The Google Nest Mini is one of the most important products that Google makes.
It's the most accessible ambient computing product in Google's lineup. As
we continue to connect more and more of our devices to the Internet, the Nest
Mini is the perfect smart speaker for playing music and media, controlling your
smart home devices, and answering general queries and helping you with everyday
tasks. In the six months I've had our Nest Mini, I've enjoyed using this
device and overall I think it's a worthy successor to the Google Home Mini. So
let's go ahead and dive into some of the main features of this device, the setup
experience, reliability, downsides, and then ultimately if I recommend getting a
Nest Mini. First up, let's talk about one of the big three features of the Nest
Mini, which is playing music and media. The Nest Mini's design lends itself to be
a pretty great smart speaker for areas in your home that you don't really care
about sound quality. For a $49 US dollar speaker that you can usually get
for less than that, it actually sounds pretty good and it does sound better
than the Google Home Mini and that's likely due to the new 40 millimeter
driver that is found in the Nest Mini. Now here's a sound comparison between
the Nest Mini and some other Google speakers.
One of the main ways to play music on the Nest Mini is to use the Google
Assistant, Google's smart assistant that you use by saying a trigger word which
we're not going to say in this video but anytime we would use a trigger word
you're going to see the text below that you see right now. You say that ask a
question and then the Google Assistant will give you an answer so if you want
to play music on the Nest Mini using the Google Assistant, you can play music from
Spotify, YouTube Music, Pandora iHeartRadio, Deezer, Google Podcasts, and
TuneIn. There's no Apple Music integration with the Google Assistant on
the Nest Mini, so if you have an Android phone and you use Apple Music all you
have to do is actually just cast your device's audio to the Nest Mini and
it'll work over Google's Chromecast now if you have an iPhone unfortunately
that option to use the cast system is not available to you, but the Nest Mini
does support bluetooth pairing so you can simply stream your music to the Nest
Mini over Bluetooth. all you have to do is tell Google to enable bluetooth
pairing mode...Google: "Sure, to connect, open Bluetooth settings and look for the
device called Josh's bathroom speaker." Take out your phone and open up
Bluetooth settings and then pair it with the Nest Mini, you'll then be able to play
whatever you want on your Nest Mini over the Bluetooth connection. Now when you're
playing any media on the nest mini you have a couple of options when it comes
to controlling that media on the device itself. You could of course use your
voice to play, pause, skip, increase or decrease the volume, or you could use the
touch controls on the device itself. When you place your hand near a Nest Mini
when media is playing the volume LEDs will illuminate tap the volume buttons.
To raise or lower the volume to play or pause the media that you're
listening to, tap the top part of the speaker once. Now there's one more button
on the Nest Mini to talk about and that's the mute switch at the back of
the device. Unlike other smart speakers out there it's a physical switch so when
you mute the Nest Mini, the connection to the microphone is physically
disconnected, meaning there's no way to turn on the mics on the Nest Mini if it
has been muted. You can still cast music and media to a muted Nest Mini
and the touch controls will still work. Alright now back to the music features
and the last feature I want to mention which I use a lot is being able to
include the Nest Mini in a Google cast speaker group. In the Google home app you
can group your Google speakers together to create a speaker group for me I keep
my Nest Mini in the bathroom so I can listen to the news when I'm getting
ready in the morning or listen to music when I'm in the shower, but I also
include my Nest Mini in a speaker group called Josh's bedroom speakers, so when
I'm moving about my room as well as my bathroom, typically like on weekends when
I'm doing my weekend cleaning, I can listen to music and podcasts throughout
the entire space which is great. Moving on the second major thing that I
use my nest mini for is controlling the smart devices in my home the Maine smart
devices I have are my thermostat smart lightbulbs and smart plugs the Google
assistant on the nest mini can interact with all the various smart home products
I have and control them so I can ask my nest mini to turn down the thermostat
turn on a light or start a routine that has various actions built in from a
single trigger phase like good morning or bedtime etc routines can be set up in
the main page on the Google home app and if you're curious about smart homes and
want to learn more about how to build one we did a video on that topic so I'll
make sure to add a card here in this video as well as add a link to it in the
video description below the last main thing I use the Nesta mony
for is asking the Google assistant for information or help with household tasks
like setting timers and reminders now I'm not going to get into everything the
Google assistant can do in this video we actually did another video on that exact
topic so if you're interested in learning more about the Google assistant
I'll leave a link to that video here in the video card as well as I'll leave a
link to it in the video description below so what are some things that I
like to ask the Google assistant to do for me
well here are a couple of examples I like to ask it to play the news play the
news here's the latest news from NPR news now at 6:00 p.m. today
live from NPR news I'm Jack spear what is the weather like today in Raleigh
tonight it's predicted to be 59 degrees with rain right now it's 58 degrees with
showers there is currently a flash flood watch in effect I'll also ask it all
sorts of random things like how do I know when I need to water my
spider-plant on the website wikiHow dot-com
they say if the top one inch or so of soil is dry it's time to water your
spider plant watering moderately or once per week during the first year should be
sufficient to keep the soil consistently moist but not overly wet or when was the
bidet invented 17th century here's a summary from the website en dot
Wikipedia org the bidet appears to have been an invention of French furniture
makers in the late 17th century you can usually ask it anything you'd
normally type into a Google search bar and it'll give you an answer it's also
really useful for tasks like spelling out words how do you spell euphemism
euphemism is spelled e uph e em I SM defined spindrift here's the definition
of spindrift spray blown from the crests of waves by
the wind what's another word for telemetry on the website inter Glatt com
they say measurement measuring measure mensuration and it'll even help you
pronounce words besides getting information from Google I'll also ask
the assistant to help me with everyday tasks like setting a reminder for a
specific time taking a note or setting a timer remind me to take out the trash in
two hours alright I'll remind you at 9:10 p.m. set a timer for 18 minutes 18
minutes starting now take a note sure what's the note don't
forget to talk about the nest mini settings in the Google home app okay
saving your note by the way you can check your notes any time just ask what
are my notes probably one of the things I'll ask it the most especially when I'm
in the shower is what time is it it's 7 11 p.m. say goodbye to running
late for zoom meeting because yet took too long in the shower because you
didn't know what time it was moving on those are the main features
that I use my nest mini for now let's take a look at the setup experience as
well as I'll take you through some of my favorite settings that you can enable
with the nest mini settings on the Google home app which can be downloaded
from the Google Play Store on Android and the App Store for iOS devices
setting up the nest mini is quite simple and takes only a minute or two the app
guides you through all of the steps you need to take in order to set it up and
train the Google assistant to recognize your voice if this is your very first
google assistant product the Google home app is the app that you'll use to
control a variety of google mess devices as well as other devices like smart
plugs or lights that connect to your Google assistant when you click on your
nest mini device in the app it'll bring you to the main page where you can
adjust the volume of media that's currently playing on your device as well
as a shortcut for EQ settings for the nest mini and then up at the top right
hand corner there's a gear icon that will take you to the main settings for
the device the main settings houses a lot of important features that can make
the experience using a nest mini even better and I'll take you through some of
my favorite ones that I found to be quite useful over the past six months
one setting I always make sure to change is the volume for alarms and timers
moving on down you'll see the section for speaker groups adjusting the speaker
groups and being able to see what groups of my nest mini is currently in is
something that I utilize quite a bit I've got several speaker groups in my
home and will sometimes switch which device I want to put where so I end up
changing the room for the devices as well as the speaker groups quite often
further on down you'll see that I've enabled my nest mini in the preview
program which will give my many new features first before they're rolled out
to a wider audience though it's not all upside sometimes the software can be a
bit buggy from time to time night mode is another feature that I use on every
Google assistant device I own it reduces the response volume from the Google
assistant at night as well as lowers the brightness of the leds on top of the
nest mini you can set different times and days for when you want night mode to
be enabled you can also turn on do not disturb for one night mode
enabled and do not disturb will block out sounds from reminders broadcast
messages and other notifications on the device do note though it will not block
out sounds from alarms or timers lower volume when listening is another really
useful feature for making sure that the Google assistant can hear you over the
media plane this feature will lower the volume of anything playing on your
speaker so the assistant can hear you one new software update that Google
pushed out to the nest many in our six months of testing it was the ability to
adjust the responsiveness of the Wake word which is super useful if you put
your Nesta mony behind an object or in the bathroom and it's trying to hear you
over the noise of the shower now the last thing I'll mention is a feature
that I actually talked about earlier in this video where the nest minis LEDs
will turn on when you wave your hand over it and media is plain that feature
can be enabled from this page overall in the past six months I've enjoyed using
the Google Nest Mini and I haven't run into any issues with the device I think
it's a solid improvement over the original Google home Mini and I like
that Google used recycled materials in their construction of the device and one
other minor improvement that they made was to the clips for cord management
they're much better on the nest Mini the only thing I don't like about the nest
emoni is the circular plug that Google uses with it it's fine if you're just
plugging the device into the wall but if you're trying to plug it into a power
strip that is already pretty full it can be kind of a pain the Google Nesta Mini
retails for forty nine US dollars but it often goes on sale for less than that
you can purchase one on the Google store in various colors and at other retailers
if you liked this video and found it helpful make sure you hit that thumbs up
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related videos and six months later reviews like this one for 6 Months
Later I'm Josh Teder, thanks for watching.