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00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave 2D here, and this is a video on the Google Home Mini and the
00:09Amazon Echo Dot. So this thing just came out, the Google Home Mini. It's 50 bucks. It's
00:14relatively inexpensive, but it's just so much cheaper than its predecessor. That thing was
00:18120 bucks, I think. This is like less than half price, and it looks nice, right? But
00:23just because it's new and it looks a heck of a lot nicer than this, it doesn't mean
00:27that it's inherently better than this, right? I've been using this quite a bit, the Amazon
00:32Echo Dot, and it's a very good product, but depending on what you do and what you don't
00:37do, one or the other might be a better fit. So that's what this video is. It's going to
00:42talk about what these products are, what they aren't, and I guess kind of a guide as to
00:47whether or not any one of these are actually a good purchase for you. So I'm going to focus
00:51on three things. First, let's talk about using these things as media controllers. So they're
00:56both pretty good as media controllers. This thing, the Google Home, two things kind of
01:01bug me about it. It doesn't have an audio jack out. So if you have a pair of speakers
01:06that you want to connect it to, like a hardwire, you can't do that. And it also doesn't technically
01:11have Bluetooth. Like it does, but you can't just connect it to a Bluetooth-enabled speaker.
01:16You need to connect a Chromecast audio to some speakers, and then now they can talk
01:22wirelessly. And I mean, that's just a bit of a money grab from Google, and they're just
01:26basically trying to keep the Chromecast audio product alive. And it's fair, but if you're
01:32looking for good audio and just like simple audio with less wires and stuff like that,
01:37it's going to cost you a little bit more with this device. With the Amazon Echo Dot, it's
01:42got an audio out, so it's just, you plug it up and you're good to go. Both of them can
01:46be used as speakers. The Google Home Mini is probably a little bit better sounding.
01:50It's not like much better because neither of them are very good, but it does sound a little bit
01:54cleaner and just a little more depth to the audio. It does have upward firing speakers.
01:58I'm not sure if that's making a big difference, whereas the Amazon Echo Dot has downward
02:02firing speakers. So when it's on a table, it's just the sound is projected off of the surface.
02:07They both handle TV well. This thing needs Chromecast. This thing needs the Fire Stick.
02:19They both have their advantages inherently just from the products of Fire Stick versus
02:24Chromecast, but they both work. And I wouldn't say that one is like massively better than the
02:29other in terms of their video playing capabilities. One thing I have noticed with the Google Home
02:33products, and it's not just with the Google Home Mini, it's with all of the Google Home
02:36products, you can speak more naturally to them. Whereas the Amazon products, you need to just hit
02:41those keywords for it to be able to trigger the command that you're trying to make it do.
02:54And because of that difference, I find it easier and just more enjoyable to control
02:58my media using Google Home products. The one big advantage with this though,
03:02and this probably won't apply to most people, is that if you are an audiobook user or just more
03:07particularly Audible, this thing can do like text to speech and it can just read out stories,
03:13which is super cool. It's so simple. I feel like this is something that Google Home should be able
03:17to do, but it doesn't. I use Audible and I like audiobooks. So yeah.
03:26The next thing I want to talk about is using these devices as an assistant. So either a home
03:31assistant or a work assistant or any kind of like voice operated assistant. And both of them are
03:36pretty good, but the winner to me is the Google Home product. This thing has just better connectivity
03:42for what I use. So everyone's going to be different. I use a lot of Google services,
03:46particularly Google Calendar, and this is excellent for that.
03:49Hey Google, what's my calendar like tomorrow?
03:54Tomorrow there are three things on your calendar. The first one is at 12 30 a.m
03:58and its title is Busy Stuff 1. Google Home can distinguish between different voices. So if you
04:04have one device in a household with different people in it, they can ask it with their own
04:08voice and it'll react accordingly. So if you have a different calendar from your wife or your family
04:13members, it'll just read your calendar out to you and tell you your schedule. And same thing with
04:18like making calls. So if you say, or if I said, hey Google, call my mom, it would call my mom.
04:23But if my wife said the same thing, call my mom, it would call her mom because our voices are
04:28different. Now the Amazon Echo Dot is actually connected to even more services, in particular
04:35Microsoft Outlook. So if you're an Outlook user, you got to go with this thing. It doesn't even
04:40work on the Google Home products. When it comes to asking it questions, and this is something that I
04:44don't use very frequently. I mean, it's very cool. It's kind of like trivia time, but it's not
04:48something that I use regularly. Google Home crushes Echo. It's just not even close. I want to
04:54say it's like one to 10 in terms of the number of questions that are answered. It's just so much more
04:59robust in terms of its knowledge base. And a large part of that comes from the data collection.
05:03Google has been collecting data forever, and I feel like it'll be really hard for Amazon to ever
05:09catch up in that regard. Hey Google, do you like Siri? You know Siri? What a small world. Hope
05:16she's doing well. Now the one assistant type feature that Amazon is just amazing at is shopping
05:22because of Amazon's e-commerce power. Right now it's pretty good. Like if you need to refill
05:27something, you can just request it and it shows up in your Amazon cart. But I think the future
05:31of Amazon's Echo products are going to revolve entirely around the whole e-commerce thing. And
05:36that could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it, but I really do think
05:39that's the future of Amazon. Now in terms of using these products as home automation, I got to be
05:45completely honest, I don't love home automation right now because I live in a relatively small
05:50condo. It's like a small space. Home automation isn't that important to me. There's like one large
05:55living space. All the cool stuff that you can do with home automated stuff just is less appealing
06:00in such a small space. But I recently got a house and I've been looking between these two to kind of
06:06see which one would be better from home automation. And surprisingly, even though this thing's called
06:10Google Home, the Alexa products or the Echo products are just so much better. Just they're
06:15able to connect to way more home automation stuff. So if that's your jam, if you're looking for home
06:21automation, the Echo products are the way to go. But you can't go wrong with either of them. They're
06:26both really inexpensive. If you're looking for something that's aesthetically pleasing, the Google
06:30Home Mini looks nice and it's better answering questions, making phone calls. It's just not great
06:35as an audio controller because it lacks connectivity. But the Amazon Echo Dot has a
06:39line out so it might be a little bit cheaper and better for music controls. And it's going to have
06:44better home automation connectivity. So everything I've talked about so far is pertinent to right now
06:50in late 2017. And all it takes is Google or Amazon to just tweak a little bit of their software.
06:55And these things suddenly have new functionality and new features. And you don't have to buy new
06:59hardware, right? This is always going to just have a speaker and a mic and a power source. And it can
07:05do all of the stuff that we've talked about. And it can do any future things that Google wants these
07:10things to do. Like, it doesn't do very much processing. So yeah, I mean, these are so inexpensive.
07:1550 bucks. You can definitely get into the game of whole home automation or just smart stuff and
07:22check it out. Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it.
07:26See you guys next time.