Google Home Speaker review

Google Home Speaker: Introduction

• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Thread
• Ecosystems: Google Home

It’s been nearly six years since Google last launched a smart speaker, if you don’t count smart displays, and five if you do. Now the company is back with the Google Home Speaker, designed for its new smart assistant, Google Gemini for Home.

Is this the model that gets Google back on top, or does it still trail Amazon and Apple for audio quality and features? Read on to find out more in my full review.

Design and build

• Captive power cable 
• Available in four colours (two in the UK) 
• Neat touch controls

Google’s old smart speakers were sold as Nest products, but a lot of things have changed in the last five/six years. Today, Google seems entirely unbothered about continuing the Nest name, so it’s ditched at and we have just the Google Home Speaker instead.

The new speaker sits somewhere between the old Nest Mini and Nest Audio. From the looks and price, the Google Home Speaker is a direct competitor to the Amazon Echo Dot Max and Apple HomePod mini.

That means a price to match, too, and the days of ultra-cheap, voice-only speakers is over, with the Google Home Speaker costing $99.99/£99.99.

If you’re in the US, you’re lucky as you get the choice of four colours: red, green, white or grey. In the UK, where I’m reviewing, there’s just white and grey, a decidedly duller selection.

Design-wise, Google has played it safe, and that’s not a bad thing. The mushroom-shaped speaker is wrapped in a soft mesh finish very much in line with the competition. If anything, it looks like an inflated Nest Mini.

It’s neat, understated and easy to place. My one complaint about the design is the captive power cable, which terminates in USB-C at the end. I’d have preferred a replaceable cable.

The microphone mute switch sits beside the power button and is a bit fiddly to reach, especially compared with the Echo Dot Max’s front-and-centre privacy button.

A light bar around the base changes colour to show what’s happening: white when listening, blue when Gemini is replying, and yellow when the mic is off.

There are no physical buttons, but you can tap the top to stop a response, silence an alarm or pause music. There’s no shortcut support for skipping tracks or jumping back with the standard controls: two taps to skip forwards, and three to go back.

Tap either side and two small LEDs light up on either side: right for volume up, left for volume down. The brightness of the main light ring neatly reflects the current volume level.

Features

• Runs Gemini for Home
• Can be quite slow 
• Good at general inquiries, but some frustrating interactions

Powered by Gemini for Home, this speaker is designed for the new GenAI voice assistant. To get you going, it comes with six months of Google Home Standard, which is normally $10/£8 a month or $100/£80 a year. This includes 30 days of Nest camera history, intelligent alerts, Gemini Live and in-app routine creation help. Step up to Google Home Advanced at $20/£16 a month or $200/£160 a year, and you also get 60 days of event history, 24/7 recording for wired cameras and AI-powered video search.

That all sounds good, but in use Gemini for Home just isn’t as good as Alexa+. Before you start, it’s worth turning on Continued Conversation so that you don’t need to keep saying “Hey Google” every time. You’ll want it, because I found that follow-up questions are needed a lot.

One main issue is that Gemini hasn’t be tuned for different locations. Ask, “Hey Google, what can you do?” and it suggested setting the thermostat to 72, which is pure nonsense if you use Celsius.

Gemini’s memory is inconsistent too. When I first tested Gemini for Home on a Nest Hub, I told it to remember that my wife was a vegetarian. After a couple of trys, it remembered. A few weeks later, I plugged in the Google Home Speaker, and then asked the speaker to recommend a chicken dish for me and my wife, which Gemini happily did.

I asked Gemini what it knew about my wife, and it said it had a note that she was a vegetarian. So, I asked the question again, and got the correct response, with suggested dishes that are suitable for both of us. How and when Gemini decides to access the information it has is a bit beyond me.

Gemini for Home also falls short on document handling. Alexa+ can process PDFs and documents; Gemini suggested uploading the file into the chat. When I asked how, it said I couldn’t do that, and I could try reading the PDF aloud. No thank you.

The speaker even interrupted to ask me to rate the interaction. I went with, “Minus 10 billion.” Gemini responded by telling me what it can do. Sadly, understanding what I was saying wasn’t one of the things.

A quick test for dodgy AI: ask how many letters are in a word. I asked how many “Ms” were in “mammal” and got the bizarre answer that there were three megaseconds in the word mammal. Asking for an explanation just caused a more maddening reply.

That said, Gemini for Home isn’t useless and it can find information online. I asked (a few weeks ago), what England’s next football match was, and Gemini knew it was vs DR Congo. I could create a calendar event for this, although that event was just an hour long, despite football games being more like two hours in total.

Only Google calendars are supported, naturally, and Workspace accounts aren’t allowed, so I had to make a separate Gmail account just for this review.

For general questions, Gemini is decent. It can check whether the Central Line is running or say who played a role in a film. That’s to be expected, if Google can do one thing well, it’s pulling information from the web.

Smart home control is more mixed. Simple commands work well enough, but longer instructions can trip it up. I asked it to turn on a light and then switch it off after five minutes: the light turned on but Gemini set a timer for five minutes instead. Break the request into two commands, and it behaves better.

Gemini for Home can string together multiple actions, such as turning on a light and a fan in the same room.

A vague prompt such as “It’s hot in here” should trigger the obvious fix. In my case, it first switched on the wrong devices, switching on the AC units in the home tech lab, before getting it right on the second attempt and turning on the misting fan I have in my office (the room that the speaker was placed in in the Google Home app).

There’s no option to create routines with your voice, which feels like a massive oversight, especially as Alexa+ can do this.

Speed is another issue. Gemini can be painfully slow, especially when it has to reach out to the cloud. I’d often sit there waiting for a while to get a response. Google says it’s working on it.

Gemini for Home can search video history from compatible cameras, but only if you have the right subscription. In my case, I asked it to find video of a cat, and was told, after a significant pause, that I need Google Home Advance.

If you do pay up, video can be shown on another device, but that’s still not as slick as a smart display.

Overall, Gemini for Home just isn’t a great user experience. Alexa+ is much better. Siri isn’t brilliant with complex requests, but Apple’s HomePod mini has its own strengths, including clever handoff tricks and a better smart home app with Apple Home.

Thread support is welcome on the Google Home Speaker. That means the speaker can act as a Thread Border Router and help connect Matter devices directly to your network.

Sound quality

• Decent bass
• Omni-directional sound
• 58mm full-range driver

Inside is a 58mm full-range driver tuned for omnidirectional sound, so audio should spread evenly around the room rather than sounding directional. On paper, it’s up against the Echo Dot Max and HomePod mini, and in use, the comparison is fairly close.

Spotify casting worked without fuss, although sound quality topped out at High, while my HomePod mini supports Lossless.

The omnidirectional tuning does its job well. Cheap small speakers often soundn like audio is coming directly from them, but this one fills a room more naturally.

There’s no real stereo separation unless you buy two speakers and stereo-pair them. On Foo Fighters’ Open Space, the guitar should move left-to-right, but here it mostly sounds like the volume is shifting. The HomePod mini and Echo Dot Max do it a little better.

Bass performance is respectable. Rage Against the Machine’s Bombtrack lands with proper punch, and OK Go’s This Too Shall Pass stays controlled without distortion.

It’s less impressive with more delicate material. Frank Sinatra’s That’s Life pushes too much into the upper registers, while Hell Is for Heroes’ You Drove Me To It can turn harsh at higher volumes.

The Google Home Speaker also doesn’t quite match the old Nest Audio, which is a little odd given that Google hasn’t launched a proper successor. That seems a missed opportunity, after all, Apple has both HomePod mini and HomePod, while Amazon has the Echo Dot Max and Echo Studio.

Final thoughts

The Google Home Speaker has been a long time coming, but it doesn’t feel like it’s been worth it. The hardware is smart and the sound is decent, but Gemini for Home isn’t very good: slow, inconsistent and missing key features the competition already has.

Alexa+ is the best smart assistant for the home right now, and Amazon also gives you more hardware options, including speaker and displays. Apple users may prefer the HomePod mini, which sounds better and has iPhone-specific features

With Gemini for Home already available on existing smart speakers, and little sign of a meaningful performance leap here, the Google Home Speaker is hard to recommend.

How we test

When we publish our reviews, you can rest assured that they are the result of “living with” long term tests.

Smart speaker usually live within, or even control, a smart home ecosystem, or a range of products that – supposedly – all work in harmony. Therefore, it’s impossible to use a connected speaker for a week and deliver a verdict.

Because we’re testing smart home kit all day, everyday, we know what matters and how a particular smart speaker compares to alternatives that you might also be considering.

Our reviews are comprehensive, objective and fair and, of course, we are never paid directly to review a device.

Read our review process for smart speakers to learn more.

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