COMMON MAGAZINE EUROPE - FALL 2017

2017 FALL//COMMON
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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
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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.