Google Nest Mini (Chalk, 2nd Generation)

Design

In spite of the Nest Mini’s affordable sticker price, there’s nothing about its design that alerts you that this is indeed a cheap speaker: The design is modern, clean and unobtrusive, especially if you buy it in a subtle color like Chalk or Charcoal (grey-black). If you want to spice things up with the two more colorful options – Coral (pink-red) or Sky (light blue) – you can certainly do so, but those might not fit with everyone’s living room decor.

Features

While the addition of Bluetooth is great (and, as you’ll see in a minute, desperately needed), the primary way of interfacing with the Google Nest Mini is, obviously, Google Assistant.

If you tried other virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa or Bixby in the past, or have tried Google Assistant on another Android device, you’ll know what to expect here – a solid assistant that can tap into your calendar to make appointments, set reminders and timers, control the music from popular streaming services, connect to some smart TVs and answer many – but not all – of the questions you can come up with on a day-to-day basis.