streaming. The speaker itself
is decent for its price range, but don't buy this and expect great sound to come
out of it. Podcasts sound decent, but actual music can be hit or miss
depending on how the song was mixed and how much bass there is. Unfortunately, you
just don't get that much bass coming out of the Google Home Mini. The microphone
on the Mini is quite good and can pick up your voice over ambient sounds like
rain, a shower running etc. The design of the Google Home Mini is also pretty nice
aesthetically. I think it looks better than the Amazon Echo Dot. Google's
devices overall just look more inviting than Amazon's.
Amazon's look a little to space-age for my taste. I also love that the Google
Home Mini comes in three colors: chalk, charcoal, and coral. So no matter what
room you plan to put it in, there should be a Google Home Mini color that matches.
Now unfortunately for some out there, Google decided not to put a 3.5
audio-out jack on the Google Home Mini like Amazon did with the Echo Dot. Now
this doesn't mean that you can't listen to music through the Google Assistant on
speakers you already own that have an audio input jack. All you have to do is
just simply get a Google Chromecast Audio, plug it into the speakers you
already own, and then cast music to it from your Google Home Mini. You can also
pair the Google Home Mini to another speaker via Bluetooth. For more
information on how to do that, check out the quick tutorial we did in the video
description below or just click on the card in the video. Now the way you
interact with the Google Home Mini is mainly with your voice though there are
a few physical controls with the Mini. You can tap each side of the device to
increase or decrease the volume. Tap and hold to play or pause media, and there is
also a mute switch on the back of the device, and a USBC cable you can use for
power. Google added some nice clips along with the power cable for cable
management, and they work great. Now I know a lot of people stick their Google
Home Minis and all sorts of different types of rooms around their house and
for me one of my favorite features of the Google Home devices is music
playback, so I own a lot more Google Homes and Google Home Maxes than I do
Google Home Minis. So I was kind of at a loss when I got my Google Home Mini,
to figure out exactly where I was going to put it. I ended up putting mine in the
bathroom so I could listen to music in the shower and play the news when I'm
getting ready in the morning. I was a bit worried with how the humidity would
affect the performance of the speaker, but I'm happy to say that I haven't had
any issues with it at all and I use my Google home Mini in the bathroom all the
time. Now overall, after six months of use I haven't had any issues with my Google
Home Mini speaker. It's just been this little great small and mighty speaker, as
advertised, and it's a great speaker if you just want the Google Assistant
somewhere in your home and you don't care about the music quality for music
playback. Now if you're going to listen to a lot of music on a Google Home
device, I'd of course steer you towards the Google Home Max if you want to spend
$400 for great sounding music. Or I'd steer you towards the Google Home if you
can't quite swing the Max's price. We have videos on both of these devices if
you would like to learn more about them, but if you don't care about the lower
performance in audio quality of the Google Home Mini, then I think the
Mini is a great buy that you can't go wrong with. Well that's it for our
6 Months Later review of the Google Home Mini. If you like this video, please give
us a thumbs up on the video and subscribe to the channel if you'd like
to see more Google Home videos like this one. If you're new to the Google hHme
family, or want to brush up on all of the features the Google Assistant now
supports, be sure and check out our Google Home features update videos
playlist here, in this video and as well in the description below. Well, until next
time, thanks again so much for watching. I'm Josh Teder for 6 Months Later.