Google Home Mini Tech Review

Hi guys! Welcome to another post in my tech reviews series. I love to write about the AirPods, which you can read here and I thought why not do another review; so here we are doing the Google Home Mini tech review.

Truth is, and I mentioned this in my previous post as well, I wouldn’t consider myself a very techie person nor an expert. Nonetheless, I do enjoy tech quite a bit and I like to be up to date with what is happening. Also, since my boyfriend loves everything tech and watches literally all the tech reviews out there, I can’t help but pretty much stay up to date with the details of everything that’s happening.

All the buzz around AI and voice assistants, well, I had to get my hands on a smart speaker as well. Even at work – I do the consulting part in a tech company – AI and voice assistants are a big part of the discussion; big corporations – and not only – want to take advantage of the latest technology to help them take better business decisions. I have always played around with Siri on my iPhone, but the truth is, Apple’s lagging behind in terms of AI and in my opinion Siri is not as strong as most of its competitors.

Smart speakers have been around for quite some time and I have definitely not been an early adopter. However, the curiosity got us buying one a few months back. We chose the Google Home Mini to start out and our pre-purchase reasons were:

• The price is very low, so there is literally no barrier from the price point perspective (in Europe it retails for approx. 50 EUR).
• The design is really good and it looks very “homey”. Design wise, I would definitely always prefer having the Google Mini at home rather than Amazon’s Echo Dot.
• Google’s AI services are strong, everyone knows it, which means that you cannot really go wrong with their assistant.
• It’s fun to play with technology that will shape the way we will be doing everything in the next few years.

What I love about it – I can connect it to my Spotify account (you will need a premium subscription for that) – it also works with Deezer, YouTube Music, Google Play – and can play music very comfortably at home. You can set timers, reminder and alarms and it also has a great morning routine – you can have the weather details, commute time for your favourite way of transportation as well as a news update. The cool part about using Google is that you can tap into all their cool services, like flight search, translation and even just basic Google search which work pretty well and better than Siri.

We also connect it to our Philips Hue bulbs which makes it really easy to switch the lights on and off, change scenes and colours.

You can also add the Google Home Mini to your list of entertainment sources; with it you can play games such like Akinator and Trivia or ask it to tell you jokes. You can play the games by yourself or with friends and it is a pretty cool way to entertain your guests!

What I don’t like so much – Features available in Europe are unfortunately more limited compared to the US. You can’t have a specific song or podcast wake you up, which is something that I think it’s very basic in terms of functionality so I am impatiently waiting for them to release it to Europe as well.

I use Apple for my other tech, which means that I miss on having the full benefits of one ecosystem. Google cannot read my last messages nor start a FaceTime call, which I think is almost a must for a smart speaker nowadays. As an Apple user, this is the main drawback to the Google Mini, but if you are on Android this might work out much better for you.

Who should get it – Anyone who loves some tech incorporated into their daily routine. If you like to use your morning to read news or listen to podcasts, you can do it much better with a smart speaker. At the ned of the day it is a very affordable gadget that allows you to take a sneak peek into the tech of the future.

So this is it, if you’ve read so long, this is the end of my Google Home Mini tech review. In a nutshell, I would say it’s a fun, inexpensive gadget, that you should definitely get your hands on. It’s fun to use, it has a beautiful design for any home and with it you can easily entertain guests or just set up your perfect, streamlined morning routine.