Tichome Mini evaluation: an intelligent assistant that can be carried with you.

IT 168 What is the best carrier to evaluate artificial intelligence? Cell phone? Home smart stereo? Maybe this is a false proposition in itself. Because the essence of artificial intelligence is an algorithm, it can also be understood as a way of thinking of machines, which can be integrated with the Internet of Things to make smart homes around us more "smart".

But before the grand plan of the Internet of Things is popularized, the market actually needs a product that can make artificial intelligence at your fingertips. Mobvoi is a pioneer in developing such products in China. The birth of smart watch Ticwatch, smart speaker Tichome and smart rearview mirror Ticmirror are all Mobvoi's thoughts on machine learning and human-computer interaction.

The Tichome Mini we evaluated this time is mainly portable. You can leave it at home or take it with you. The compact body gives it more scenes to display its skills. What is the comprehensive performance of such a smart speaker? Is it worth buying? This is the problem to be discussed in this paper.

Look at your face before you buy anything.

Whether it is online Taobao or shopping, the value of a commodity is definitely the first reference factor. For portable speakers, its purpose is not only to eat ash at home, but also to take it out with a face.

As can be seen from the packaging, the origin of Tichome Mini is not simple. The LOGO in the upper left corner represents the 20 17 Japanese good design.

Award, and enjoy the same honor as well-known explosive products such as Xiaomi MIX and Xiaomi VR.

Tichome Mini won this award probably because its simple and natural design concept attracted the Japanese. There are four symmetrical solid buttons and two noise-reducing microphone openings on the front.

When the computer is turned on, four interactive indicator lights will appear in the center of the four buttons. The indicator light * * * can display three colors, namely red, blue and orange. In addition, the indicator light can also interact with the user by flashing, breathing, continuous color change and so on. , intuitive and vivid, giving people a sense of intimacy.

At present, there are two color schemes to choose from: magic night white and elf black. One is smart, the other is deep and steady, with different temperament, and other new color schemes may be introduced later.

Design details show the truth

The body of Tichome Mini consists of three materials. The front area is made of silica gel, and the surface is finely frosted, which is very skin-friendly; The upper fuselage is sprayed with metal anodized aluminum ring to improve the texture and prevent wear; The plastic part at the bottom reduces the weight of the speaker, and its gentle texture also makes the user not as cold as metal when picking up the speaker.

The speaker opening part of the base is designed by arc transition, so that the sound emitted by the speaker will not be dull whether it is placed on the table or hung on the wall. In addition, it has a built-in 2500mAh battery capacity, which can play music continuously for 5 hours or stand by 16 hours after being fully charged.

In addition, it is worth mentioning that there are two noise-reducing microphone openings on the surface of the speaker, and their "disorderly entry" makes the four buttons that were completely symmetrical somewhat "unbalanced" and loses a certain sense of beauty. It will be more orderly if you can choose to open holes from both sides of the speaker.

To be an assistant, you must study first.

Tichome Mini has an independent "brain" instead of sharing the "IQ" of mobile phones via Bluetooth. It is paired with the mobile phone in different ways through Bluetooth, but through WIFI. As long as the paired mobile phone and Tichome Mini are in the same network, they can be connected to each other.

When the mobile phone is paired with the speaker to help the speaker connect to the network, you can play your own wisdom. In my experience, what it can do is far beyond my imagination. According to my understanding of the smart speaker, its functions are roughly to check the weather, play music, be used as an alarm clock when you die and so on. But after reading the list of skills, I realized that the functions I can think of are just the tip of the iceberg.

How to describe its many functions? Let's just say that I slipped wildly in its skill list, and it took me nearly 5 seconds to slide to the end! Compared with the few functions of general smart speakers, Mobvoi is simply a clean stream of artificial intelligence assistants.

There are too many functions, so I won't list them one by one. I'll just pick up my favorite function and briefly introduce it.

1，Evernote。

This function is comparable to the "flash capsule" in Lao Luo's mouth, and it is my favorite. First of all, I am a loyal user of Evernote. I usually use Evernote code word. Its biggest advantage is that it can use mac, ios and Android on multiple platforms, and I can synchronize in time no matter what device I use.

When I authorize Tichome Mini, I just need to say "I want to take notes" to it, and then I may directly say some thoughts at that time. There will be a notebook named Mobvoi in my Evernote APP, which will store my recordings and convert the voice into text at a glance. In addition, it also supports cloud notes with the same function.

2. Listen to the news.

In fact, there is nothing to say, just watching a news, not a novel. However, the news broadcast by Tichome Mini is not the main news of the day. It also supports the broadcast of entertainment news, financial news, internet news and other news you want to hear, even the content being discussed in Weibo.

3. Encyclopedia of People.

This function is my girlfriend's favorite. She always asks Tichome Mini: "Is XXX (a star) cheating?" "Who is XXX's husband?" "How many children does XXX have?" Waiting for a series of gossip questions, the key is that the speaker can really answer her.

In addition, Tichome Mini can not only achieve the above functions, but also be used in conjunction with LifeSmart.

The universal bowl realizes the control of traditional homes and the interconnection between smart homes.

Don't forget, it's also a speaker.

When we look at the "new species" such as smart speakers, we often ignore its own sound quality. Tichome Mini adopts 3W full audio speakers to ensure a powerful sound. 360-degree omnidirectional sound design can make sound transmission more balanced.

In terms of sound quality, Tichome Mini is better at expressing rich and deep music, and its tuning style is biased towards bass and midrange, and the treble is slightly worse. This may be because Mobvoi considers that its usage scene is not only playing music, but also users will use it to tell stories to children and broadcast news. The debugging orientation of middle and low frequencies makes people sound more comfortable.

I am one step away from "knowing you"

Speaking of now, it's time to give an example of the problems I encountered when using this speaker.

Tichome Mini gets the user's wake-up word "Hey! Quiz is used to activate voice interaction, so the ambient sound around the speaker will affect the probability of voice activation to a certain extent, and the distance between the user and the speaker and the size of the voice will also affect the activation rate. Therefore, when you put it next to the TV and sit on the sofa, it is difficult to wake it up. In addition, when it is playing music, you need to wake it up with a louder voice than usual.

Tichome Mini makes people worry about the activation rate in some scenes, and occasionally there will be false awakening. This phenomenon is random. When the microphone of the speaker can pick up human voices, there is a small chance, such as when two people are chatting, watching TV and so on. Of course, this situation is rare. It took me a week and only appeared 2-3 times.

Of course, these two problems are not limited to Tichome Mini, and smart speakers on the market will have the same problem more or less. If users want to get a better user experience, they still need to wait for Mobvoi to iterate on speech recognition technology.

Evaluation summary

Tichome Mini is a relatively rare type of smart speaker. It not only has the characteristics of general household smart speakers, but also makes it more portable because of its compact body. This portability allows users to use it in more scenes, and it is a good choice to hang it in the bedroom, living room, bathroom or carry it with you in a backpack.

Tichome Mini is priced at 499 yuan. For this price, Xiaomi AI speaker (Xiao Ai) and JBL Go Smart can be compared with it. Regardless of product appearance and brand premium, Mobvoi is in a leading position in content, function and speech recognition algorithm. If you want to buy a smart speaker for early adopters, but don't want to spend 1000 yuan to buy a home smart speaker, then Tichome Mini will be your best choice at present.