Anyone buying/bought a Google Home mini?

[satchmo]

Given it’s cheap price and Apple’s delay with it’s speaker offering, I was thinking of picking up one of these cheap Google Home mini.

Even still, I’m not really sure how useful it’ll be and how it performs within the Apple ecosystem.
If you’ve bought one, what are your thoughts? Has it made your life a bit more convenient or just a gimmicky glorified search machine?

 

[ajayjp]

I got one recently from BestBuy @ 30$ with a 10$ gift card. I would say it has quite a limited use until you have smart devices all like Thermostats and switches. But in general worth for 20$

 

[Uofmtiger]

Given it’s cheap price and Apple’s delay with it’s speaker offering, I was thinking of picking up one of these cheap Google Home mini.

Even still, I’m not really sure how useful it’ll be and how it performs within the Apple ecosystem.
If you’ve bought one, what are your thoughts? Has it made your life a bit more convenient or just a gimmicky glorified search machine?

Depends on your needs. I have it and the Echo Dot and find the Dot to be more useful thanks to its skills.

The main thing that this offers that the Dot does not offer is the Casting features. However, those can be hit and miss. In other words, if you want to cast the latest Casey Neistat video on your Casting receiving device, it is great for that. However, if you want to play "IAMJAKE" or another Youtube site that is not a person's name, you may get some strange results...even if you subscribe to that Youtuber.

If you subscribe to Google Play Music, it works great for music casting. It also works fine for controlling lights if you use Hue.

If you are the type that sits around and wants to send random query after query to it, it is the best at that. Echo doesn't get close.

I also took advantage of the Best Buy discount. It was worth the $20 if only for music.

 

[manuseg]

Still waiting for the Homepod, i bought a Google Home mini for 40$ and I actually really like it. It's not compatible with Apple, but if you have a smart home i recommend you to get one for 40$. I have Philips HUE lighting and iHome smart plugs, which are compatible with the Google Home mini. I can ask Google to turn on and off the lights, or I still can control them with my iPhone or Philips remotes. In the morning you just have to say "Ok Google hi !" then it gives you the actual weather and the weather coming for the day, the news, etc. You can set some scenes like in Homekit, so when i say "Ok Google bye bye" all the lights turns off. You can also use it as a bluetooth speaker, so i linked it with my Apple TV.

For now i really like the google home, but i cant wait to see what the Homepod will bring to us

 

[Uofmtiger]

Still waiting for the Homepod, i bought a Google Home mini for 40$ and I actually really like it. It's not compatible with Apple, but if you have a smart home i recommend you to get one for 40$. I have Philips HUE lighting and iHome smart plugs, which are compatible with the Google Home mini. I can ask Google to turn on and off the lights, or I still can control them with my iPhone or Philips remotes. In the morning you just have to say "Ok Google hi !" then it gives you the actual weather and the weather coming for the day, the news, etc. You can set some scenes like in Homekit, so when i say "Ok Google bye bye" all the lights turns off. You can also use it as a bluetooth speaker, so i linked it with my Apple TV.

For now i really like the google home, but i cant wait to see what the Homepod will bring to us

I have the Dot and the Mini Home and I prefer the Dot. It does the same stuff you mentioned, but also has the ability to connect directly to a speaker/systems via aux or send/receive a Bluetooth signal. Personally, the Bluetooth receiving on the Mini isn't a big selling point for me because while its sound is louder than expected, it is not very good. However, the Dot can plug into a better speaker which makes the Bluetooth receiving feature much more useful.

The Dot also has a lot more skills (it can control Plex, J River Media, SimpleControl app, etc). In my experience, it hears better than the Mini, as well. I set an alarm with the Mini last night and I had to get a lot closer for it to hear me to tell it to stop. My Dot is farther away and doesn't have that issue. Also, the Google is more talkative. For example, if I use it to tell it to turn off Living Room it says, "Okay UofMtiger, the Living Room is off". The Dot just turns it off and says "OK".

I would only recommend the Mini Home for people that like to sit around and query it (which is its strong point), have specific devices that work with it and not the Echo, or those that have Casting devices and plan to use it with the Home...though even the Casting is hit and miss. If you want to watch a Youtube channel with any name other than a person's name (like I mentioned in a prior post), it probably won't know what you are saying. It works great with Google Play Music, though.

It should be mentioned that I would only recommend these products to people that understand that they are adding an always listening device to their home. Google and Amazon have differences in how they handle that saved data and I am sure Apple will have their own (probably better for those that care about privacy) approach, as well.