Condensing everything that's good about the bigger Google Home into a small pin-cushion-like speaker works great, but it won't blow you away for music

full Google Assistant; relatively discreet; Bluetooth in; sounds decent for a small speaker; relatively loud; can hear you very well

no 3.5mm jack or Bluetooth out; fabric could get dirty in a kitchen; LEDs a bit dim to see from across the room

If you take the Google Home Mini's $79 CAD price into consideration, the device is an impressive smart home assistant.

Affordable; Sleek and small; Voice control works great

Sound quality is poor; Lacks Alexa's skills; just like the Google Home; No direct competitors in the Canadian market

It's been a year since Google introduced the world to Google Home, one of the company's first physical hardware products and generally the best way to interact with the then-nascent Google Assistant.

The Google Home Mini is quite literally a mini version of the standard Google Home. It's really competing directly with the Amazon Echo Dot , but with more of a focus on design and audio quality. At $50, it's priced affordably and has a lot to offer.

Attractive design; Better audio quality than Amazon Echo Dot; Affordable; Works with most smart home devices and music streaming services; Google Assistant works quickly and accurately

Shopping feature with Walmart is still nascent; Audio quality falls apart at high volumes; Cannot pair directly with other speakers (requires Chromecast Audio

If you're after a dinky smart speaker to tuck away out of sight, or perhaps some affordable secondary units to spread your smart home control to other rooms, the Home Mini is a solid choice.

Compact and subtle; Impressive mics; Smart app control

Fluffy, friendly design; Sounds better than an Echo Dot; Just as knowledgeable as bigger Home; Strong smart home support; Recognises the voices of up to six people and gives personalised replies; Good value;

Doesn’t have a 3.5mm line-out or have Bluetooth out; Touch buttons on the top have been disabled; Still favours Google services over others; Echo still more versatile for music and shopping;

So, which mini smart speaker should you get – Google’s doughnut or Amazon’s hockey puck? It depends on a few things. Firstly, whether you’d prefer an friendly, engaging digital assistant (the Home Mini) or a more efficient, if slightly robotic one (the Echo Dot). But it also depends on what you’re going to use it for. The Home Mini does a lot right and is better than the Echo Dot in a few areas. It looks and sounds much better. It’s also far more likely to have a stab at answering random trivia questions, making it the best bet for young families with inquisitive kids. Another strength is controlling your smart home, with Google’s Home family supporting most major brands now (although it’s worth checking the compatibility list). Alexa certainly has more ‘skills’ for connecting to third party services, but it’s pretty close when it comes to smart lights and heating. If you and your family mostly use Google services (like Photos, Calendar and Chromecasts), the Home Mini is likely to be the better bet too. Unless you want to connect it to your work Gmail calendar, strangely. But for everyone else, the Echo Dot remains the best all-round mini smart speaker. Unlike the Home Mini, it has a line out and can play through Bluetooth speakers, making it the more versatile musical assistant. It’s also better for voice shopping (at least in the UK) and will support voice recognition soon. One thing’s for sure – at £49, both are bona fide tech bargains that are now better entrées to the glorious world of voice control than their bigger brothers. And with new features being added on a seemingly weekly basis, they’re only going to get better.

Fluffy, friendly design; Sounds better than an Echo Dot; Just as knowledgeable as bigger Home; Strong smart home support; Recognises the voices of up to six people and gives personalised replies; Good value;

Doesn't have a 3.5mm line-out or have Bluetooth out; Touch buttons on the top have been disabled; Still favours Google services over others; Echo still more versatile for music and shopping;

ImageTagInstance gallery-187c452f-43f0-4c91-aa86-2ffe63d95951 When Wi-Fi speakers started infiltrating the market, we were eerily skeptical about them – mainly because we had grown accustomed to Bluetooth-enabled ones. Call it being complacent or whatever, Bluetooth speakers provided the convenience of allowing almost any device to connect to them without complication. So, when we started seeing a shift in the market to these Wi-Fi-connected ones, many of us wondered how much of a change in the product field they’d bring.Change they brought, in the most revolutionary way! Last year's Google Home helped to spark that shift, as it offered consumers more than just another speaker for music. Rather, it has integrated itself into the home in more ways than we could've imagined, and as time went on, its functions helped to solidify its importance in the evolving smart home.Having seen so much success in such a short period, Google introduced a smaller, more "mini" edition of its popular smar...

How much can you slice away from a Google Home and have it still be good? That was the question asked of Google's hardware team when it created the Google Home Mini, a device that slashes the $129 Google Home down to a mere $50.

It's cheap! For $50, newbies can easily experiment with Google's voice command system, The mostly cloth design merges easily into a home decor, It's small; You can put it anywhere, and it won't be in the way, Tethering to a Chromecast Audio is nice for those with bigger speakers, but a wired option...

Google Home still feels like an early adopter product; Music was the Google Home's best feature; and this doesn't really work with music; The sound the speaker pumps out

has been one of the best combinations of hardware and technology that I have happily adopted into my home and into my family's life. The device is used mostly to play back podcasts and music from Spotify and Google Play subscriptions but it has since expanded in many ways.