When Google announced that its voice assistant service was coming to third-party hardware in August, one of the first Google Assistant-enabled devices the company teased was a smart speaker called the TicHome Mini.

Now that speaker is up for pre-order. It has a list price of $99, but it’s currently on sale for $79.

It’s also the first battery-powered smart speaker to support Google Assistant.

The TicHome Mini can do just about anything a Google Home speaker can do. You can use it listen to music, get news and weather updates, get answers to questions, set reminders, take notes, or control smart home hardware.

It also works as a Bluetooth speaker, and supports NFC to make it easy to pair the TicHome Mini with a phone.

Basically the little speaker is what you’d get if you added a battery to the Google Home Mini, allowing you to use it when it’s not plugged into a wall jack. The speaker is also splashproof with an IPX6 rating, which means you can use it in the kitchen or by the poolside (although you probably won’t want to drop it in the pool).

The TicHome Mini is 1.7 inches tall and has a diameter of 4.3 inches. It has a 3 watt speaker, a dual mic array, 4 RGB LED lights, and a 2,600 mAh battery for up to 6 hours of run time. Thre are volume, power, mic/mute and action buttons on top of the speaker.

It supports dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2 low energy.

The speaker comes in four color options: black, white, teal, and pink.

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4 replies on “TicHome Mini is like a battery-powered Google Home Mini”

  1. Interesting but the battery life is on the short side. Also I’d just as soon stay with the Google products because I know they will get updates right away. I also don’t worry about them not updating the firmware to take advantage of or correct problems with changes in the API.

  2. I have been planting roots in the Amazon garden for years now and recently I’ve been very pleased with the work Google has been doing in the smart speaker field. They’ve forced Amazon to innovate. I think Google’s best chance of success is thru independent third parties, just like they did with Android.

    I’ll stick to Amazon for a while longer until Google catches on to the fact that manufactures need more control of their device’s wake word. It would allow them to differentiate their brand. For me, the TicHome Mini could be competitive with Echo speakers if only it could activate to a different command than, “OK Google”. Amazon has what three of them right now, “Alexa, Echo, Computer and Amazon”, I guess that’s four. It can be done, so why not do it?

    1. I take your point but actually at least Google Home (and I’d bet the new MIni and Max) will also answer to ‘Hey Google’. So that’s two to Amazon’s four anyway.
      ‘Computer’ seems far too simple. A word which might commonly come up on its own. It doesn’t sit that will with me that Amazon gets an extra point for that one, but what-evs.
      I totally agree that Google entering the marketplace has forced Amazon to find another gear. I wish Google would now find another gear as well in like response.
      The interesting thing about this war from the consumer perspective is that there really is no reason to pick a side. You mention that you’ve been using Amazon for quite some time. But you could add a Google Home or Mini or whatever and lose nothing of that Amazon investment. You can run the two side-by-side because they don’t actually interfere with each other in any way.
      A lot of functionality would be duplicated of course, but not all of it. That’s the way with things in competition.

      1. Good post, but about the adding a Google Home and not losing the investment is not really the point. It just means that the marginal utility is less because of the duplicated function, making paying full price for a second ecosystem a hard sell.

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