Description
Introducing Google Home Mini
Get hands-free help in any room with Google Home Mini. Its powered by the Google Assistant. You can ask it questions. Tell it to do things. Its your own personal Google. Use your voice to quickly find information about the weather, news, sports and more. Get help with things like your schedule, commute, travel information and more. Control your favourite music, movies and shows, using only your voice.
Use your voice to control your compatible lights, thermostats and more. Get personalized responses for everyone at home with voice recognition. Google Home Mini comes in two unique colors, Chalk and Charcoal. Select the right color that matches your room and personal style.
Google Home Mini: Design
Its immediately obvious that design is a lot more important to Google than it is to Amazon. While the Amazon Echo Dot is entirely utilitarian, with visible grilles, buttons and microphones, the Google Home Mini makes a decent stab at looking nice.
There are no hard edges what you get is a large Babybel wrapped in various coloured fabrics. The only thing giving it away as a gadget is the microUSB cable it needs for power, and the LEDs that peek through the fabric at the top when the device is active.
Tucked away at the back is a small slider, which mutes the microphone. Its a bit fiddly, though, and given its at the back of the device, I wish it had been just a button instead of a slider.
It may not look like it, but despite the fabric finish, the Google Home Mini has touch-sensitive controls. You tap the left of the device to turn the volume down; the right to turn the volume up.
The top of the device is supposed to be touch-sensitive, too, but that doesnt work any more. Apparently a fault with the sensor tricked some units into thinking they were being touched when they werent, leading to those devices permanently listening for commands. Thats terrible for privacy, and as a result Google has permanently disabled the touch-sensitive top.
That means the only physical controls are volume, and youll have to rely on your voice to pause or play or fast forward music. Not ideal.
Google Home Mini Features
The Google Home Mini can do pretty much everything the big Google Home can do. You can, of course, just treat it as a Bluetooth speaker and use it to play songs from your phone, but that wouldnt be making the most of its potential.
It runs on Google Assistant, and you can use your voice to command it to do a whole lot of things. The most basic commands include setting alarms, making shopping lists and getting weather reports. It gets more interesting when you factor in smart home components, such asPhilips Hue lightbulbsandHive thermostats. It can also play music from a number of big-name services, such as Google Play Music, Spotify and TuneIn.
There are various advantages and disadvantages to Google Assistant compared to Alexa, but basically it comes down to this: Google is a bit smarter, but Alexa has better hardware support.
For basic searches, Google pulls data from its own search engine, while Alexa uses Bing. Googles voice input is also more contextual and naturally conversational, while sometimes with Alexa it seems like you need specific commands to get what you want.
However, third-party support is a lot better for Alexa. Take Sonos, for instance the biggest name in multiroom has chosen to lean heavily on Alexa. You can use Alexa to control old Sonos speakers, while the newSonos Oneactually has Alexa built into it. Meanwhile, Google Assistant wont be appearing on that speaker until sometime next year.
Alexa also has the advantage of letting you choose from four trigger words. You cant do that with Google Home, which is a shame because I find it very unnatural having to say OK Google or Hey Google.
One unique trait of Google Assistant is that it works with Googles existing Chromecast ecosystem, so you can cast music to compatible speakers. The Chromecast element also lets you set up a multi-room system if you buy multiple Home or Home Mini devices, you can use them to play the same music through
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