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 kind of 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 38.5
of the cost and speaking of smart only the smartest
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design wise the google home mini nails it it's smaller than a donut weighs only
170 grams that's 5.997 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
stealth indicator lights for visual feedback
now originally you could tap the middle
to play and pause doesn't work 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 flip side being that it could easily get lost if the battery died between a
couch cushion and you know google's gotta 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-size
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 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 um 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 sonos setup 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 2 the mini does not have a three and a
half millimeter audio out jack so that you could hardline it 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 existing 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
assistant's voice annoying eagle is returning to nest i repeat annoying
eagle as returning to nest so that's pretty cool
and voice match lets minnie 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 we'll actually call your mom and not your roommate's mom
unless that's what you were going for which
brings us to the best new ish feature
free non-emergency calling within the u.s 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 56th avenue in
surrey and this kind of functionality also syncs with your phone like if you ask
minnie 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 ok 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 texts 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
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tech tips in the how did you hear about us section we'll have that linked below
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