Mobvoi TicHome Mini: The Ultimate Portable Smart Speaker System
You might have had an impression that you need a Pixel phone in your pocket to take the help of Google Assistant in every walk of life, there is good news for you brought by a small portable smart speaker called TicHome Mini. It has inbuilt Google Assistant to deliver AI-powered help through voice commands in all walks of life.
With Mobvoi TicHome Mini in your pocket, you can stay connected with Google Assistant throughout the day. Whether finding your way to a specific address through asking your Google Assistant or enquiring about the available ticket in the nearby restaurant with a voice command to your Google Assistant, you can do all these and much more through TicHome Mini.
Design
The most formidable thing about this little device is it’s absolutely portable design allowing you to take it around. TicHome Mini is available several attractive colors such as teal, pink, black and white. The device is just 43mm tall and has an only 110mm diameter. All the devices come with beautiful silver edging with four distinct physical buttons on the top of the device.
Besides the buttons for increasing and decreasing the volume, there is also a power or mute button. There is also a dedicated button for facilitating dialogue with the inbuilt Assistant. In spite of these physical buttons, you hardly require using any of these buttons since just your voice command will be enough for all these actions. Weighing just 276g, it is extremely lightweight and does perfect justice to its cute portable built.
Battery life Not Bad, Not Very Good Either
The speaker comes loaded with a 2,600mAh battery which allows the speaker remain active and working for six hours at a stretch with just a single charge. Six hours battery life is not too less time, but for extended hours of outdoor use, it is not too good either. The only unattended thing is the charging point which looks old fashioned with micro USB charging. We were rather expecting it to have wireless charging. To add more annoyance, the device offers no specific way to see the battery level.
It Is Waterproof
The speaker also comes with IPX6 waterproofing to protect the device from normal splashes of water. This means you can carry it into the bathroom and keep it on a hook beside while taking your shower.
There’s Still Miles To Go About Connectivity
The most irritating issue is, when you get out of your home Wi-Fi with TicHome in your pocket, the Google Assistant may not work properly except for music playing. Outside of Wi-Fi connectivity the device comes with a lot of limitations about delivering smart features. But playing music from the smartphone through Bluetooth may just work fine anywhere.
Great Performance
It can be tiny and built, but TicHome Mini can just beat your expectations with unmatched performance in responding to voice command and speaker output. All that you can do by commanding Google Home at your home can just be performed smoothly with TicHome as well. You can make it play your favourite music playlist or any song from the streaming music service, check the daily weather, make it read-aloud news headlines, make a schedule, set reminders and all sorts of activities that you can make Google Assistant do.
Did We like It? Yes, Sort Of.
It is really challenging to talk about such appealingly beautiful and outwardly smart portable devices in negative terms. TicHome in spite of many shortcomings is unarguably street smart with a unique portable design allowing anyone to move it around almost anywhere within home or outside. It does worth attention because it took inside its palm hidden shape a gamut of smart interactive capabilities that we expect from Google Assistant. But on the flip side, it still has the scope to improve and get better by addressing few shortcomings.
Deservingly Pricey? Oh, Not At All!
When it comes to price, the new TicHome rather seem to be a little less ambitious with just a price tag of $99. For such a portable smart little speaker to interact with your voice commands, it seems like a no-brainer price rather.
Our Verdict
We all are aware of the new and raging smart speaker revolution ever since Amazon Alexa came into the scene with its smart interactive voice-controlled speaker system. Although since then a wide array of smart speakers arrived in the market, none of them came with such portable and movable design like TicHome Mini. That is exactly why it is worth the attention.
Bharat Mamtora is Online Marketer at Nimblechapps Mobile Game Development Company. We provide mobile game development services for iOS and Android Platform.