Google Nest Mini (2nd Gen) (Charcoal)

Google Nest Mini (2nd Gen) 

            The Google Nest Mini is one of the most important products that Google makes. It's the most accessible ambient computing product in Google's lineup. As we continue to connect more and more of our devices to the Internet, the Nest Mini is the perfect smart speaker for playing music and media, controlling your smart home devices, and answering general queries and helping you with everyday tasks. In the six months I've had our Nest Mini, I've enjoyed using this device and overall I think it's a worthy successor to the Google Home Mini. 

           So let's go ahead and dive into some of the main features of this device, the setup experience, reliability, downsides, and then ultimately if I recommend getting a Nest Mini. First up, let's talk about one of the big three features of the Nest Mini, which is playing music and media. The Nest Mini's design lends itself to be a pretty great smart speaker for areas in your home that you don't really care about sound quality. For a $49 US dollar speaker that you can usually get for less than that, it actually sounds pretty good and it does sound better than the Google Home Mini and that's likely due to the new 40 millimeter driver that is found in the Nest Mini. Now here's a sound comparison between the Nest Mini and some other Google speakers. One of the main ways to play music on the Nest Mini is to use the Google Assistant, Google's smart assistant that you use by saying a trigger word which we're not going to say in this video but anytime we would use a trigger word you're going to see the text below that you see right now. 

               You say that ask a question and then the Google Assistant will give you an answer so if you want to play music on the Nest Mini using the Google Assistant, you can play music from Spotify, YouTube Music, Pandora iHeartRadio, Deezer, Google Podcasts, and TuneIn. There's no Apple Music integration with the Google Assistant on the Nest Mini, so if you have an Android phone and you use Apple Music all you have to do is actually just cast your device's audio to the Nest Mini and it'll work over Google's Chromecast now if you have an iPhone unfortunately that option to use the cast system is not available to you, but the Nest Mini does support bluetooth pairing so you can simply stream your music to the Nest Mini over Bluetooth. all you have to do is tell Google to enable bluetooth pairing mode...Google: "Sure, to connect, open Bluetooth settings and look for the device called Josh's bathroom speaker." Take out your phone and open up Bluetooth settings and then pair it with the Nest Mini, you'll then be able to play whatever you want on your Nest Mini over the Bluetooth connection. Now when you're playing any media on the nest mini you have a couple of options when it comes to controlling that media on the device itself. You could of course use your voice to play, pause, skip, increase or decrease the volume, or you could use the touch controls on the device itself. When you place your hand near a Nest Mini when media is playing the volume LEDs will illuminate tap the volume buttons. 

            To raise or lower the volume to play or pause the media that you're listening to, tap the top part of the speaker once. Now there's one more button on the Nest Mini to talk about and that's the mute switch at the back of the device. Unlike other smart speakers out there it's a physical switch so when you mute the Nest Mini, the connection to the microphone is physically disconnected, meaning there's no way to turn on the mics on the Nest Mini if it has been muted. You can still cast music and media to a muted Nest Mini and the touch controls will still work. Alright now back to the music features and the last feature I want to mention which I use a lot is being able to include the Nest Mini in a Google cast speaker group. 

             In the Google home app you can group your Google speakers together to create a speaker group for me I keep my Nest Mini in the bathroom so I can listen to the news when I'm getting ready in the morning or listen to music when I'm in the shower, but I also include my Nest Mini in a speaker group called Josh's bedroom speakers, so when I'm moving about my room as well as my bathroom, typically like on weekends when I'm doing my weekend cleaning, I can listen to music and podcasts throughout the entire space which is great. Moving on the second major thing that I use my nest mini for is controlling the smart devices in my home the Maine smart devices I have are my thermostat smart lightbulbs and smart plugs the Google assistant on the nest mini can interact with all the various smart home products. 

               I have and control them so I can ask my nest mini to turn down the thermostat turn on a light or start a routine that has various actions built in from a single trigger phase like good morning or bedtime etc routines can be set up in the main page on the Google home app and if you're curious about smart homes.

• Smart Speaker with the Google Assistant, in Hindi Too
• Better Sound, All-around
• Wall-mount Ready
• Stream Music with Your Voice
• Control Your Home with Just Your Voice
• The Google Assistant is Always Ready to Help
• Voice Match
• Thoughtfully Designed for Every Room
• Family-friendly