Black Friday sales may be over, but it looks like you can still get a deal on Google Home Mini with most retailers slashing the price of the smart speaker to as low as $53.
It may not be slashed on the Google Store, but Google Home Mini has been slashed from its normal $79RRP to as low as $53 at Harvey Norman and Office works, while The Good Guys have it for $54 and JB Hifi for $55. Home Mini is only available in Charcoal (Black) or Chalk (Grey) from retailers, and it appears that Officeworks is all but out of stock of Charcoal.
If you’ve got your heart set on the Coral coloured Google Home Mini (you’re not alone), you will have to pay $79 on the Google Store unfortunately.
In the US, Google has dropped the price of Google Home Mini to just $29USD until the end of the year. There’s no word on how long this special will last for so head into one of these retailers and grab it while it’s on-sale.
All we need now is for the bigger Home to go onsale to a reasonable price ($99 has a nice ring). Since Amazon have decided to screw up, it’s an ideal opportunity for google to tie up the Oz market going forward …
I’m still to discover the actual use of the Mini that I got free from a Woolies promotion, beyond telling it to play my playlists on Spotify and what the weather is. I can’t get it to communicate with my chromecast, and I don’t have a smart TV.
You can setup rooms in the Home app. It’s more powerful with more connections and putting up grouping like this. For instance we use it to control our lights, set cooking and tea timers, I use broadcast to let my partner know when I’m on the train home so she can leave to pick me up. We have two Chromecast and it’s great being able to even turn the tv on and off via the Chromecast. I’ve set the room’s default Chromecast on each of ours so if you talk to the loungerooms mini it will control the loungerooms cast… Read more »
Is your TV a smart TV, if not how do you get your chromecast to switch it on? I also forgot about searching, I have used it once or twice.
Your TV doesn’t have to be “smart”. Often in the tv settings there is an option that allows you to control the tv with other hmdi devices. Different devices call it different things but what you’re looking for is CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) function. Turn it on and then you can tell the Google Home to turn off the tv. It will trigger your connected Chromecast to turn off the tv. I believe it can turn it on also if Chromecast is independently powered – but I’ve not tested this as mine is powered by the tv.
You’re correct Tim; some TVs output USB power to the ports even if the TV itself is off, so yeah you can use CEC to control your TV via Chromecast and Google Home quite easily.