Announced this morning, the donut-sized Google Home Mini is the newest member of the Google Home family. It’s definitely mini, but it retains all of the features that make the Google Home so interesting. It also gets over the one major hurdle that the Google Home had – it’s price point.
We reviewed the Google Home back in June and spoke a lot of its potential, but the price certainly turned a few people away. The speaker is great but a speaker with Google Assistant alone doesn’t quite seem worth $159, especially if that speaker looks like an alien-monolith combined with oversized salt and pepper shakers.
The Mini has a simplistic design – four white lights in its centre that denote various functions of the Mini, from listening to acquiring answers to the questions that you ask – and it has a two-tone design split horizontally down the middle. Fabric on top, plastic on the bottom (just like an iced donut). Beyond that, it has a touch-responsive surface for play/pause, speaking to Google Assistant and changing volume or muting the microphone. It weighs only 173g, which is only slightly heavier than a bag of Mars Pods and about the same as an adult Golden Hamster, and measures less than 100mm in diameter.
But it’s the sound that counts? First impressions suggest that even though it’s mini – it has a powerful speaker with 360 sound. Audiophiles need not apply – you’ll be after the original Home if you want a voice assistant speaker – but the 40mm driver is serviceable.
The major benefit? The Google Home Mini retails for only $79.
If you were tossing up whether or not to grab a Google Home and were turned away merely because of the price, then this just might be the product you’re looking for. It comes in three colours: Chalk, Charcoal and Coral. You can order it now at the Google Store.
We’ll have some full impressions of the Home Mini in the near future but for now, we’ll keep asking our Google Home silly questions.
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