Finished with the sale of the last pieces, Home Mini abandons the official Google store, leaving space only for the range of smart speakers signed Nest
Thanks to a 50% discounted price, Google has managed to permanently empty its warehouses by selling all the remaining models of the smallest and cheapest smart speaker it had in its range. In this way, the Mountain View company will devote itself only to the sales of its successor and the new Google Nest range, composed of more competitive models in terms of price/features ratio.
The device that disappears from the shelves is Google Home Mini, the one that remains is Nest Mini. The latter costs the same as Home Mini, though it was launched two years later and with some substantial changes: larger speakers, additional microphone and a machine learning chipset (which allows it to process more commands without the help of the cloud, which improves privacy), just to name the most important ones. The design, however, has remained almost identical. From now on, you'll need to turn to third-party retailers to get a Home Mini, while from the official Google site you'll only be able to buy Nest Mini and Nest Audio. The differences between the two models are not that important and you will discover them as you continue reading.
Google Home Mini, what will happen to the smart speaker
Google has discontinued Home Mini, one of the most popular smart speaker models: for a long time it was Google's cheapest smart speaker, therefore the best-selling one. Although Nest Mini had already taken its place, the device continued to be marketed by virtue of its cheap price and features that allowed it a good longevity. Google, in fact, had launched it on the market in 2017 continuing to sell it on its official store until recently.
Home Mini is nothing more than an audio speaker connected to the Internet: it understands our language and can perform actions based on our voice commands. This is enabled by artificial intelligence and the excellent Google Assistant, a voice assistant also present on devices equipped with the Android operating system. But most of the commands were not processed by the device, which was limited to receive the activation words "Ok Google" and then pass the questions to Google's servers.
To put it into operation, however, has always been very simple: just plug it into the power and use the Google Home application on your smartphone to make it communicate with other smart devices. Probably, it was such peculiarities that allowed Home Mini to enjoy such an enduring success.
Google Nest, the current range of smart speakers
Currently, Google continues to market its Nest series smart speakers: Nest mini and Nest Audio. The first, as anticipated, is an evolution of Home Mini, which maintains its design and extremely competitive price. It is covered with recycled plastic, has LEDs that highlight the touch buttons for adjusting the volume and can be installed on the wall using a special support.
The main difference between Google Home Mini and Google Nest Mini is the presence, only in the second, of a chip capable of processing the simplest questions. This allows you to get faster results and send less data to Google, which improves privacy a bit.
Google Nest Audio is, instead, a higher-end device: it's bigger and uses a more powerful speaker, able to return a crisp sound and deep bass. The most important difference probably concerns the hardware: Nest Audio has a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 1.8 GHz processor, while Nest Mini can count on a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 1.4 GHz CPU.
Finally, within the Nest range, there is the only Google smart display currently available: Google Nest Hub, a 7-inch touchscreen smart display that, among its peculiarities has the "Soli" radar thanks to which it is able to perform precise sleep monitoring, if placed on the bedside table in the bedroom.