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

When it comes to shifting smart speakers, Amazon is streets ahead of Google. The Google Home came late to market; by the time it turned up, it didn't just have to contend with the Amazon Echo – it also had to face the much smaller and cheaper Amazon Echo Dot .

Good looks; Affordable

No 3.5mm or Bluetooth audio output; No top touch controls besides volume

It's been a long time coming, but Google's Home Mini can now make and receive calls. After almost six months of waiting, the Home Mini, along with its bigger brother, now has support for hands-free video calling.

Affordable; Stylish design with touch controls; Integrated Google Assistant and speaker

No 3.5mm jack output

For someone who's very busy, always on the move, and doesn't quite have time to faff about with a radio and alarm every morning, the Google assistant is your best friend. Whether it's asking my assistant for a recipe, setting a timer, asking for a specific radio station, setting alarms or even...

Help with recipes and timings when cooking

Not a lot of free music options, has trouble linking to some types of data, says 'still learning' but not where it will pick that new info up from; Had ours for 2 months and it still can't some simple news related questions

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.

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

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

We're clearly big fans of the Google Assistant, and any device that makes it more accessible to the masses is well worth a second look in our book. If budget was no option then the standard Google Home offers significantly better audio quality, but for most people budget will unfortunately come into...

Nothing easier.....set timer, play music, answer questions, check schedule, make calls....This sounds silly but I think the best feature is setting timers while cooking. Had 4 different timers going...while playing music..lol