Google home mini charcoal7/13/2023 ![]() This mini speaker can get fairly loud, but there’s no bass in the delivery.Fine, but quirky and certainly not indespensible. But if you’re looking for something that will faithfully reproduce your favorite music, this isn’t the best solution out there. It’s more than enough if you’re simply using it to get a glimpse at your calendar, hear the latest news or phone a friend with its free voice calling (available now in US, coming later in the UK). When in this grouping, the Home Mini stood out as the star of the highs, pushing the vocals through extra hard when the larger Home was more focused on the mids.īut, on its own, the Google Home Mini shouldn’t be used as much more than a desk buddy. ![]() In my studio apartment, I grouped together a Google Home, a Chromecast Audio-connected soundbar and the Google Home Mini to build a surround-sound setup. Speaking of Cast, Google’s latest speaker works best within a crowd of other Cast-enabled devices. Either give the speaker a shout for some tunes, being as specific or vague as you’d like, or just hit the Cast button near the top to give your phone free reign to push its audio straight to the Home Mini. Once your smartphone is set up with the Home Mini, it’s simple to begin listening. If you want to solely use the Home Mini as a set of Bluetooth speakers, the Google Home app offers up pairing settings, though they are rather buried within the app. The Home Mini is also a smart home hub in that it can also integrate with Internet of Things (IoT) devices from the likes of TP-Link, Philips Hue, Wemo and more.īut putting aside its smart capabilities for a moment, the Home Mini boasts an impressive set of features that are available right out of the box for those who can’t be bothered to talk to their speaker or connect it with extraneous services.Ĭonnecting is a breeze through the Google Home app and is quick to teach you a thing or two about the Home Mini, like how it works and resources that provide instant access to a wide variety of free audio content. It can send a request to pull up a YouTube video over to your Chromecast to effortlessly begin viewing. You can place a call for free in the US, a feature that's also recently launched in the UK, as well as stream music through an assortment of music apps like Pandora, Spotify, YouTube Music, iHeartRadio and more. In terms of what the Home Mini can take control of, the list goes on. ![]() Whether shouting from across the room or speaking gently 10 feet away, the Home Mini yielded similarly great results. The Google Home Mini is the most affordable Google Assistant-enabled speaker available and thankfully, its voice recognition doesn’t suffer from the reduction in size and price. ![]() And lastly, whenever you navigate with your voice or touch, the Home Mini will illuminate four LEDs on its top to show that your action has been registered. Placing a finger on the left and right sides of the speaker lowers and raises the volumes, as you might expect. Google had plans to allow for the Assistant to be summoned by tapping and holding on the middle, but has since permanently (via: 9to5Google (opens in new tab)) disabled the feature due to privacy concerns. For example, tapping the top pauses and resumes play. The palm-sized Home Mini gives off a look that its fabric mesh is just for looks, but it’s actually conductive to your touch in a few areas. Also, if you like to compare tech to food, this device looks like a macaron. As such, you’ll find the fabric texture on the top of this device with the matte plastic on the bottom half. The Google Home Mini looks as if Google turned the Home upside down, then smushed it down to size. The microphone toggle switch (Image credit: TechRadar) Design
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