My feelings going into this video are no secret. I'm on the record and more than once as thinking that
"smart speakers" like the Amazon echo and Google home are
kinda cool and with the potential to be awesome in the future.
But right now, not useful enough to warrant their three digit price tags.
But what if 50 bucks got you all the same functionality?
Introducing the Google Home Mini: as smart as the original, but at just thirty eight point five percent of the cost.
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Design wise, the Google Home Mini nails it. It's smaller than a donut, weighs only a hundred and seventy grams -
that's 5.99 seven ounces - and comes in three distinct colors.
Unlike its rival the Amazon Echo Dot,
Mini has no visible buttons, relying instead on a touch sensitive fabric top to adjust the volume and
craftily stealthed indicator lights for visual feedback.
Now, originally you could tap the middle to play and pause,
and to hail the assistant without using your voice, but that functionality has actually since been disabled.
Possibly forever, according to a Google statement, since some kind of bug was causing the Mini to record audio
without you asking. That means physically, there's really not much to it anymore.
There's a hardware switch for disabling the Mini's microphones
outright when you want some definite privacy and then next to it, a port for plugging in the power cable.
Which is USB Micro-B instead of C.
What!?
I mean given you get a free Mini with the purchase of a Pixel 2 phone,
it would be nice if the two products had interchangeable power cables.
Maybe we'll get that on the next-gen.
On the subject of the power cable,
no, the Home Mini is not wireless. Though, for some things that would be kind of nice.
Even if the battery life sucked, being able to cart it over to the shower, or
put it on the workbench next to you in the garage would be kind of killer.
With the flipside being that it could easily get lost if the battery died between a couch cushion,
and, you know, Google's got to get that money,
so they would probably much rather you carry your phone around with you, and then fill your house up with these things, anyhow.
Speaking of, do I need to already have a full sized Google Home for the Mini to work?
And, what's the difference between the two anyway?
As with the Amazon Echo, and the Echo Dot, the only difference is the size and the price.
Oh, right, and also the audio quality.
So how bad is that speaker?
Well, the Mini's single 40 millimeter driver emits equally in all directions, and, actually,
my first impressions, anyway,
is that the speaker isn't that bad. The assistant's voice in particular is full-bodied and clear. And as for music?
There are only a handful of phones that I've used with what I would call
"acceptable speakers". Many of them are even
discomfort inducing at normal listening volumes for me.
But this is quite a bit better than that. The quality is more on par with, or even exceeding what you might expect from a
laptop, and it's surprisingly loud,
so you could use it instead of your Bluetooth speaker. That is to say as long as you have a power plug nearby.
And the experience gets even better when you link a few of these bad boys
along with any other Google home or
Chromecast enabled devices in a multi speaker setup now compared to my solo set up at home
It doesn't sound as good
but it's really cost-effective and the voice controls let you adjust the volume of the entire group or
individuals without using an app even if you want to turn down the mini that you aren't directly speaking to
With all that said I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to music on these
Especially just one of them, but I don't think Google wants you to do that anyway. That's what the
$400 home max is for we're hoping to review that one shortly to evaluate its superior auditory experience
Because we don't have hands-on with it yet
I can't draw a conclusion
But I will say that it would have to be pretty impressive because sound from the mini can actually be piped through third-party
speakers
Provided that big asterisk here. They are chromecast enabled or you have a chromecast Audio dongle for them because
unlike the echo dot but like the pixel to the
Mini does not have a three-and-a-half millimeter audio out Jack so that you could hardline at the old fashioned way
This appears to be a clear cost-saving issue and is one of our biggest knocks against this product
But enough about the hardware let's talk about the software experience
Along with the visting home features like using it as a voice remote for your TV, which is so?
Super cool. By the way the mini is also rolling out some new tricks
Broadcast is an upcoming feature that lets you send messages throughout the house in the assistance voice
"annoying eagle is returning to nest I repeat annoying eagle is returning to nest", so that's pretty cool and
Voice match lets mini know who it's talking to. "Okay Google, tell me about my day. Good morning Alex,
It will take you 45 minutes to get to work", so multiple users can link their accounts and commands like
Call mom will actually call your mom and not your roommates mom
unless
That's what you were going for which brings us to the best new ish feature
free
Non-emergency calling within the US and Canada which came out about a month ago, you can call any local business or any contact
that's in your phone and
The thing that's actually
New new is that now you can actually link your number to it so that phone calls
Coming from the Google home will look like they are coming from your phone
And it's smart so you can speak to it naturally
Some stuff that seems pretty obvious to me doesn't work yet like
returning your last missed call
But other things that we tried worked surprisingly well like redialing the last number that you called or
Hey
Google, call the closest open pizza place, "calling Pizza Hut on 56 Avenue in Surrey", and this kind of functionality
Also syncs with your phone like if you ask Mini how to get to the aforementioned pizza place
It'll beam it over to your handheld device, and it works the other way, too
You can browse for recipes on your phone
And then send the one that you want over to the assistant with okay Google start cooking. Like anything though
It's not a perfect product, and we do have some complaints
Google home still a year later, can't send a text message
"Sorry, I can't send text yet"
probably because they don't have enough confidence in its voice recognition to
send out messages from a device that you can't preview them on yet, and
This one is even more relevant to me: It doesn't sync with G-Suite
Google's enterprise level product. So since my entire life is basically work
And I use my corporate email account for everything
This effectively means I can't use it for my calendar at all
So for you though, is this the smart speaker to get?
I still need that work integration
but for everyone else, man,
since echo still isn't available in Canada at 50 bucks, I
Really, don't see what you have to lose. This is a great place to start if you want to join the smart speaker revolution.
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