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The Google Home Mini Is Google’s $49 Answer to the Echo Dot

arstechnica.com

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Re: The Google Home Mini Is Google’s $49 Answer to the Echo Dot

#21

Post by casey_lang »

Klathmon wrote: post #9
melling wrote: post #3

Is Google twice as smart as Siri? https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/02/google-ai-has-almost-twice-t... I’m considering adding one of these to my family of iOS devices. Siri is cool when it works, but I’d like something a little better. That, and I won’t have to watch my watch, phone, and tablet competing to answer my questions. Finally, and most importantly, according to the article, Google appears to be improving the fas…

I love and use our 2 google homes on a daily basis, but they get significantly more useful if you are in google's ecosystem and have home automation. For me, i'd give a super rough guess at my usage like this: * 60% home automation (turning on and off lights when hands are full, ensuring doors are locked and garage door is closed, running "shortcuts" like "i'm leaving" which will lock up and arm the alarm in 5 minute…

Does it have a good shopping list? I've had a Home since they were released and used to use the shopping list feature all the time when it was backed by Keep.

At one point they moved it into some web app that I could only access from my phone by spelunking through the Home app. Has that changed?

When it worked, it was great.

Re: The Google Home Mini Is Google’s $49 Answer to the Echo Dot

#23

Post by Eridrus »

r00fus wrote: post #20
Klathmon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love and use our 2 google homes on a daily basis, but they get significantly more useful if you are in google's ecosystem and have home automation. For me, i'd give a super rough guess at my usage like this: * 60% home automation (turning on and off lights when hands are full, ensuring doors are locked and garage door is closed, running "shortcuts" like "i'm leaving" which will lock up and arm the alarm in 5 minute…

Sorry to be the luddite, but these devices just seem like first-world-only interest to me. I have no desire to automate my house (I can see why others do). I don't have a home alarm. I have one TV in the house for several kids. The day planner/shopping list is good, but I pull out my phone instead and speak to it (when I press home button). Finally, is everyone really comfortable having always-on listening in their h…

> It's amusing to see how privacy oriented HN is yet these devices are so popular here - they're an unaudited vector into your most private moments.

HN is an echo chamber where it's not even worth talking about trade-offs when it comes to privacy, all I ever get from it is downvotes.

Re: The Google Home Mini Is Google’s $49 Answer to the Echo Dot

#24

Post by bmelton »

StringyBob wrote: post #19

Does it have a headphone socket? All I want from my google home devices is better control over the audio, and it seems the only way I can do that is plug it into my own amp. Edit. Nope. However the latest software lets you change default audio device for media playback to a chromecast audio. That's halfway there - what I'd like is to redirect the entire audio stream (so spoken answers too!) Alternatively, can we get…

It doesn't. It might support bluetooth headphones, as the tech specs indicate that it does have Bluetooth and WiFi, but the only physical port, sadly, is Micro-USB, which is weird to me that it isn't USB-C.

I keep hoping that one of these magic boxes we keep seeing is going to be implemented with an optical port so that I'll have a viable replacement for my Sonos, but I guess I'm back to waiting for Sonos to integrate Google Home or Alexa or whatever they plan to integrate for me to get everything tied in.

Edit: I guess if I'd checked my email a little bit earlier, I might have noticed that they apparently just started preorders for the Sonos One with Alexa integrated.

http://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/one.html

Re: The Google Home Mini Is Google’s $49 Answer to the Echo Dot

#25

Post by Klathmon »

r00fus wrote: post #20
Klathmon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love and use our 2 google homes on a daily basis, but they get significantly more useful if you are in google's ecosystem and have home automation. For me, i'd give a super rough guess at my usage like this: * 60% home automation (turning on and off lights when hands are full, ensuring doors are locked and garage door is closed, running "shortcuts" like "i'm leaving" which will lock up and arm the alarm in 5 minute…

Sorry to be the luddite, but these devices just seem like first-world-only interest to me. I have no desire to automate my house (I can see why others do). I don't have a home alarm. I have one TV in the house for several kids. The day planner/shopping list is good, but I pull out my phone instead and speak to it (when I press home button). Finally, is everyone really comfortable having always-on listening in their h…

Well I can tell you why I'm okay with it. Google says (and i've somewhat validated) that data isn't sent to their servers until you say the "keyword". And they do allow you to view and delete any previously sent speech from your account, and I do trust them about that as the backlash from not actually deleting it when they said they would could be pretty bad (and they could be in some pretty deep legal trouble as well).

And if the worry is that they can update it to be "always recording and uploading", they (or another adversary) can already do that with the other phones, laptops, and other devices in the house (most likely more easily).

It's a tradeoff, but it's one that I and my family are comfortable making. Just like how you can choose to not go outside and keep your privacy that way, I find the benefits and usefulness of these products are worth the loss in privacy for me. And that loss in privacy is controllable by me (they can be turned off, unplugged, or shut down whenever I want).

That being said, things like the home-automation are as local as possible. Everything is run via local-network-only systems (zwave, wifi, bluetooth, zigbee), and then "external" systems are added on (like the google home). So i'm not trusting quite as much as people assume I am to some other company, and there are things I will not trust to 3rd parties (like i'm still not comfortable putting surveillance camera footage on anything I don't own myself).

Re: The Google Home Mini Is Google’s $49 Answer to the Echo Dot

#26

Post by bmelton »

casey_lang wrote: post #21
Klathmon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love and use our 2 google homes on a daily basis, but they get significantly more useful if you are in google's ecosystem and have home automation. For me, i'd give a super rough guess at my usage like this: * 60% home automation (turning on and off lights when hands are full, ensuring doors are locked and garage door is closed, running "shortcuts" like "i'm leaving" which will lock up and arm the alarm in 5 minute…

Does it have a good shopping list? I've had a Home since they were released and used to use the shopping list feature all the time when it was backed by Keep. At one point they moved it into some web app that I could only access from my phone by spelunking through the Home app. Has that changed? When it worked, it was great.

Offtopic perhaps, but that's the one feature I regularly use on the Alexa. "Alexa, add milk to my shopping list" is such a common occurrence in this house that we haven't switched off of the Alexa even though that's basically the only thing I use it for, and even though Amazon keeps making the shopping list worse with every product iteration.

Re: The Google Home Mini Is Google’s $49 Answer to the Echo Dot

#27

Post by Klathmon »

casey_lang wrote: post #21
Klathmon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love and use our 2 google homes on a daily basis, but they get significantly more useful if you are in google's ecosystem and have home automation. For me, i'd give a super rough guess at my usage like this: * 60% home automation (turning on and off lights when hands are full, ensuring doors are locked and garage door is closed, running "shortcuts" like "i'm leaving" which will lock up and arm the alarm in 5 minute…

Does it have a good shopping list? I've had a Home since they were released and used to use the shopping list feature all the time when it was backed by Keep. At one point they moved it into some web app that I could only access from my phone by spelunking through the Home app. Has that changed? When it worked, it was great.

It's in the "Google Express" app now (both a web app, as well as a "native" app).

I didn't like that change, but it does work just as well now, and keeps all the same features (checking it off, manually adding stuff, sharing with friends/family members, etc...).

I do wish they kept it in keep, and even allowed more "lists". Being able to tell it to add a book to my "reading list" would have been fantastic...

Re: The Google Home Mini Is Google’s $49 Answer to the Echo Dot

#28

Post by dragonwriter »

r00fus wrote: post #20
Klathmon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love and use our 2 google homes on a daily basis, but they get significantly more useful if you are in google's ecosystem and have home automation. For me, i'd give a super rough guess at my usage like this: * 60% home automation (turning on and off lights when hands are full, ensuring doors are locked and garage door is closed, running "shortcuts" like "i'm leaving" which will lock up and arm the alarm in 5 minute…

Sorry to be the luddite, but these devices just seem like first-world-only interest to me. I have no desire to automate my house (I can see why others do). I don't have a home alarm. I have one TV in the house for several kids. The day planner/shopping list is good, but I pull out my phone instead and speak to it (when I press home button). Finally, is everyone really comfortable having always-on listening in their h…

> Sorry to be the luddite, but these devices just seem like first-world-only interest to me.

Probably mostly, but so what? The first world is over a billion people.

Re: The Google Home Mini Is Google’s $49 Answer to the Echo Dot

#29

Post by deskamess »

StringyBob wrote: post #19

Does it have a headphone socket? All I want from my google home devices is better control over the audio, and it seems the only way I can do that is plug it into my own amp. Edit. Nope. However the latest software lets you change default audio device for media playback to a chromecast audio. That's halfway there - what I'd like is to redirect the entire audio stream (so spoken answers too!) Alternatively, can we get…

Google Home Max : "it also has an auxiliary port so you can connect it to a turntable or other speaker".

Re: The Google Home Mini Is Google’s $49 Answer to the Echo Dot

#30

Post by michaelbuckbee »

StringyBob wrote: post #19

Does it have a headphone socket? All I want from my google home devices is better control over the audio, and it seems the only way I can do that is plug it into my own amp. Edit. Nope. However the latest software lets you change default audio device for media playback to a chromecast audio. That's halfway there - what I'd like is to redirect the entire audio stream (so spoken answers too!) Alternatively, can we get…

The Echo Dot does and I do exactly this Spotify (from everything) going to the dot -> amp -> speakers.

It works well.

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