Sale! Google Home Mini Smart Speaker with Google Assistant – Chalk

★★★★★ Google Home -- they're all the same, other than the size of the speaker -- is a nice little gadget. NOTE: YOU HAVE TO HAVE WIFI TO USE IT!!! If you don't, it won't do you any good at all. It plays music with decent (no one would say "good") sound. This is especially good if you have Google Play Music or Pandora, in which case you can tell it exactly the music you want to hear, or the kind of music ("Hey Google, play Chicago II", or "Hey Google, play 70s slow dance music"). If you have Chrome TV, you can use voice commands to select programs on some channels, notably Netflix (no surprise, it doesn't work with Amazon Prime). It will give you the current time or temperature, or the forecast, or tell you what traffic will be like on your route to work. You can tell it items to add to your shopping list, and check the items off on your phone at the store, as you put them into the buggy. It will tell you bad jokes -- some so bad they're pretty good. 🙂 It will play trivia (and I think other games) with you. It will sit practically anywhere (we have it on a high shelf, where we can't really see it). It just needs to have its power cord plugged in, and be within hearing range. if you have more than one, you can network them together. The best use we've found for that so far is that we can send music from our phones to all of the units in the house, so we can listen as we go from room to room. I suspect there are other things -- maybe a way to use them as an intercom; it seems like that ought to be possible, but we haven't yet found a way. It's not going to change your life, but it's fun, and convenient to use, and has a couple of really nice features.

★★★☆☆ Setup was easy but I don’t have Home nor chromecast nor 90% of the other connections this offers. So it’s a nice talking weather app that can also answer questions some of the time or play music from YouTube or google play. Won’t connect to my google work calendar which is what I was interested in most. Google device can’t connect to google calendar. SMH. Glad I got it free with an eBay promo or I’d sent it back by now.

★★★★★ I have installed 7 of these throughout my home (counter top and ceiling mounted). I mainly use them to listen to music throughout the house as they can all be playing the same music at the same time. They are also just as easy to use as single room music if the rest of the family doesn't want to hear it. Much cheaper and easier to install and use than a whole house music system. They sound good, but obviously aren't large enough to provide extraordinary base. Besides the whole house music, the smart speakers' features are fun and occasionally convenient. I purchased a Bond and now have voice control over 6 of my ceiling fans/light fixtures after installing remote transmitters in each. I added a Nest Thermostat E and have remote and voice control over that as well. I already had a Chromecast on both TV's in the house and now have voice control over much of that content (pause, play, rewind so many seconds/minutes, stop, etc..).