The Google Home Mini isn't flawless, owing to a dearth of developer support compared to Amazon, the inability to drill down for hyper-specific commands and odd design choices (where's the headphone jack?). But for US$50 or less, it's an ideal introduction to the world of smart speakers.

While it's not quite the perfect experience, it's hard to complain too much about what the Home Mini does. It is primarily a good voice assistant, with the ability to control other devices.

Affordable Google Assistant; Chromecast compatibility; Fine sound for speech radio

Sound quality is average for music; No aux or Bluetooth output; Device support could be better

For $50 or less, you're simply not going to find a better speaker that does so much. While Alexa still holds the crown for smart home integration, Google is catching up every day, and offers a considerably better virtual assistant than any other company out there in a number of ways.

Can't beat the price. Works great with my chromes cast enabled tv and sound bar. Way better than the echo dot. Google ecosystem pairs much better with my smart home products.

Google is not used to being second. And yet, that's uncomfortable the position it finds itself in within the smart speaker space.

The new, cut-down version of the digital assistant could probably have been summed up in a tweet. Something like: "Home Mini: smaller, cheaper, sound worse but still fine."

Cheap; well designed; compact

Average sound quality; fiddly to mute; no speaker output

I wasn't sure I would find the Google mini useful and had my doubts it would live up to the hype. My only other experience with "smart" assistants is using/ trying to use Siri on the iPhone which is next to useless and a horrible experience.

There's nothing especially remarkable about Google Home Mini, except perhaps one thing: it does everything the bigger Home product does, but is much, much smaller. Home Mini isn't designed as a speaker for music, though.

Attractive design; Google Assistant delivers good responses to questions; Growing support for third-party devices

Fabric won't clean easily; No audio output; Sound quality isn't great (but then it's not designed as a speaker for music; Really

Talkative smart speakers are jostling for position at the heart of Australian smart homes, with the tiny Google Home Mini making it easier than ever to bring Google Assistant to life.

Access to Google Assistant; Compact; Inexpensive

Underwhelming music sound quality; No audio line-out