The new Google Home Speaker excels in its hardware design and capabilities, yet its accompanying AI, Gemini for Home, falls short of expectations for a next-generation assistant. For several years, smart speakers have been seeking a compelling evolution beyond basic functionalities like music playback, timers, and smart lighting control, often struggling to justify their presence in the home. The advent of advanced AI was widely anticipated to revolutionize this landscape. Following Amazon's unveiling of its revamped Alexa-powered hardware last autumn, Google has now introduced its own entry. The Google Home Speaker marks the company's first new smart speaker in six years and is its inaugural device "built for Gemini." This launch signals Google's renewed, and seemingly serious, commitment to the smart home sector after a period of relative inactivity. However, the Gemini for Home experience, despite this ambition, currently feels incomplete.
Key strengths of the Google Home Speaker include its commendable sound quality for its compact size, an appealing aesthetic, and Gemini’s impressive conversational comprehension. It also functions as a robust smart home controller, supporting Matter and Thread protocols, and offers the unique ability to pair with a Google TV Streamer for enhanced audio. Conversely, notable drawbacks are Gemini’s sluggish and inconsistent performance, the decision to gate several features behind a paywall, and its audio fidelity not quite matching that of the Nest Audio, which it effectively succeeds.
Priced at $99.99, the Google Home Speaker is a remarkably well-crafted piece of hardware. It embodies the "Goldilocks" ideal for smart speakers: sufficiently large to deliver quality audio, yet compact enough to integrate discreetly into any room. Its design is attractive without being ostentatious, and its affordability makes purchasing multiple units a viable option. During testing, the Home Speaker seamlessly complemented various settings, from a bedside table to a kitchen counter, and performed admirably when a pair was positioned beneath a TV. The soft jade green color offers a sophisticated blend without appearing bland. Minor criticisms include the absence of a color-matched power cable, a feature offered by competitors like Apple’s HomePod Mini and Amazon’s Echo Dot Max. Additionally, while the power brick now utilizes USB-C, the cable itself is permanently attached to the speaker, posing a potential inconvenience for those requiring longer cable lengths or facing cable wear.
The speaker's mesh fabric-covered body maintains a clean aesthetic, devoid of visible controls, while the activity indicator light ring at its base is sufficiently subtle to avoid distraction. Uniquely, this light can be disabled in settings, a beneficial feature for setups like dual speakers under a TV in a darkened room. The previously frustrating invisible controls on older Google speakers have been significantly improved for responsiveness. A tap on the top surface now reliably pauses or resumes audio playback and silences the assistant, while taps on either side adjust the volume, with faint white dots illuminating to confirm successful input.
As noted by my colleague David Pierce in his initial assessment, the audio quality is commendable for the speaker's compact, "softball"
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