Xiaomi Mi Smart Speaker Review

Here’s my review of the Mi Smart Speaker, after about a month of using it. I should mention that the streaming service I use is Spotify.

In short, the speaker’s pretty bad:

• Default eq settings have waaaay too much bass. There’s an option to change it, but it’s very limited.
• When listening to music, it’s pretty common to hear a buzz, a sound that makes me think that there’s something moving inside that shouldn’t be. (Update: it’s just the sound of the speaker vibrating on top of the ground. You can silence it by putting some books or other weight on top, but then the mic has trouble hearing you).
• Worst of all: Half the times I tell it to play something, it just says that something went wrong¹. This seems to be an issue with a lot of Google Assistant speakers though, so maybe it’s not Xiaomi’s fault. Update: As of December 2023, this doesn’t happen anymore, at least not so much that it’s annoying.

I haven’t done a thorough comparison on all smart speakers in this price range, to be honest I have only tried this one. But if this is (as they say) the best one you can find under $50, you may want to just save your money.