Google Home Mini review: Taking aim at the Echo Dot

they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If that's true, Amazon must be tickled pink right now. The obvious inspiration for last year's Google Home was the Amazon Echo, and it's just as obvious that the new Google Home Mini is taking cues from the Echo Dot. To be fair, it's a logical strategy: By packaging all of Alexa's features into a smaller and cheaper package, Amazon expanded the Echo ecosystem and made it easier to blanket your house with voice-activated assistants.

Google is now doing the same, right down to the price. The $49 Home Mini does almost everything the larger Home does, at a price that makes the idea of buying three or four to place around the house a lot more palatable. For that to be worthwhile, though, the Google Assistant and the Home Mini hardware both need to seamlessly integrate themselves into your home and make your life easier.

Summary

The Google Home Mini is both affordable and capable -- for $49 it can pull up loads of information, control your music and videos and manage a wide variety of smarthome devices. Its tiny speaker sounds better than expected, though you probably won't want to play music on it. But it does a lot for the price and provides an easy and affordable way to get the Google Assistant into your house