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Voice Assistants

Echo Dot 5 vs Nest Mini: The Small Speaker Showdown

2023 · From the Tech with Asher channel · Watch below or read on

Two small speakers, one job: put a voice assistant in every room without the room noticing. The Echo Dot 5 and the Nest Mini are both almost exactly four inches across, and that is where the similarities start running out. I have both on the desk; here is the honest comparison.

Shape decides where they live

The Dot 5 is a sphere; the Nest Mini is a flat puck. That sounds cosmetic until you try to place them. The Mini hangs flat on a wall with a cheap adapter, tucked into a kitchen corner in stealth mode, invisible. The spherical Dot has to sit on a surface, in the open. If you want your assistant unseen, the Mini wins before either says a word.

The Dot's hidden hardware

• An accelerometer with gesture control. When the morning alarm goes off, you tap the top of the sphere and it snoozes. Once you have done it half-asleep, you will not want a speaker without it.
• A temperature sensor. Open the Alexa app and see the actual temperature of the room the Dot sits in, no thermostat required. The Mini has no equivalent; in Google's world that reading requires a Nest thermostat or sensor.
• A stronger speaker. The Dot's 1.73 inch front-firing driver is clearly the better listen, and you can pair two Dots as a true stereo left and right, or add an Amazon bass speaker to the family.

The Mini's quiet strengths

Three microphones instead of fewer means it hears you reliably from across a noisy kitchen, near or far. Its capacitive buttons are invisible but real, tap the sides for volume. And both devices cover 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi, though neither is Wi-Fi 6 yet; the Dot adds mesh-network abilities with other Amazon gear.

The ecosystem question matters less than it used to

I used to buy strictly by family: a Google home or an Amazon home. That logic is dissolving. Amazon devices now show Nest thermostats and Google cameras, and the arriving Matter standard lets gear from different companies talk directly. Buy the speaker you like, not the badge on it.

The verdict

I give this one to the Echo Dot 5: the accelerometer, the temperature sensor, and the stronger speaker add up to more everyday usefulness. But if your goal is an invisible helper mounted flat on the kitchen wall, the Nest Mini earned its spot there, and no Dot can follow it.