Kiwi Design Google Home Mini G2 Wall Mount Review: Solving Problems That Aren’t There

Miniature smart speaker designs like the Google Home Mini and the Amazon Echo Dot are so small and handy that they beg to be placed in convenient places. And what’s more convenient than sticking them right next to the outlet that they’re plugged into?

That’s the idea behind the Kiwi Design G2 Wall Mount for the Google Home Mini. It’s not the only Home Mini mount that’s designed to attach directly to an electrical outlet, and unfortunately, it’s not the best, either. In trying to give a rigid wall mount extra flexibility, Kiwi removed some of its utility, making it harder to work in the limited space of a wall plug.

It’s a real shame, because in terms of aesthetics and materials this base is a winner. It’s also very reasonably priced at just twelve bucks. But the simple fact is, there are better options available if you want a semi-permanent wall mounted home for your Home Mini.

Keep It Simple (Or Don’t)

The Kiwi G2 consists of two pieces made almost entirely of silicone: a mount and coil that nestles the Home Mini’s standard plug, and a tray for the Home Mini unit itself.

The plug piece unwraps to allow you to coil the long excess of charger cord around it, then folds down to hide it. On the top of the plug piece and the bottom of the tray piece, there are strong magnets to keep the two together.

Assembly is fairly straightforward. Thread the cable through a hole in the mount, then let the plug nestle into its designated spot. Unfold the mount, wrap the cable up, thread a bit through the second hole, then fold it down again. Put the Home Mini in its tray, stick it to the plug, then plug the cable into the Home Mini and the charger into the wall. Stick the tray to the mount and you’re good to go.

Why multiple pieces, when other designs use a single piece of plastic to accomplish the same thing? Why indeed. The point seems to be that with an easily-detachable tray, you can move the Home Mini around your house at your leisure. Perhaps the point is to allow you to slip the Home Mini into Kiwi’s own battery base. But that doesn’t make a lot of sense: the battery base is designed to be used more or less continuously, and it can’t be stuck to the charger base. You’ll need to remove the Home Mini from the mount tray if you want to use the battery with its flush cup.

I would assume that most users looking to mount their Home Mini near a wall outlet want it to stay there essentially all of the time. That being the case, this product seems to have engineered a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist… and created another one at the same time.

Make Room! Make Room!

The magnetic mount design makes the entire G2 stick out horizontally from the power outlet in a rough cone shape. That’s unfortunate because it limits access to the remaining outlet (or outlets). Anything bigger than a standard plug just won’t fit.

Other designs for mini smart speakers handle space more efficiently by moving the speaker up or down the wall (depending on how you orient it). That functionality doesn’t exist with the G2 mount, having been sacrificed for the previously-mentioned magnetic attachment system.

The design also means that the whole getup pokes out of the wall by 3.3 inches, roughly double what it would need to with a design dedicated to more economical use of space.  You can use an included magnet to mount the Home Mini somewhere else on the wall, but the appeal of these docks is that they’re semi-permanent and won’t damage anything. This design is awkward, and it doesn’t need to be.

Better Options are Out There

Despite the low price, the nice feel of the silicone, and the color-matched options for the G2, it’s simply a poor choice compared to competing mounts for the Google Home Mini. It’s an unfortunate example of overdesign, perhaps in the hopes of differentiation: I get the impression that Kiwi wanted their dock to stand out from a crowd of very similar ones.

And it does, but not to its benefit. There are better choices if you’re looking for a way to get your Google Home Mini on the wall.