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Upgrade your lifestyleDigital Trends helps readers keep tabs on the fast-paced world of tech with all the latest news, fun product reviews, insightful editorials, and one-of-a-kind sneak peeks. Both the Echo Dot line and the Nest Mini line allow you to use their respective assistants to set up voice shopping capabilities. Google Assistant and Alexa both offer routine setup, so that’s no problem. Google’s version is a bit more cookie-cutter, helpful prompts make it easy for beginners. Yet, Google Assistant also offers more complex custom Routine options. In my experience, the basic stuff like alarm, timer, weather works fine on both.
The sound vibrations produced by a passive radiator depend on its mass and the size of its enclosure. It is usually used in combination with a woofer to produce deep bass tones. More microphones result in better sound quality and enable the device to filter out background noise. Chromecast built-in is a technology that allows users to stream entertainment and apps from their phone, tablet, or laptop, straight to the Chromecast-enabled device. A key feature of both devices is the universe of smart home gadgets they can connect to and control. The Echo Dot connects to its power supply with a barrel connector, and the Google Home Mini uses a USB power supply.
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Home Mini lacks any buttons except for the mute button under the speaker. To adjust the volume, you can tap the left and right sides of the home mini. There are other gestures like long press on either side to play/ pause a song, end call, etc. Unlike the fixed buttons on Echo, home mini gestures can be updated and more gestures can be added later on. As you can see the Echo dot clocks in at 81 dB at 70% volume, while the Google Home is a little less loud clocking at 64dB.
Or when I ask where to buy Chinese food, it sends details on local restaurants. With Google, you can also string commands together in a single sentence. With Alexa, you must give it one command at a time, waiting for it to respond before giving it another.
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Having said that, Alexa tends to be better when it comes to support for a wider range of devices, as well as better smart home integration. So if you have a lot of smart home devices already, Alexa might be your best bet. For a comprehensive picture of all the top smart speaker options, see our roundup of the best smart speakers. If you want better sound, the Echo Dot has a 3.5mm aux output, so you can connect it to external speakers (including battery/speaker combos, such as the Ninety7 Vaux). And both the Dot and the Mini can be connected to external Bluetooth speakers, but those solutions diminish the benefits of having a small, compact unit. If saving money is a priority for you, this is a great time to buy the discounted 2nd-Gen Echo Dot.
For my tastes, it easily offers enough oomph for casual listening in your kitchen or at your bedside -- and if you need more, you can still hook it up to a larger audio setup like you could before. The home is becoming a hub of smart devices designed to make your life easier. Alexa’s version is a bit more complex, but once you get the hang of it you can easily set up detailed routines based on exactly what you want to do. Alexa also still beats Google Assistant when it comes to compatibility, so there’s a greater chance of your smart devices actually working with the Dot. While the second-gen Nest Hub lacks a camera, the display makes up for it with a suite of advanced sleep-tracking features, using Soli technology to monitor overnight movement and breathing.
Looks and Build Quality (Draw)
If you're looking for a small Echo speaker, your best best then is the Echo Spot, which despite its size, offers a richer sound. The screen, however, massively increases its expense, so bear that in mind – if you don't want a screen, the Echo Dot with Clock is an attractive option. Recently Google launched a follow up to its smallest smart speaker; the Google Nest Mini comes with three speakers (that's one more than the original), and is made from recycled materials.
While we love both touchscreens, we’ll award the Echo Show for its rotatable screen and bigger size. I'd say that yes, the two are at least on equal footing as far as strength of sound is concerned. But whether or not the new Dot sounds better than the Home Mini is really up to the listener. Some of us preferred the fuller-sounding Dot, while others thought that the Home Mini offered slightly better clarity. With Google Nest Mini, there are fewer compatible music services sources, but you can use Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, Deezer, and Google Play Music, among other options.
It is compatible with Google Assistant, allowing you to use voice commands to control the device from other Google Assistant-compatible devices. It all comes down to the hardware, the capabilities of their digital assistants, and the way they can do things such as play music and control other smart devices in your home. Seeing as one smart display lacks camera-centric video features while the other lacks a host of handy sleep monitoring tools, we’re calling this category a draw.
Both need to be connected to power full time, but you can buy a third-party battery dock for either of them. Both are suitably low profile to fit in almost any location in your home. We found the new Dot's audio to be superb, with a very full sound and clear bass. It's not as good as what you get from a full-size Echo or Echo Plus, but it's a definite upgrade. We much prefer it to the 2nd-Generation Dot's sound, which was tinny and distorted. While the Echo Dot features a hockey puck-shape with fabric-covered sides and button on top, the Google Home Mini has a puck-shape and encases its touch-sensitive controls beneath a fabric.
If you have a second speaker of the same type, you can pair them together to create a stereo sound setup. The hardwear calculus changes though when you compare the updated Nest Mini to the Echo Dot . The improvements to the speaker, microphones, and on-device intellegence make that Google/Nest device a no-brainer to buy. While colorful and compact, the microphone and speakers on the Google Home Mini just scream "you get what you pay for" when it comes to quality.
Again, the Echo Dot leads here, with a plethora of different types of skills available for the device . Google’s offering is certainly smaller at this point but is expanding quickly, adding features like a multilingual mode, a translator mode, and step-by-step cooking instructions. The Nest Mini may not have a clock option, but it still uses LED dots to communicate, and it’s available in chalk, charcoal, coral, and sky. Again, the build quality is excellent, and the Nest Mini’s pincushion form gives the device its own identity. Google’s recent design upgrade made the nest Mini more eco-friendly too.
Alexa is mostly just in your house for now, and unless you do a lot of shopping through Alexa there isn't a compelling reason to use it over Assistant most of the time. Once you’re accustomed to your digital assistant answering questions and carrying out orders, you’ll probably want to use it to control things around your home. Recently Google demonstrated a system that allows Assistant to make calls on your behalf. Called Duplex, it’s an impressive and somewhat spooky tech development that could handle things like making a restaurant reservation, but so far it’s not available to consumers.
"At night, I just say, 'Hey Google, turn off my bedroom lights,' and the room goes dark," she wrote. Google Assistant doesn't have nearly as many third-party plug-ins, but it's much easier to talk to. It can understand different requests more easily than Alexa, and that's very appealing. Alexa has an edge with third-party functionality, thanks to thousands of different skills that can do everything from order pizza to read a bedtime story. It tends to require very specific syntax, though, especially when activating and using most of those skills.
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