The announcement and release of Yandex Station took place in 2022 and, reading reviews of those years, I can say with confidence that Yandex has greatly improved the capabilities of its voice assistant - corrected errors, improved various aspects of interaction with the device, added radio, made integration with smart devices houses from various manufacturers, the ability to order a taxi and many other minor improvements. And new opportunities are constantly appearing thanks to the Yandex Dialogues platform. In general, the functionality is constantly expanding, which is good news. Although in 2021 the number of updates was noticeably less than in previous years.
Due to the abundance of different functions, I decided to split the review into two parts. The first will be a general overview of Yandex Station, its functions and capabilities, the second will be an analysis of integration with the Xiaomi smart home system.
Yandex Station only works if there is Internet access. She can't do anything without him. Nothing at all.
Specifications
| Sound | |
| Frequency range | 50 Hz - 20 kHz |
| Total power | 50 W |
| Woofers | 1 piece, 30 W, 85 mm |
| Tweeters | 2 pcs, 10 W, 20 mm |
| Passive radiators | 2 pcs, 95 mm |
| Signal to noise ratio | 96 dB |
| Number of microphones | 7 |
| Connection | |
| Video output | HDMI 1.4 |
| Video resolution | 1080p |
| WiFi | 802.11 b/g/n/ac, 2.4 GHz / 5 GHz |
| Bluetooth | 4.1/BLE |
| Other | |
| CPU | Allwinner R18 Quad-core ARM Cortex-A53, 1 GHz |
| GPU | Mali-400 MP2 |
| Persistent memory | 8 GB eMMC |
| RAM | 1 GB DDR3 |
| Nutrition | from power supply (20V DC) |
| Available casing colors | purple, black, gray, red |
| Dimensions | 141x231x141 mm |
| Weight | 2.9 kg |
Delivery set, appearance
The kit includes everything you need to operate the device: HDMI cable, instructions, power supply and Yandex Station.
The Station casing can have several color options - silver-gray, purple and black. I have the silver-gray model. If desired, you can always change it by searching for a new one on Avito or printing it on a 3D printer.
There is also a Red Station. Unlike regular ones, the red one comes with a monthly subscription. It cannot be repaid ahead of schedule, and if you do not pay for the month, the device is blocked. It is also tied to only one account, which cannot be changed until the end of the subscription. So be careful when buying second hand.
The station has a rectangular appearance, its dimensions are 141x231x141 mm. On the side there is a heatsink and connectors for HDMI and power. At the top are the controls: volume rocker, voice assistant launch button and microphone mute button. During operation, the radiator can heat up to approximately 50 degrees. This is normal, no need to worry.
There is also an LED backlight at the top that lights up both during Alice’s answers and during various problems (for example, lack of Internet) or while adjusting the volume, showing its current level.
Is it possible to connect speakers to Yandex Station? Unfortunately, there is no audio output for connecting external speakers. Alice outputs all sound only to her own speakers. However, an audio output for external speakers can be found in the Mini and Max versions.
The manufacturer also decided not to install a LAN port in the device, so the Station only supports wireless connections via Wi-Fi according to IEEE 802.11 b/g/n/ac standards, that is, it can operate in both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands.
Everything runs on a quad-core Allwinner R18 Quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor clocked at 1 GHz. GPU – Mali-400 MP2. RAM – 1 GB DDR3, permanent memory – 8 GB.
The device also does not have a built-in battery. Yandex positions the Station as a home voice assistant.
⇡#Conclusions
At first glance, Yandex.Station Mini is not particularly different from the already familiar compact speakers with Alice - Irbis A and DEXP Smartbox. And at the same time it costs more - 3,990 rubles versus 3,299 rubles for the DEXP device and 3,490 rubles for the Irbis (here it is worth clarifying that in Beru.ru this speaker can be bought for 3,290 rubles, and in Citylink there is now a special one for it price - 1,990 rubles). Whether a more thoroughbred design, better (subjectively, I admit) sound quality and gesture control compensate for this difference is up to you to decide. But personally, I will definitely prefer the original device from Yandex.
Sales of Yandex.Station Mini will begin on October 31. The device can be purchased online in Beru and Svyaznoy, as well as offline in the Yandex store. A company representative said that the day before, anyone would be able to get a speaker for free by bringing any unnecessary audio equipment to the Yandex store in Moscow.
About microphones and speakers
Yandex Station uses 7 microphones. It recognizes commands quite well when the speaker is in the next room, and in my kopeck piece I can launch the voice assistant from any room without raising my voice too much. Naturally, when it’s quiet around and all the doors are open. According to the manufacturer, the distance for effective recognition of requests is up to 7 meters.
As for the volume - there is plenty of it here - 3 speakers are used, the total power of which is 50 W:
- two tweeters of 10 W and a diameter of 20 mm;
- one 30 W woofer with a diameter of 85 mm;
- two passive radiators with a diameter of 95 mm.
And if at the time of release users complained about the sound being too loud at minimum values, now this has been corrected and the Station can be used comfortably at any volume settings. But Yandex has not yet responded to requests to add a quiet response when contacting in a whisper (like Alexa). The developers added the ability to whisper to Alice at the end of 2022. They asked quietly - she answered quietly. If you contact immediately after a recent launch, Alice will respond according to the last volume setting. But after five minutes of inactivity, the volume is reset to medium level. In any case, according to user reviews, this should be the case; my volume remains at the same level.
I won’t write anything about the sound quality - some people are satisfied with it, while others say that it is inferior to its competitors. All this is subjective, but I am more than tripled by the sound of the speaker. I’ll just note that despite a large number of requests, the developers never added an equalizer to the application.
By the way, Yandex Station supports a Bluetooth connection, which allows you to use it as an external speaker when transmitting sound from a smartphone. To activate, simply ask Alice to turn on Bluetooth. And there were some downsides here. First, when Bluetooth is turned on, anyone can easily connect to the speaker. The second is the impossibility of simultaneously streaming music via Bluetooth and using a voice assistant. Alice simply stops responding to voice commands.
How the column works
To activate the portable system, you need to say “Yandex” or “Alice”; this is especially convenient when your hands are busy with something or you cannot tear yourself away from your work to turn on the device. If you do not want the station to respond to your words, turn off the microphones by pressing the Off button. To set up the gadget, you will need an account on Yandex, where you need to enter your username and password when you turn on the speaker for the first time. The station operates from the network, which is simply necessary for such power. For some ordinary people this is a disadvantage, but Yandex does not yet have an alternative solution.
Why do you need Yandex Station? Review of the capabilities of a smart speaker with Alice
Since entering the market, the capabilities of the voice assistant have been greatly expanded - smart home support has been added, many different skills have appeared, and listening to radio stations has become available. And if earlier the feasibility of purchasing the Station was in question, now everyone will find something useful for themselves.
Voice commands
Want to know something? Contact Alice with the appropriate question and she will try to answer it using Yandex services, information from Wikipedia, or by searching for information on other sites on the Internet. This way you can find out about the weather, traffic congestion, exchange rates, ask to read current news, find the right recipe and much more. Accordingly, the quality of answers taken from the network depends on the sites on which Alice finds the necessary information.
Activation of the voice assistant is possible using one of two words - Yandex or Alice. You can choose the one that suits you in the settings in the smartphone application. So, if there is already Alice in the family, then no problems will arise when operating the Station. But you won't be able to change your voice.
I would also like to highlight the weather forecast. Unfortunately, Alice only voices temperature and precipitation. It does not provide information about pressure, wind, humidity and perceived temperature. Even to direct questions, like “tell me, what is the current wind speed,” Alice will not be able to answer anything. Although it would seem - take data from your own services, and answer. But no. I’ll say right away - if you need a detailed weather forecast, then use the “My weather forecaster” skill. Just say “Alice, my skill is a weather forecaster.”
What other queries does Alice support? Here are some of the options:
The first thing is to search for places nearby. For example, you can find out where the nearest pharmacy is, where to eat sushi or pizza, where you can get a haircut and other similar information.
The second is setting various reminders. In my opinion, this is one of the most useful functions. You can set an alarm clock (or several and put any melody on each of them), create a to-do list (add new ones and delete old ones), ask to be reminded of something on a specific day and time. You can start a timer, which will be useful when cooking or during morning exercises. Just say: “Alice, remind me to turn off the stove in 10 minutes” and Alice will set a timer, and after the time has passed, she will remind you what needed to be done.
Third, you can ask to convert a certain amount of rubles into dollars or another currency, find out how much a certain product costs (information is taken from the market), ask to translate some phrase from one language to another. Or you can simply ask to flip a coin. Or ask to recognize the track currently playing.
Fourth – help in cooking. Alice will find the required recipe (if it is available in the database), read out the list of ingredients and tell you step by step what needs to be done. After each stage there will be a pause - Alice will wait until you have done everything and tell you what to do next. The downside is that at the moment the list of available recipes is quite small - only 21 dishes. You can view it on the official website using the following link. More recipes are available in different skills, but I didn't like how they worked.
Possible voice commands for Alice can be found in the Yandex directory.
Alice recognizes when a child is speaking to her and when an adult is speaking to her. For each of these user types, you can configure content filtering:
Calls. How to call Yandex Station?
Not long ago it became possible to call the Station through an application on a smartphone. How to call Yandex Station:
- Launch the Yandex application;
- Go to “Devices”;
- Next, go to the “Device Management” menu;
- Press the call button.
- You can also enable the ability to receive calls received through Yandex Messenger in the settings. So, when you make a call, it will go both to the application on your smartphone and to the Station. To do this, select Yandex Station in the same device menu and enable “Receive incoming calls”.
When you call, Alice will tell you who is calling, after which you can accept or reject the call.
Call a taxi
Yes, the Station can call a taxi. Just say: “Alice, call a taxi” or make a detailed request, for example, “Order a taxi to General Lizyukov Street, 24, pay in cash.” When the car is found, Alice will tell you the number and make of the car, and also tell you the waiting time. Upon arrival, it will notify you by voice and send a notification to the application.
Skills
Skills are additional dialogues written by users for Yandex Station. This is an excellent move on the part of the developers, allowing them to constantly expand and complement the functionality of the device. To launch, just say: “Alice, launch the skill skill_name.”
A complete selection of skills can be found on the official website at the following link.
What functionality can be obtained from skills? You can turn on fairy tales and various games, launch a fitness assistant, culinary recipes and much more.
Despite all the advantages that skills provide, there are also a number of disadvantages:
- There are not so many really useful, interesting and well-developed ones. For example, in many skills, voice commands are very poorly developed - you say what needs to be done, but Alice does not recognize it.
- While the skill is running, it becomes impossible to perform other commands with the voice assistant. That is, until you leave the skill, you will not be able to find out the weather, check what time it is, and so on.
In any case, over time, each user himself selects useful skills for himself, so I will give only those that seemed useful and interesting to me.
Interesting skills for Alice
Fairy tales
This skill is ideal for those who have small children. A large selection of different fairy tales; the duration of the selected story is announced before starting. An important feature is excellent announcers who read the text with expression. And it, like other skills, does not require a subscription. To launch the skill, just say: “Alice, Fairy Tales skill.”
Guess the animal
A great skill that is suitable for both children and adults. To start, say: “Alice, start the guess the animal skill.” In it, Alice will play the sounds that animals make, and you will need to guess them.
Cities
A childhood game familiar to everyone. Alice names the city, after which your task is to remember the city that begins with the same letter as the previous one ends with. To start, say: “Start the game of cities skill” or “let’s play cities.”
What before
A game in which Alice names two events, and you need to guess which one happened first. To start, just say: “Alice, start the skill as before.”
My weather forecaster
A useful skill for those who lack standard weather information from Alice. With it, you will not only receive information about temperature and precipitation, but also find out what the current atmospheric pressure is, what the temperature feels like, humidity, wind speed and direction. To start, say: “Alice, my skill is a weather forecaster.”
Connecting to a TV/monitor/projector
The connection to the TV takes place via the HDMI 1.4 interface and, despite the support of 4K resolution by this standard, the Station will transmit a maximum of 1080p images. It is worth noting that sound transmission is also not supported when watching a movie from the Station; all sound will come from it. A strange decision, but it is what it is.
Why connect Alice to the TV? To watch various videos – both paid (from Kinopoisk) and free (from Youtube, Contact, Odnoklassniki). It is worth noting here that Alice does not have any integration with Youtube - you cannot log into your account and there is no search/display/opening of playlists. And sometimes it’s quite difficult to find the right video.
Even when connected to a TV, you can launch Yandex Ether and watch TV channels. There are almost 200 to choose from, although you probably haven’t heard of most of them, but many well-known and favorite channels may not be here.
But Alice cannot open any website. It says it is not supported on this device.
The station cannot turn the TV on and off, but if you have a new Samsung TV, then you can use the Samsung SmartThings skill for voice control (a link to the list of supported TVs is in the description of the skill in the official Yandex catalog).
Smart House
Smart home control using the Station became available back in 2019. It was then that an update was released that expanded the capabilities of the voice assistant and allowed you to connect and control various smart devices. The list of integrations includes all the major market players in the smart home market: Xiaomi, Aqara, Tuya, Redmond, Sonoff and others. In addition, Yandex also released its own devices - a smart light bulb, socket and remote control. The remote control controls devices equipped with an IR port (air conditioners and TVs), and using a smart socket you can turn on and off electrical appliances connected to it (the connected device should automatically turn on when power is applied to it, so electrical appliances with touch buttons will not work. Keep this in mind mind).
For each of the supported manufacturers there is a list of devices compatible with the Station, which can be found on Yandex Market. There is everything you might need for automation - light bulbs, lamps, sockets, kettles, humidifiers, washing machines, coffee machines, robotic vacuum cleaners and much more.
In the application, you can configure various smart home scenarios. For example, in response to a morning greeting, Alice will open the curtains, turn on the music and put the kettle on to heat up.
As in other applications, a smart home from Yandex can combine devices into groups and distribute them among rooms. Thus, you can ask to turn on the lights in the hall and Alice will turn on the chandelier in this room.
I plan to write a separate article about the Yandex smart home and its interaction with the Xiaomi smart home a little later.
What the station can’t do yet
We think it is quite logical that the Yandex smart speaker cannot yet perform any actions. For example, she is not a multitasker at all. That is, if you want to find some information on the Internet while listening to music, you are unlikely to succeed. Alice will first pause the track and only then fulfill your request. Also, the assistant will not be able to fulfill complex requests, for example, you ask her “Alice, who is Johnny Depp?”, in response she tells you who he is, but if you ask her an additional question, she is unlikely to will answer it.
Why do you need Yandex Plus?
Yandex Plus is a monthly subscription that allows you to access Yandex Music, as well as films from KinoPoisk and Amediateka. When purchasing Yandex Station, a free promotional period is provided with six months of the KinoPoisk + Amediateka subscription, after which another six months of Yandex Plus will be available. Without this subscription, the Station will not include music or movies, but it will not turn into a useless brick - all the other functions discussed in this review will remain available.
Not only music is available by subscription, but also audiobooks and podcasts available in the Yandex Music service.
I would also like to say about the inclusion of fairy tales. From time to time, various reviews write that fairy tales cannot be included without a subscription. This problem can be solved using a skill. Just say: "Alice, fairy tale skill."
By the way, the morning show is launched only if you have a subscription.
Yandex Station features without subscription
As mentioned above, a subscription allows you to listen to music, fairy tales, podcasts and watch films from Kinopoisk and Amediateka. Accordingly, all other functionality will be available without a subscription, namely:
- voice assistant (internet search, alarm clock, reminders, etc.);
- radio;
- fairy tales (through skill);
- watching videos from Youtube and Odnoklassniki (including films);
- smart House;
- all skills;
- using Yandex Stations as Bluetooth speakers.
Now you can call the Station - hello, home phones from the 2000s
In the fall of 2022, the Station received support for voice calls in test mode. Station users can communicate between speakers or call directly to the speaker from a connected smartphone. The technology is based on Yandex.Messenger, so an activated account in this service is required.
The quality is quite satisfactory. The sound is a little muffled, but the interlocutor and I heard each other without significant distortion in a series of calls. I noticed a bug: when you call from a smartphone, after receiving the call both sides remain silent - the solution is to call back. Since the feature is being tested, Yandex accepts feedback and conducts a bug survey after calls are completed.
Of course, the function will be useful in certain situations (for example, when you can’t get through to the main number or you want to communicate with your family in one easy call). But it is unlikely that they will use it more often than advanced calls in modern instant messengers - they support both video and group communication. Well, two years later they implemented it, now it’s there - okay, it doesn’t seem superfluous (probably).
How are Yandex Stations different? Light, Mini, Regular and Max
Old Station Mini is the best option if you want to use the device as a voice assistant. It does not have HDMI and is inferior in power and number of microphones to the older model. It will work well in the kitchen - it will replace the radio, tell you a recipe, turn on music.
New Station Mini and Light. The mini is available in two versions - with and without a clock. Light is the cheapest option, which does not have an audio jack and the speaker power is 5 W. The Mini has a 10 W speaker and an audio jack for connecting external speakers. Additionally, unlike the old Mini version, the new and Light versions removed the touch volume control and added buttons.
Regular Station. If you are planning to connect to your TV, you should consider purchasing it. It is more powerful than the mini, it has more microphones and has HDMI for connecting to TV. The only picture resolution is 1080p.
Max, as the name implies, is a column in the Maximum configuration. Maximum power – 65 W, maximum number of speakers, support for 4K via HDMI, LAN port, AUX output for connecting external speakers, LED display with time, weather and various emotions. Well, as a bonus, a remote control with a microphone is included.
So should I take it or not?
If you need bonuses from Yandex (such as discounts on taxis) and you actively use the company’s services, including music, then take the Station and don’t think twice about it. The sound will more than suit you.
If you don’t need bonuses and you don’t like middle-class sound, then you don’t need a speaker.
Personally, I wouldn't take it. Yandex.Station is not worth the money.
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21 votes, overall rating: 4.48 out of 5)
