Google Nest Mini (2nd gen)
Cheaper than most other smart home speakers, the Google Nest Mini is a tiny wonder. A great upgrade to the original Home Mini, controlling your smart home through voice commands is a breeze with this.
Apple HomePod Mini
In the walled garden of the Apple ecosystem there romps a little beast called the HomePod Mini. Armed with Siri and sounding better than it has any right to at that size, it is a worthy contender in the smart speaker race.
For a future-proof home, smart devices are obvious. Smart speakers can act as hubs to control your smart home, from lights, locks, cameras, and even window blinds. And in that respect, size doesn’t indicate performance — so long as you’re not too worried about the ‘speaker’ part of smart speakers.
TheGoogle Nest Miniand theApple HomePod Miniare both competitive micro smart speakers that act as smart home control hubs. Both are excellent in performance, provided you curb your expectations a little considering their tiny size — small enough to grab in a fist. The ease of use and portability just makes things peachier.
Both of them aregreat smart speakerswithin their own niches, and with all the bells and whistles they come with, you may be scratching your head about which one to opt for. That’s where we come in.
Price, availability, and specs
There’s no two ways about it: the Google Nest Mini is dirt cheap. Consider how much is put into the device — the speaker, the powerful processor, the dedicated machine learning chip, the wireless chip, the touch controls — and you’ll be amazed that Google can sell this for $50. What’s more, it often goes on sale for as low as $35.
The Apple HomePod Mini is double the price, but we think that’s okay because of how much great the audio is. Some top-of-the-shelf Bluetooth speakers sell at that price, and this one is almost comparable to them in size-to-performance ratio.
Neither is available on Amazon, but you may buy them from the Google and Apple stores respectively. Some other online stores do stock them, like BestBuy, Target, Home Depot, or Walmart, though don’t expect much of a price change.
Both the Nest Mini and HomePod Mini are small enough to hold in your hand. But where the Nest Mini is a flattened oval, the HomePod Mini is almost perfectly spherical.
The Nest Mini looks just like the olderGoogle Home Miniin shape and size. Available in Chalk, Charcoal, Coral, and Sky colors, its unobtrusive yet smooth design would fit most decoration schemes. Google says parts of it were made from recycled plastic, which is welcome.
The upper side of the Nest Mini is covered by a mesh fabric that looks and feels premium, hiding touch controls that are hard to find if you don’t know where to tap. The flat bottom is rubberized; besides the standard barrel charging port and a hardware mic mute toggle, it also has a hole to mount directly on the wall. This is definitely a plus since, in modern small apartments, you may not always have enough surface space.
Bigger overall, the HomePod Mini is a ball with the top and bottom cut off. The slightly recessed plastic top glows and houses the touch interface, and the charging cable (USB-C) comes out of the bottom (this is inseparable from the device). It’s available in five colors (White, Yellow, Orange, Blue, and Space Gray. You can’t hang it on the wall without the help of special mounts.
The HomePod Mini is also covered by a fabric mesh. It doesn’t have a hardware mic mute button though; instead, you have to turn off voice commands with — wait for it — a voice command. A solid button would have definitely been more reassuring.
Neither has a 3.5mm in/out option.
Sound quality
Being speakers, first and foremost, the sound quality of these devices matters. And we must say, Google worked amazingly with their device here. With the HomePod Mini, you can at least imagine a small speaker inside, like many smaller-sized Bluetooth speakers. But the flattened Nest Mini defies expectations and impresses with its loud, rich sound.
The custom 40mm driver in the small Nest Mini, combined with the powerful processor, delivers astounding clarity and bass (again, considering the size). While not at all comparable to larger speakers, the sound is still powerful and detailed enough to let you enjoy your favorite playlist or create a background vibe in your living or dining room.
With the HomePod Mini, Apple took advantage of the extra space and jammed a full-range driver in. While it’s certainly more powerful than the Nest Mini’s speaker, that’s not its most distinguishing feature - that would be the DSP (Digital Signal Processing) that Apple is inserting into everything these days.
What it does is adjust the dynamic range, bass, and treble of the output intelligently depending on the volume. This keeps audio undistorted even at high volumes, and rich and full even at very quiet volumes.
Do note that these smart speakers differ from standard Bluetooth speakers in that instead of just transmitting audio from your phone to the speaker, they play music using their own processor. That means you’ll need a subscription to a music service. The Nest Mini supports Google Play Music, YouTube Music, Spotify, Deezer, and Pandora. The HomePod Mini supports Apple Music and Spotify.
Both devices can pair with a second matching speaker to deliver stereo audio. In addition, you’re able to string multiple devices in multiple rooms to play the same audio all over your house or even different tunes in different rooms.
The Nest Mini has three far-field mics that can pick up your voice quite a distance away. The HomePod Mini ups this slightly with four mics.
Performance
Both devices support Bluetooth 5.0 and Wi-Fi. The HomePod Mini can also use peer-to-peer AirPlay, which lets you play tracks from other connected devices even if the internet is down.
Annoyingly, you can’t send music to your HomePod Mini via a standard Bluetooth connection; you must use AirPlay. However, once playing, you can transfer your music to the device by simply touching your iPhone to it. This could be a nice feature if the iPhone didn’t keep nagging you to do it as soon as it’s within range of the device.
Smart home features
These are ‘smart’ speakers, meaning you can control them using voice commands. You can ask simple questions, and they will search the web to give the most likely answer. Or you can ask them to control all the smart devices connected to your smart home ecosystem and to set alarms and timers, create calendar reminders, and make appointments.
Both speakers support multi-user operations; they are smart enough to recognize different voices and adjust the response accordingly. For example, if you and your partner each ask them to play a mix of favorite music, the playlist would be different in each case. The HomePod Mini is even smart enough to recognize even non-human sounds like fire alarms and react accordingly.
Additionally, these speakers can also serve as intercoms if you have them in multiple rooms. Just ask one to relay a message to another one set up in another room. You can also broadcast messages house-wide. “Hey Google, let everybody know the game is starting!”
Peeping toms and big brothers are always lurking in the back of our minds. Few can stand by while their personal data gets abused — especially if that data contains intimate information that reveals who you are. Smart speakers often work with such kinds of data: what you like to hear, what you like to read, what you are buying, what you are watching.
It’s great to see both Google and Apple stand up to this challenge and include definite and solid steps to fix this. Google’s approach is through hardware and Apple went the software way. You can cut off the mics in a Nest Mini using a dedicated toggle button on its underside. With the HomePod Mini, you have to tell Siri to stop listening and it will stop responding to your voice commands (you can reactivate it through the Home app).
Are Google and Apple listening to you using the Nest and HomePod devices and using the information behind your back? Hard to say. While the idea behind a smart speaker is that the voice commands would be processed on the device itself rather than transmitted to the company, people understandably fear that isn’t the case. Apple does say that your requests are identified with a random number and encrypted before sending for processing. The point is, how paranoid are you?
Both services have stringent data protection and privacy policies in place. We recommend you to go throughGoogle’s privacy tips for Nest devicesand Apple’s notes aboutSiri and privacy.
Which is right for you?
Choosing a smart speaker is more complicated than it seems. The situation differs vastly if you are starting out your smart home setup or adding to an existing one. In the first case, you’re not really choosing the speaker but the smart home ecosystem. In the second case, this is already decided; you are just choosing different sizes of the same product type.
This isn’t the place to debate which smart home ecosystem is better — Alexa, Google, or Apple. We’ll let you make that decision yourself, each has its own ups and downs. But we will say this: you cannot use one system’s device in another (without significant hacking, I guess). So, the choice between Google Nest Mini and Apple HomePod Mini just boils down to this: which side is your house on?
“But what if my house is just starting,” you say?
If you use Android devices all the time, the Nest Mini makes sense. It’s cheap, it’s easy, and there are a ton of compatible apps and hardware that go with it. The Android ecosystem is, of course, much larger than Apple’s. You’ll get a lot of flexibility and choice. And with the Nest Mini being so cheap, you’re able to easily buy a pack of them and use them all over your house — in stereo mode or not.
A tiny wonder that sounds bigger than itself
The Google Nest Mini is your first choice when starting out a smart home in the Google ecosystem. Its low price and simple setup allows you to use a variety of them in the same or different rooms of your house. The amazingly loud and rich sound coming from such a tiny device is just a cherry on top.
However, all those choices can just make your life more confusing. If you prefer a simple solution and can pay for it, welcome to Apple. It offers a solid, robust roundup of apps and devices that will go with your HomePod Mini, there will be less confusion, and the setup will be childishly simple.
The ball that sounds like a premium speaker
Easy to use and easy on the eyes, the Apple HomePod Mini is a boon to those who seek simplicity in life. Buy one to start your Apple smart home system. You’ll need to own other Apple tech to really get the best out of this device, but you will love the excellent audio reproduction.
