I've owned a Google Home Mini for three months now - here are the 4 biggest issues I have with it

As a person who sleeps with the TV on, I've had to get up in the middle of the night multiple times to physically unplug the Google Home Mini because it was awakened by someone on the TV saying something that remotely sounds somewhat similar to the phrase, "Hey, Google," and then tried to interpret what was said on TV into a function.

I know, this seems like a fairly rare, easily avoidable problem. But until you've been woken from a deep sleep by an eerily deadpan robot-woman yelling, "Sorry, I don't know how to help with that," or an unidentified Spotify playlist blasting at full volume, you won't know the pain I've endured.

The Google Home app seems like a great idea.

In theory, it should show me what's currently playing through my Google Home Mini (whether it's a YouTube video, show on Netflix, playlist, podcast, or whathaveyou) and allow me to pause, control volume, rewind, and all the other functions that you usually find on a remote control. In addition, the app is intended to offer content that I might be interested in, and offer helpful tips and suggestions for using the Google Home.

In reality, the app is never synced with what's really happening in my device, rendering it pretty useless as a replacement for the remote control. The "Browse" section is entirely generic, and not catered to my search histories at all.

The suggested commands are helpful, and I'm often surprised at some of the cool things I can ask the device. One of my favorites right now is, "Ok, Google. Tell me a joke." Unfortunately, I have no reason to open the app and browse the suggested commands if it's otherwise of no use to me, so I rarely interact with it.

I am — for better or worse — an iPhone User. But my boyfriend, who also lives in the apartment and regularly interacts with the Google Home Mini, owns the Google Pixel XL.

While his experience with the Google Home Mini is similarly disappointing in the general sense, his Pixel phone is surprisingly more compatible with the device than my iPhone, despite the fact we use all the same apps to interact with it.

Google Assistant syncs more quickly and more often with the Google Home app on my boyfriend's phone, and actually works reliably as a remote control by changing his phone's lock screen to reflect whatever is playing through the speaker, which is pretty clever. On my iPhone, meanwhile, the remote control feature only works about 50% of the time simply because of the syncing issues.

The Google Home family is supposed to support all devices from both Android and iOS, so I don't understand why his phone seems to be given preferential treatment. Of course, this may be unique to my experience, but it's frustrating nonetheless.