COMMON MAGAZINE EUROPE - FALL 2017

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COMMON//FALL 2017// THE BATTLE OF SMART HOME SPEAKERS: GOOGLE, AMAZON, AND APPLE SPOIL YOURSELF WITH THE LATEST SMART SPEAKERS FOR YOUR HOME By Azhar Ahmad 48
2017 FALL//COMMON AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAA GOOGLE GOES MINI THIS TINY SPEAKER PACKS A PUNCH By Azhar Ahmad The Google Home Mini is a stylish-looking speaker with surprisingly strong sound quality for its size. The Google Assistant is a capable Alexa competitor, especially thanks to its ability to search out detailed answers to a wide variety of questions. Google kept things simple with the Mini's design. It's an oblong orb of plastic and fabric with no visible buttons save for a slider to mute the microphone that's hidden in the back. It comes in your choice of three colors -- chalk (light gray), charcoal (dark gray), or coral (pinkish orange). To wake it up, you say "OK, Google" or "Hey, Google," and then you give it a question or command. You can ask it to play music, turn your smart home gadgets on and off, look up a fact for you, control Netflix and YouTube on your Chromecastenabled TV plus a whole host of other tricks. It puts the power of the internet just an utterance away, with the Google Assistant as your concierge. The Google Assistant is a good assistant. It's pleasant and helpful, and generally good at finding answers to whatever questions you can think to throw at it. By default, the 49 Assistant's digital voice is female, but if you'd rather converse with a "he," that's an option now, too — just toggle the setting in the Home mobile app's preferences section. Regardless of which voice you choose, I still wish Google would give its Assistant a better name. Despite the lack of physical buttons, the Home Mini still has touch controls you can use. You can tap the top to pause or resume music playback, and you can tap and hold to activate the Assistant. To adjust the volume, you tap the sides of the device. I wasn't a huge fan of those volume controls — they aren't quite responsive enough when you want to use them, and yet it's hard not to activate them by mistake whenever you pick the thing up. That said, you'll probably prefer to turn things up and down using voice commands. Overall, it's a design that's capable of blending in with your home's decor while still looking good if you happen to fix your gaze on it.
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