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In general, Google Assistant is better at interpreting loose, natural-language queries than Alexa is. Alexa gets more powerful when you include its library of third-party skills, but you often need to know the specific wording to make things work. For example, if I ask Google Assistant, "Where is Blade Runner 2049 playing near me?" it will give me movie showtimes, automatically. For Alexa, you have to specifically "Ask Fandango." I can ask Google Assistant directly for a fried chicken recipe; with Alexa, you need to remember to enable the Allrecipes skill. That said, Alexa's recipes then come from Allrecipes, a reliable source; Google's came from some site I'd never heard of.
To get started, fire up the Google Home app, then tap the “Devices” icon in the upper right corner. And get a daily digest of news, geek trivia, and our feature articles.
Design and Set Up
Having audio flow through your entire house is super cool. If you already have a handful of Google Homes spread throughout the house, it’s easy to do—a couple of toggles, and you’ll be ready to roll. We compare Google's two tiny speakers in our Google Nest Mini vs Google Home Mini comparison piece to get you up to speed with all the news features. And while Google's third-party "actions" are catching up to Alexa's, Alexa is still ahead when it comes to support for third-party services.
This device’s specialty, aside from being oh-so smart, is mainly to reward those who are already within Google’s Cast-enabled walled garden with a cheap, new device. Once your smartphone is set up with the Home Mini, it’s simple to begin listening. 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. We're seeing more Alexa-enabled speakers than Google-enabled speakers coming down the pike in the next few months, and Alexa has maintained its lead in third-party services. Some speakers, like the upcoming Sonos One, support both. To use your Google Home Mini as a TV speaker, you first have to connect the device to your TV.
Ports and Connectors
The Home Mini is also a smart home hub in that it can also integrate with Internet of Things devices from the likes of TP-Link, Philips Hue, Wemo and more. Vocals and the like chime through clearly, but come in at the expense of, well, everything else. This isn’t a problem if you have other speakers picking up the slack, but by itself, the Home Mini just isn’t mighty enough. PCMag.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering lab-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services. Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology. Speaking of Cast, Google’s latest speaker works best within a crowd of other Cast-enabled devices.
Maker.pro needs to review the security of your connection before proceeding. When using the Chrome cast plug in your Google Home, Mini can turn your TV on or off. Remember to label your device, and after the linking is completed, you are done. Select the device that you want to link with your Google Home Mini and follow all other given instructions.
Ports & Connectors
The soundstage – despite being pitched as 360-degrees – falls a little flat. While skilled in pulling up the most obscure music you can think up from a fairly wide variety of streaming services, the Mini has a difficult time doing them justice because of this speaker’s diminutive profile. You plug the Mini into the wall and set it up through the Google Home app on Android or iOS. Then, when you say "Hey Google," four soft LEDs light up in the middle of the speaker, and Google Assistant answers. The app is very similar to the Alexa app (and, like the Alexa app, it buries many of its options and third-party services under a hidden menu). Building a house-wide audio system used to be an expensive, complicated process requiring professional installation and pricey equipment.
This will allow Google Home Mini to either play streaming content or, in reverse, be used as the audio output. There are additional functionalities such as volume control without the additional Chromecast player plugin. This smart speaker includes a wide range of functionality in homes, but our focus in this review will be mainly on how it can be used as the audio output device for your TV, whether the TV is smart or not. There’s certainly an aspect of subjectivity in judging sound quality, but most would agree that what the Home Mini is capable of isn’t a whole lot.
Doesn't Play Well With Others
At arm's length, it can be up to 10db louder than the weak little Dot, with a much rounder sound that at least it suggests bass. The Google Assistant's voice sounds considerably more natural and human than Alexa's does. That said, this is still a secondary speaker; if you want to kick back and enjoy music, you need to get the larger Google Home. Google Assistant helps you to search the web, play or pause music, dim smart lighting, and even control your TV. It can also take charge of your TV's audio, and this begs the question of How to use the Google Home Mini as a TV Speaker and plenty more besides.
Smart devices can do way more when you put them together than they can alone, with probably the most popular project being the creation of a whole-house audio system. There's never been a better time to flood your house with music, thanks to new Google speakers. 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.
He’s been published in print magazines and quoted as a smartphone expert in the New York Times. Cameron Summerson is ex-Editor-in-Chief ofReview Geekand served as an Editorial Advisor for How-To Geek and LifeSavvy. 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. In terms of what the Home Mini can take control of, the list goes on. 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. It can send a request to pull up a YouTube video over to your Chromecast to effortlessly begin viewing.
If the smart TV has come with Chromecast as standard, you will use your smart device, either Android or iOS, to perform the initial setup work using the Google Home App. The first option we have looked at of connecting your Google Home Mini with Chromecast is embraced for TVs that are not smart or smart TVs that do not have chrome cast built-in. Launch the Home app on your smart device, either Android or IOS. It's key to note there are slight variations on both of these platforms. When the Chromecast is paired with the Google Home Mini, you have the option of using Google Assistant voice commands on your Google Home Mini. Google has a couple of devices in its smart hub lineup.
Placing a finger on the left and right sides of the speaker lowers and raises the volumes, as you might expect. 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. PCMag supports Group Black and its mission to increase greater diversity in media voices and media ownerships. Sign up for Lab Report to get the latest reviews and top product advice delivered right to your inbox.
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. 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. That means that the Home Mini is exactly like the larger, more expensive Google Home and even the much more powerful Google Home Max in that it can control your smart home devices. While the others make for very solid standalone speakers from a performance standpoint, the Home Mini can’t hold its own as the sole sound-maker in your house.
One of the ways to do this is by using Google's Chromecast, a streaming media player that takes content from the web and plays it on your TV upon request. Once you have your speaker groups set up, playing music through all the speakers in a particular group is as easy as saying what you want to play and what speaker group you want to play it through. For example, "OK, Google, play reggae radio on whole house speaker group." Alternatively, "OK Google, play some Katy Perry on the upstairs speakers." The Goole Nest Wifi system includes access points that double as smart speakers and are available in three colors to compliment your home decor. If you're looking to add voice control or audio playback to more rooms of your home, at $49 (£49, AU$79) the updated Google Nest Mini is the least expensive way to do it. But, on its own, the Google Home Mini shouldn’t be used as much more than a desk buddy.
This should also generate a new entry at the bottom of the Devices page, though I had to close the Home app and re-open it for this new card to show up. On the next screen, give the group a name and then choose any other speakers you’d like to add to the group. From there, find any speaker you’d like in a group and tap the three-dot overflow menu in the upper right.
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