This fall introduced new good audio system and shows from tech giants like Google, Amazon and Apple. The primary two, Google and Amazon, compete in a singular approach — with the price range good speaker. $50 good audio system just like the Amazon Echo Dot and Nest Mini (each presently on sale for even much less) have made good residence tech, a historically dear class, far more accessible to common customers. In truth, when you’ve got a sensible speaker in your countertop at residence, chances are high it is one in every of these two price range choices.
Learn extra: Apple HomePod Mini evaluate: iPhone house owners will love this $99 Siri good speaker
The competitors is fierce: the previous 4 years have seen Amazon and Google go tit-for-tat with their bite-size audio system, with the second-gen Dot, the Google Residence Mini, the third-gen Dot and at last the Nest Mini. However now, in 2020, Amazon has launched yet one more wallet-friendly good speaker, the fourth-gen Echo Dot. It boasts a bigger speaker than ever earlier than and a brand new, spheroidal form.
The query is, pitted towards final 12 months’s nonetheless aggressive Nest Mini, which speaker is best? Let’s discover out.
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HomePod Mini vs. Echo Dot vs. Nest Mini: Finding the…
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Amazon’s Echo Dot is impressive as ever. Its 1.6-inch speaker is half an inch larger than the previous generation’s, and it’s a few millimeters larger than the Nest Mini’s 1.58-inch speaker. Practically, this new Dot sounds fuller, with a slightly stronger bass than the Nest Mini — though the Nest Mini still offers comparable distinction to midrange tracks, such as in acoustic or classical music. The Dot also features a 3.5mm audio jack for connecting to bigger, better speakers, which is a nice touch for audiophiles.
The biggest difference, though, is in its voice assistant. The Echo Dot uses Alexa, Amazon’s assistant, which can do pretty much everything you need a voice assistant to do — control smart home devices, answer questions, play music and so on. Alexa can also do a few unique things, like listen for break-ins and check delivery statuses for Amazon Prime packages. If you have a Fire TV device, you can also tell Alexa to stream shows on your TV. Basically, Alexa is as smart as ever in the new Echo Dot.
The new Dot also features a new, spheroidal profile — it’s not exactly revelatory, but it’s a welcome evolution. For $50 (when not on sale), the whole package is great: it would’ve been hard to imagine getting a speaker this good for this price only a few years ago.
Read our full Echo Dot (2020) review.
Tyler Lizenby/CNET
Google’s Nest Mini, even a year from its release, is still a great smart speaker. It features strong clarity of sound for the size and price, and a surprisingly ample bass. Otherwise, a lot of the design features are similar to the Echo Dot: you have the cloth-topped design (made of recycled plastic), in coral, charcoal, chalk and a new blue hue called sky.
An ultrasound sensor system built into the top of the Nest Mini can also detect when you’re standing close to it, and then activate a pair of LEDs that point out the touch-based volume controls on top of the speaker. They were harder to find on the Home Mini, which lacked that feature.
An integrated bracket on the underside of the new Nest Mini makes it officially wall-mountable, but it doesn’t have the 3.5mm audio jack for plugging into bigger, better speakers — and that’s a big disappointment for audiophiles looking to add Google Assistant to older, non-smart speakers.
Google Assistant is marginally more naturalistic than Alexa, but they can basically do the same things. Unlike Alexa, Google Assistant works well with Google services and platforms like Calendar, Gmail and more — and it can work with Chromecast devices, as Alexa works with Fire TV devices.
Read our full Nest Mini review.
Which is better?
Disappointing as it may be to say, which device is better for you will likely come down to your preferred voice assistant. If you use Google platforms often, the Nest Mini adds a great deal of day-to-day administrative smarts that the Echo Dot can’t match. But if you’re more concerned about Amazon shopping, especially as we approach the holiday season, the Echo Dot will serve your needs better.
If the speakers are measured simply on their hardware, the Echo Dot has to get the nod for the slightly improved sound quality and the audio in/out jack, which makes listening to music better on Amazon’s device. But again, if one device is on sale (as Google’s Nest Mini is at the time of this article’s writing), then even a slight difference in price could legitimately swing the right decision one way or the other.
To see Google’s and Amazon’s full-size smart speakers compared, read our in-depth comparison.
