Google’s latest smart speaker offers surprisingly good sound for its size, Gemini-powered voice controls, and more.
Google’s latest smart speaker offers surprisingly good sound for its size, Gemini-powered voice controls, and more.
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If you’re looking for a good smart speaker, the Google Home Speaker is down to around $79 ($20 off) in all four colors at Best Buy , Walmart , and Target . That’s the best price we’ve seen for the Gemini-powered speaker, which launched in June and represents Google’s first smart speaker in several years.
In her review , my colleague Jennifer Pattison Tuohy noted that Google’s new Home Speaker offers a nice balance of sound quality, size, and design. It’s smaller than the prior-gen Nest Audio , making it easy to place anywhere in your home. However, despite its small size, it produces loud, clear audio with 360-degree sound. Our own David Pierce even found it sounded cleaner, louder, and sharper than Amazon’s similarly priced Echo Dot Max , though Tuohy preferred the latter’s fuller sound and stronger bass. The older Nest Audio still sounds better overall, but Google’s latest speaker takes up less space and costs slightly less.
The Google Home Speaker also offers a few useful smart home upgrades. It supports Matter and includes a Thread border router, allowing you to connect and control a wide range of compatible smart home devices. It’s also the first Google smart speaker that can double as an audio output for the Google TV Streamer 4K , letting you play TV audio through one or two speakers instead of your TV’s built-in speakers. Tuohy found it worked well and delivered clear dialogue, though sound quality varied depending on what she was watching.
One of its most notable features is support for Gemini, which is also available on older Google speakers and is much better at understanding natural language and complex requests than the old Google Assistant. In her testing, Tuohy found it could handle multiple smart home commands at once and respond to conversational requests, like turning down the air conditioner when she mentioned feeling too hot. It’s also particularly impressive at answering general knowledge questions, though it can be slow and unreliable at times. Keep in mind, too, that some features require a $10-a-month Google Home Premium subscription , including Gemini Live, which lets you have extended conversations with the assistant without repeating the wake word.
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