HomePod Mini is a waste of money, unless you like screaming at your dumb robot that never understands what you want it to do

Setting timers works well though

HomePod Mini is primarily a speaker you can AirPlay to which happens to have some basic voice control functionality. I'd really love them to be a bit more usable (in particular I want to be able to change the app it sends reminders to) but my experience has been that they're fine for music, timers, and basic smart home control.

+1 to this we had a set of HomePod minis for intercom and not only do they not work reliably, but the diagnostics provided when they fail are non-existent, making it hard to improve the setup.

> Setting timers works well though

This is Siri’s primary use case, at least I assume so based on my experience.

As long as the timer isn’t for 50 minutes.

Or between 13 and 19 which intermittently is interpreted as 30 or 40 etc. Maybe it's just my enunciation.

They're nice little speakers that also do well when controlling things through Apple Home, setting alarms, timers, reminders etc.

I'd love to know the % of Alexa Dots (whatever the small ones are called now) that are used for anything more than this.

I have one for settings timers when cooking and playing music.

Maybe I'm just not creative enough, but I don't see anything else I would want it to do.

We have Google Home Minis in every room and the screens in bedroom and kitchen and the only thing that works reliably to message intra-room is to say "Hey Google, broadcast message" because half of the time it will tell me it can't send messages yet. If someone knows what I'm doing wrong I'd love to hear it since this would be a great feature.

To be honest, I'm honestly sick of Google Home's approach to this since the Gemini update has turned everything really slow and I'm getting close to the point where I'd rather home-roll a full system myself that works reliably instead of the crapshoot that this is. Home Assistant seems to have a functionality bridge to Google Home connected devices like my blinds or cameras so I should be able to retain the edge devices but I have half a mind to just dump the whole thing and start over.