Nathan Ingraham for Engadget

RATING : 8 / 10

Somehow, it's been almost nine months since Google first revealed its latest smart speaker, the boringly-named Google Home Speaker. I don't understand why it took the company so long to get it to market, as there's nothing that particularly changes the game here hardware-wise. The $99 orb looks a lot like Apple's HomePod mini, with a speaker that fires audio in 360 degrees and microphones so you can chat with Google Assistant Gemini for Home.

It's the definition of an expected, iterative piece of hardware — but on the other hand, it's been almost six years since Google released the Nest Audio and seven since the Nest Home Mini. Given that timeframe, Google is overdue for some updated hardware, just to make sure the "smart" part of the speaker stays current. The bigger question is whether or not Gemini for Home is a good enough assistant to run your smart home.

Nathan Ingraham for Engadget

The Google Home Speaker replaces both the $99 Nest Audio and $49 Nest Mini, so Google effectively doubled the price of its entry-level speaker. That's a bummer, but the Google Home Speaker provides a massive upgrade if you care at all about audio quality. The Google Home Speaker is slightly wider and significantly taller than the Nest Mini and comes in four colors: the standard off-white and dark grey along with pinkish-red berry and light green sage.

That extra space in the new speaker gives it room for a 58mm driver (compared to 40mm in the Nest Mini); Google says the larger component provides 2.5x stronger bass. I don't have a Nest Mini anymore to compare it to, but I never wanted to use that speaker for anything besides quick and casual audio playback. There's no doubt that the Google Home Speaker is an improvement there.

Nathan Ingraham for Engadget

Compared to the Nest Audio, though, it takes a step back. The Nest Audio had a dedicated tweeter as well as a 75mm woofer. That speaker wasn't a world-beater, but for its price I thought it performed quite well. You could say the same about the Google Home Speaker, despite its less robust speaker array — it's a totally viable option for filling small- or medium-sized rooms with good quality audio. It doesn't compete with something large (and more expensive) like the Sonos Era 100, but it is significantly louder than the HomePod mini and has a stronger bass presence. It's comparable to Amazon's recently-released Echo Dot Max, which also costs $99.

Nathan Ingraham for Engadget

Of course, this speaker is not just for playing music. Like its predecessors, the Google Home Speaker has three far-field microphones to let you chat with Gemini. It also has a stylish light ring around the bottom that lights up and changes color when you talk to it, when it is thinking and when it responds. It's very much like the light ring on older Amazon Echo speakers, and I prefer it to the new lights on the latest Echos or the four lights that lit up on the front of the Nest Audio. It's a nice visual touch for sure. The speaker does have familiar touch controls on top — tapping the left or right sides adjusts volume, while tapping the middle pauses and resumes media playback. So far, the microphones have no trouble picking up my voice across the room or over the din of music or conversation, either.

While the hardware itself is an unassuming, logical update, that's only half the story. Google's previous speakers were designed with the Google Assistant in mind, but this one is the first explicitly meant to work with the new Gemini for Home voice assistant. As the name suggests, it bakes in Gemini AI features, but there are some wrinkles beyond that. Google is also offering two different subscription options for managing your home, the $10/month (or $100/year) Standard plan and the $20/month ($200/year) Advanced option.

Standard gives you 30 days of "event-based" video history from cameras or doorbell cams; Gemini Live for more interactive conversations with the virtual assistant; alerts for things like familiar faces on cameras, garage door and package notifications; and smoke and CO2 alarm notifications. The Premium plan doubles the event-based video history to 60 days and adds 10 days of 24/7 history for cameras and wired doorbells. It also includes video history search, more detailed notifications and event descriptions and daily summaries of recorded events.

It sounds to me like unless you're really invested in a video security setup that the Standard plan will work for most people. Plus, the Google Home Speaker comes with a six-month trial. If you don't want to pay a monthly subscription, you'll still have access to Gemini for Home which can do basic voice-activated tasks like playing music, setting timers and controlling smart home devices. However, you'll need the subscription for Gemini Live to get the more conversational, back-and-forth experience for asking your speaker all of the random thoughts that might pop into your head.

I know that people have had loads of trouble with Google's transition from the Google Assistant to Gemini, specifically around smart home automation. The Google Home subreddit is absolutely littered with complaints from unreliable execution to features ending up behind paywalls. I've had the Google Home Speaker for less than a week, and I also don't have the smartest home, so I can't say for sure how well this will perform for people with complex setups. But I was able to use the Google Home Speaker and Gemini to control a few speakers I had connected to the Google Home app as well as my RoboRock vacuum and a TV that runs Android.

I also chatted with Gemini Live about the World Cup schedule and the weather in various locations where games are being played. Gemini followed my questions about who was playing today, who was playing tomorrow, how teams did in their prior matches, what the forecast was for during the match and so forth. I was also able to use my voice to start creating an automation that would run my vacuum and put on a specific YouTube Music playlist every morning, though I had to jump into the Google Home app to fix some details it didn't get right.

It's unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected, that Google is locking some features behind a subscription. It had a previous subscription, Nest Aware, that also had two tiers that broke down similarly to these new Google Home plans. But putting things like Gemini Live and the ability to build a routine just by telling the speaker what you wanted to do behind the paywall is definitely a bummer.

Nathan Ingraham for Engadget

If your smart home needs are modest and you haven't really dove into using a voice assistant or speaker to control things, the Google Home Speaker is a good starting point. It's affordable, well-designed and sounds pretty good for casual music playback — that covers a lot of bases for most people. And the speaker's Thread capabilities make it a worthwhile upgrade over something like the Nest Audio if your smart home devices can take advantage of it. 

 But if you're someone who already has some Google or Nest speakers and aren't happy with how the Google Home app and Gemini are working, this new speaker doesn't change that. Hopefully Google will continue to improve things on the software front, because the Google Home Speaker does a good job of holding up its end of the bargain.