Now that I have had the Google Home Mini at the house for a few days, I wanted to give a few quick first impressions of how I feel about the device.  Overall, I think this is a great value at a retail price point of $49, but more thoughts follow below.

Things I like:

• Size and design – it really IS a donut sized device and would fit in seamlessly just about anywhere (kitchen, bedroom, living room, etc…)
• Features – right away, if you’ve used the Google Assistant on your mobile phone, you know what to expect from the home based unit.  You can now easily set up timers, alarms, ask basic fact queries, and other routine commands when away from your mobile phone.
• Ease of setup (hardware) – its literally plug and play.  You open the box, take out the cable and the Home Mini itself, and plug it in.  That’s pretty much as easy as it gets.

Things I don’t like:

• Ease of setup (software) – you need to have or download the Google Home app and then…its a series of button presses to get things going.  Its not hard to figure out, but its not exactly the most intuitive setup either.
• Microphone sensitivity – maybe its where I have the device located (up on a shelf where my Nexus Player and TV are) but it seems right now that I need to be relatively close in proximity to the device to issues commands and have it hear me and aswer.  More testing to come obviously.
• Sound quality – now to be fair, this isn’t a real deal breaker.  And it does play music easily and that’s what really counts.  I’m only saying don’t go expecting too much from a $49 speaker in terms of overall sound quality.

Be sure to stay tuned for our full review coming soon.  Feel free to leave any questions about the device in the comments section below.