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

Cheap; well designed; compact

Average sound quality; fiddly to mute; no speaker output

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."

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Google's smart speaker just got smaller. The Home Mini is, as you can deduce from its name, a smaller version of the Google Home speaker the company launched last year. It has all of the same capabilities as its larger forebear, but comes with a smaller price: $49 versus the larger speaker's $129...

Good sound quality for voice responses; Attractive design; Impulse purchase pricing

Fabric may not last long; Limited audio output options; Fewer smart home tricks than Amazon's Alexa

Interested in Google Home? Don't want to pay a fortune? Simply get the Google Home Mini – it's smaller, cheaper and just as good

Looks Good; Google Assistant Is Very Impressive; Voice Recognition is Great; New Features Added All The Time

Sound Quality (For Music) Isn't Great