Say hello to the cutest smart home speaker on the planet

I’m really happy Google’s now making hardware because if there was any company with a taste for what good products should look and feel like, it’s everyone’s favourite search engine. One of their latest products is this guy, the Google Home Mini and it’s the cutest smart home device I’ve ever seen.

The Google Home mini’s box looks decidedly Google-y. It’s simple, clean and functional. If I had one complaint it would be that it isn’t super sturdy.

On the side, you get a quick look at some of the supported apps on Google’s smallest smart home solution.

The Google Home Mini isn’t officially available for purchase here in Malaysia so when we saw it during a colleague’s trip to Japan, we had to pick it up. After conversion, we paid a little over RM200 for this guy.

Pop the lid and you’ll be greeted with the Home Mini itself. Ours is the one in Charcoal and it looks really good.

Remove the Home mini and you’ll be greeted with the charging brick and cable. It’s rated at 5V/1.8A and is 1.5m long. For a device that needs to be constantly plugged in, we would have liked to see a longer cable.

It’s a bit of a bummer that the Google Home Mini still uses a microUSB port. But since this device is designed to just sit there plugged in, I don’t think it’ll be too big a deal.

When Google said this thing was the size of a donut, they weren’t kidding — this thing is tiny. It really looks like a stuffed donut.

This charcoal colourscheme also helps it blend in with pretty much any kind of decor. The fabric is soft but not super plush. It’s like a pair of well-worn jeans.

At the bottom of the device is a very grippy patch of orange that acts as its foot. Once you’ve got it on a desk, it does really well to stay put.

Besides the mute toggle and microUSB port, there’s no other physical feature on the device. You control volume by tapping on the left and right of the Home Mini.

Pairing is done via the Google Home app which can be downloaded on your smartphone. Here you can set up your default playback devices, create smart home groups and adjust various settings for your home ecosystem. It’s pretty intuitive and easy to use. Pairing was also effortless and you can invite guests to use the Home Mini too.

[nextpage title=”Here’s what’s really cool about the Home Mini”]

Two things impressed us the most about this device with the brief amount of time we’ve been using it. The first is the sound quality — at first we were kinda expecting it to sound bad but this little guy’s got an impressive set of lungs.

Sure, there isn’t much oomph in the bass, but to my ears the mids and vocals come in nicely, and it does a great job at producing a full sound that doesn’t distort even at high volumes. It’s certainly much better than any smartphone speakers I’ve heard.

In fact, its audio capabilities — both playback and recording — are not to scoff at. The microphone easily picks up your voice even when music is blaring at full volume and we could even speak to it from across the room. One little annoyance is that when you’re far away and you say “Hey Google” or “OK Google”, there is no aural cue that it heard you. And from across the room, odds are you won’t be able to see the four little notification LEDs.

The second most impressive thing is the Home Mini’s ability to recognise specific voices. When you set up your Google Account with Home Mini you will have to train its voice recognition once, but once that’s done you’re set. If you’ve got multiple accounts from multiple different people linked to a single Home Mini, it has an almost uncanny ability to differentiate one from the other.

This is great because when you ask it for the best route to your office, it knows its you and will give you the best route to YOUR office, and not one of the other people who have their accounts linked up. It’s also good for security because if a stranger asks for personal information, like calendar appointments for example, the Home Mini won’t divulge that information because it doesn’t recognise the stranger’s voice. It’s super amazing.

As far as first impressions go, we’re really impressed with this little guy and for just over RM200, this seems to be able to give you the complete Google Home experience for a fraction of its larger sibling.

Would you like to see a full review of the Home Mini? Let us know what you think in the comments below.