ISSUE 68 • ANDROID ADVISOR 81Still, there are some laudable changes here,
though none that demand turning in your existing
Home Mini(s) to your local recycling centre. Among
the improvements: marginally better sound, a new
mounting hole, an additional built-in microphone, and
a machine-learning chip designed to make Google
Assistant faster and smarter over time. The Nest Mini’s
capacitive touch controls have also been shuffled and
refined, although they might still confuse someone
who isn’t familiar with the speaker’s tricks.
So, should you upgrade? Given the Nest Mini’s
inexpensive price tag (which will probably see steep
and periodic discounts in the coming months, if
history is any guide), a better question is: should you
buy a Nest Mini to go with your current Home Mini?
By all means, yes, particularly given the upcoming
Nest home monitoring features that both the Nest
Mini and Home Mini will support. More on that in a bit.
If you haven’t jumped on the smart speaker
bandwagon yet, the Google Nest Mini makes for
a great place to start, particularly if you’re a loyal
Google user. Of course, the £49 Amazon Echo Dot
(fave.co/36sqgdM) remains a worthy Nest Mini
competitor, particularly when it comes to Alexa’s
dominance in the area of smart home voice control.
That said, considering their inexpensive price tags,
you don’t necessarily need to pick one over the other
- even if you use an Android smartphone.
Design
Set the Nest Mini next its predecessor and you’ll have
difficulty telling them apart. They both bear the same