Google Home Mini vs. Amazon Echo Dot: The Best Pick for Cyber Monday 2018

The smart home revolution is underway and it’s about time for interested consumers to strike while the iron’s hot: The Google Home Mini and the Amazon Echo Dot are currently on sale for roughly half of their original asking price thanks to Cyber Monday deals.

Amazon users can pick up a third-generation Dot for $24 and Google has its mini speaker on sale for $25. This makes getting a speaker with a built-in voice assistant as affordable as buying a video game or ordering brunch. All of this accessible tech seems to be partially fueling the already-booming smart home industry that is forecasted to double in value come 2022.

As of 2016, the smart home market is valued at around $24.1 billion according to a report by Zion Market Research. By the time 2022 rolls around the research firm expects it to exceed $53.45 billion. Practically everyone, including scandal-plagued companies with a limited hardware background, released a product this year. Here’s how the two leaders in the industry, stack up.

Google Home Mini vs. Amazon Echo Dot: Size Is Not An Issue

The best part about both the Home Mini and Echo Dot is how compact they are. They’ll imbue your living room with A.I. capabilities while blending into furniture like a coaster would.

If you’re looking for the most compact out of the two, the Home Mini just edges out the Echo Dot by a few fractions of an inch. It comes in at 3.86 inches in diameter and 1.65 inches in height. While Amazon’s device is 3.9 inches wide and 1.7 inches tall.

If you choice comes down a purely aesthetic decision. The slightly larger Echo Dot comes in black, gray, and white color options, as opposed to the Home Mini that comes in white, black, and bright coral.

Google Home Mini vs. Amazon Echo Dot: How’s The Sound Quality?

Both devices are speakers, so the real question is: Do they slap?

Amazon launched its new Echo Dot during a surprise September hardware launch and it’s got the best sound quality offered on the Echo Dot line. The company says it’s 70 percent louder than the pervious Dot and Dan Seifert from The Verge seems to agree saying that it packs a “surprisingly loud and rich sound.”

The Home Mini is touted as being able to deliver immersive “360 sound” with its design, but reviews suggest it might not provide the same quality as an updated Echo Dot. Cameron Faulkner from Tech Radar said it makes “a better desk buddy than standalone speaker.”

So if you’re looking something to set the mood at your holiday party, it seems like Amazon’s option is the way to go.

Google Home Mini vs. Amazon Echo Dot: Google Assistant or Alexa?

For some, the most decisive factor will come down to the voice assistant. So are you team Google Assistant or Alexa? At the moment, the United States is decisively on Amazon’s side.

The e-commerce giant is currently dominating the U.S. smart speaker market making up 61.9 percent of market share according to a 2018 VoiceBot.ai Consumer Adoption and Attitudes report. But its voice assistant sometimes seems conspicuously tailored to making shopping on Amazon a breeze, for example by letting you confirm orders with a simple command.

This could change with the soon-to-be-released Duplex update. Its voice assistant is arguably the most state-of-the-art on sale at the moment, and will give the Google Assistant the ability to book appointments over the phone with an almost indistinguishable human voice.

Fortunately these two trade-offs are relatively simple for consumers. If you’re primarily looking for a speaker that can blast tunes, you’ll want the Dot; if you’re angling for the most impressive voice assistant, then the Google Home Mini is probably going to be your best buy.