Gadgetory

okay Google let's talk about your new smart speaker the Google home mini it packs everything that people liked about the original Google home into a much smaller much more affordable package it isn't as loud but it's just as smart and it only costs 50 bucks that's the same price and the same pitch as its rival the Amazon echo dot that product was and still is a smash success for Amazon and Google wants in on the action hard to blame them so how did the two compare well as you might expect they have a lot in common they can both stream music they can both answer random questions and tell bad jokes they can turn your smart home devices on and off and a whole lot more they both keep learning new tricks too which makes it fun to own one to set itself apart the home mini sports a distinctive fabric top design that comes in your choice of three colors it's a clean simple build the only physical button is a switch in the back that meets the microphone though you can tap the top to play and pause tap and hold to wake up the assistant or tap the sides to adjust the volume its fancier looking than the dot but I think there might be some style over substance here for instance it can't really pick the thing up without accidentally toggling those finicky volume controls and those white indicator lights are a little hard to see from across the room especially on this chalk colored model the dot is much easier to see at a distance for that reason I recommend going with the darker gray charcoal color if you're thinking of buying like the speaker that came before it the home mini can also distinguish between different voices which lets the speaker tailor custom responses for different family members Alexis still can't do that the whole minis other edge over the dock is that it offers noticeably better sound quality just listen to them both tell a joke when is it door not a door when it's ajar did you hear about the guy thrown in jail for refusing to take a nap he was resisting arrest of course if you really care about sound quality then you'll probably want to hook this thing up with a stronger set of speakers that's an option but only if those speakers are hooked up with a chromecast Audio with the echo dot you can connect with existing speakers directly via aux cable or Bluetooth no extra gizmos necessary that's a much much better approach and a smarter ones since connecting with external speakers is such a common use case here I predict that lots of people are going to end up choosing the dot over the home many of this holiday season for that exact reason and I can't really say that I blame them in the end if you prefer the Google assistant / Alexa and there are plenty of reasons why you might then don't hesitate to give the Google home Mini a shot it's a low cost low risk way to take Google's mastery of machine learning for a test drive and a great way to expand the Google assistants footprint in your home that said the mini isn't a silver bullet and it doesn't distinguish itself enough to establish Google's unique vision for the artificially intelligent living space if anything it feels like a concession that Amazon got there first