Google Nest Mini review

We’ve been talking at and listening to the Nest Mini for a couple of weeks, making sure everything works as advertised: from cueing up music tracks to setting timers to converting between various weights and measures.

In short, we’ve been getting the Nest Mini to do everything that it possibly can do, and at a variety of volumes, both using voice commands and via the companion Google Home app.

If you’ve set up any other Google smart home kit – like a Chromecast or a Nest camera – then you’ll already be familiar with the Google Home smartphone app.

It’s available for both Android phones (on the Play Store) and iPhones (on the App Store), and it takes you step by step through the process of getting the Nest Mini up and running.

And we really do mean step by step: you plug the speaker in using the supplied power cable, then load up the app on your phone and you’ll see a prompt straight away to set up the Nest Mini.

With a few taps on the screen, and having said a few sentences to get the speaker used to your voice, you’ll be up and running. The device is connected to the web and ready to go.

A lot of the functionality of the Nest Mini relies on third-party services: Google Calendar for your appointments, for example, or Spotify for your music (see the full list of compatible services).

Getting these accounts connected is as simple as entering the relevant username and password, and they can be added to the speaker straight away or set up at a later point. If you’ve already added them on another Nest speaker or display, they don’t need to be set up again.

The Nest Mini is almost small enough to fit in your palm – it measures 98mm in diameter and stands 42mm high. That makes it incredibly easy to position just about anywhere, from the end of a bookshelf to a bedside table to a kitchen windowsill.

There’s also a cut out on the base for hanging it on the wall, giving you another option (but don’t forget you’ll still need to be able to plug the power cable in).

You can pick up the Nest Mini in chalk (white and grey), charcoal (black), sky (light blue) and coral (a bright-ish red), which is a decent selection of colours. It means the speaker can easily blend in with its surroundings, whatever they happen to be.

There’s a nice fabric cover on top of the speaker, with four status lights shining through – these show volume levels, indicate when the speaker is in listening mode, and more.

There are invisible touch controls on top of the speaker that let you start and stop audio playback, and adjust the volume. You also get a physical switch on the base to switch off the microphone, if you’d rather the device wasn’t constantly listening for you to speak out a voice command.

We’d say Google has done a good job with the aesthetics here, producing something that’s minimal but not boring.

There are a number of ways to interact with the Nest Mini. You can simply start talking to it, and the on-board Google Assistant will respond to your commands and answer your questions: you just say “hey Google” followed by your instructions or requests.

It’s the same Google Assistant that you might already know from a phone, tablet or smartwatch – it’s in a lot of places now.

Telling your smart speaker to start playing some rock music, or getting it to translate a phrase into Spanish, or asking it when an historical event happened feels a little bit like living in a sci-fi world – and it all works seamlessly.

Words and phrases are recognised almost instantly no matter where you are in the room, and responses come back in seconds.

We don’t have room to cover absolutely everything Google Assistant can do, but it’s a long and impressive list.

Using your voice you can set timers and alarms, tune into radio stations, make audio calls to other people, pull up information from the web, listen to the news, check the local traffic conditions, find out where the nearest coffee shop is, and more besides – just like chatting to someone in the room with you.

When it comes to playing audio – so music, audiobooks, podcasts and the like – you are somewhat limited in terms of what you can listen to via voice commands. The apps have to be supported by the Nest Mini, so that the right instruction gets the right result.

However, the smart speaker also supports the Chromecast standard, which means you can wirelessly stream audio from just about any phone or tablet app over to the device – you just need to do this from your mobile gadget, rather than using your voice. Again this is simple and easy to do, though not as convenient as using your voice.

There’s no physical audio input on the Nest Mini, but the final connection option is good old Bluetooth.

This widely supported standard means it’s straightforward enough to pipe audio over to the speaker from just about any phone, tablet or laptop out there.

In short, you’ll have no problems getting the Nest Mini to do your bidding, whether that’s by asking it politely or wirelessly beaming over music from your phone.

We’d say Google Nest Mini sound quality is better than you would expect from a speaker of this size, without rivalling the bigger, more expensive speakers out there (including the larger Nest Audio).

You can fill a small room with audio of a decent fidelity, but audiophiles will notice a lack of bass and a certain tinniness to the sound as the volume starts to ramp up.

For most people though, the sound of the Nest Mini will be perfectly satisfactory – it’s an upgrade over a lot of speakers that come integrated into monitors and laptops, and it’s definitely a better option than your phone’s built-in speaker.

Audio quality matters less on audiobooks, podcasts and talk radio, so it’s only really your music where the limitations of the device start to appear.

We tested the Nest Mini with both quiet acoustic albums and heavy rock albums, and it definitely does better on the former – quiet and delicate sounds are well replicated, whereas the detail tends to get lost in mushiness if you’re playing something that’s got a louder and harder edge to it.

So, is the Google Nest Mini a good speaker? If you’re serious about listening to your tunes at a high quality, then you’ll consider whether the extra cost of a more expensive speaker set worth it.

If you’re not, the Nest Mini will do just fine for casual listening – and you might find yourself wondering why anyone would want to pay any more.

We’ve already spoken about how comprehensive Google Assistant is, but it’s only when you use something like the Nest Mini that you realise just how much it can do.

It can tell you jokes, read out sports scores, convert between units of measurement, and plenty more – if it’s a question that you can get an answer for from Google, then it’s likely that Google Assistant knows the answer too.

The Nest Mini – via Google Assistant and the Google Home app – can also help manage your smart home too. A wide variety of smart home devices are compatible with Google Assistant, from smart lights to smart locks, and supported devices can all be managed through voice commands on the Nest Mini.

In other words, you can tell your Nest Mini to turn off the smart lights in the bedroom, for example, or turn up the temperature on your smart thermostat.

This just adds to the feeling of convenience and intuitiveness that the Nest Mini exudes. It’s almost like it works by magic: operating other devices, pulling music out of the ether, reading out the football results from last night, and so on.

Admittedly you might have concerns about introducing a smart speaker into your home that’s always listening – and you need to trust Google when it says that it’s not doing anything sinister with that data.

Some snippets of conversation are saved to help Google train its voice recognition algorithms, and to recognise when you might be asking a follow-up question – see here for the full privacy policy. There is also that physical microphone switch that stops the Nest Mini from listening.

The Nest Mini doesn’t have the audio performance of more expensive speakers, but at £49 it represents great value for money.

You’ve got respectable sound for a speaker of this side, and you’ve also got everything that Google Assistant brings with it – and the assistant is getting cleverer all the time.

You can find a few speakers that are a little cheaper than this, but not by much, and they won’t offer all of the smart functionality. Bear in mind that the Nest Mini is often discounted by Google, and is often included in special offers.

If you do decide to buy two of them, you can use the Google Home app to set them up as a stereo pair: this gives you double the sound capacity, and the audio services that you connect up to the Nest Mini pair will automatically separate out the left and right channels where available, piping them to the correct speaker.

The main rival that’s up against the Nest Mini is the Amazon Echo Dot – which not coincidentally has a very similar retail price of £55 (though you’ll often find it available for less on the Amazon site).

The size is more or less the same as the Nest Mini, and you can expect the same sort of audio performance as well.

If you’re willing to spend a bit more money for a richer sound experience, then the bigger Amazon Echo, the bigger Nest Audio, and the Nest Mini-sized Apple’s HomePod Mini (with Siri as the smart assistant) are all available for around the £100 mark.

If you want your music to sound better while still not having to spend a substantial sum, then they’re worth considering as alternatives to the Nest Mini.

The Nest Mini is a great little smart speaker, and we’re struggling to find anything negative to say about it. It lacks the audio punch of larger, more expensive speakers of course – but considering what you’re paying, it does a great job with your music and other audio.

Google Assistant is the star of the show, and buying something like the Nest Mini can transform how you look up information on the web, listen to your tunes and podcasts, control other devices in your home, and plenty more besides.

To be completely fair though, the same could be said of most smart speakers on the market – there are several excellent ones to choose from.

If you’re going to go for the Nest Mini over any of its competitors, it’s really the dinky size and the low price that’s going to appeal most of all. You might even want to kit out several rooms in your home with one of these.