Google Home Speaker Review

Introduction

It’s been a long while since Google last launched a smart speaker: five years if you include smart displays, and almost six years if you don’t. With the launch of the Google Home Speaker, the company is back with a smarter, more capable speaker that runs Gemini for Home.

Is this the speaker that will put Google back on the map for smart speakers, or does it still lag behind Amazon and Apple’s offerings in terms of quality and features? Read on to find out.

Design 

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

The last time Google had smart speakers, it branded them under the Nest name. Today, Nest has been completely removed from the equation, almost a reflection of how Google has treated the smart home pioneer since buying it. 

This time around, the new speaker sits somewhere between the old Nest Mini and Nest Audio. In many ways, the Google Home Speaker is going up against the Amazon Echo Dot Max and the Apple HomePod mini.

Gone are the days of very cheap, entry-level speakers that are good for voice-only responses, and the Google Home Speaker joins the ranks of small, but audibly capable speakers for music as well as voice commands.

Buy the Google Home Speaker in the US, and you get a choice of four colours: red, green, white or grey (the latter of which I have on review). Buy in the UK, and you only get the duller colour options of white and grey. Quite why Google doesn’t think we deserve brighter colours over here is beyond me.

Google’s designers have clearly been briefed on what a smart speaker should look like, and the mushroom-like Home Speaker is covered in a nice material mesh, very similar to the competition’s. If anything, the new speaker looks like the old Nest Mini, just inflated a little.

Overall, it’s nicely designed and blends into the background. This time around, there’s a captive power cable. I’d rather have a replaceable USB-C cable, just in case something goes wrong, but it’s not a big issue.

Next to the power button is a switch that turns the microphone off for privacy. It’s a little fiddly to reach, unlike the privacy button, which is front-and-centre on the Echo Dot Max.

At the bottom of the speaker is a light bar, which lights up different colours to show you what’s going on: white when it’s listening, blue when Gemini is responding, and yellow if the microphone is turned off.

There are no physical buttons, but you can tap the top of the speaker to stop a response early or pause music. Unfortunately, there are no universal actions available: double-tap to skip a track, for example, or three taps to go back.

Tap either side of the speaker and a small LED lights up. Tap on the right to increase volume, and on the left to decrease it. Neatly, the LED ring adjusts in intensity to give a visual indicator of 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, the Google Home Speaker is built to deliver smarter responses than the Google Assistant. With the speaker, you get six months of Google Home Standard (normally £8 a month or £80 a year), which gives you 30-days of event history for Nest cameras, intelligent alerts, Gemini Live and automation creation help in-app. Upgrade to Google Home Advanced (£16 a month or £160 a year) and you get 60-days of event history, 24/7 recording for wired cameras, and video search.

As already detailed, after I upgraded to Gemini for Home, the new assistant is more miss than hit. Things don’t get better with this speaker.

When connected to your home, you’re asked if you want to turn on Continued Conversation. It’s worth doing, as you can follow up on any questions without having to say ‘Hey Google’ each time. And you will need to follow up often.

Google Gemini seems to struggle even with the little things. One thing to try is to ask, “Hey Google, what can you do?”

There’s then a list of things that you can try, but it’s not tuned to your location. So, Gemini suggested that I try setting the thermostat to 72. Given we work in Celsius in the UK, 72° would be ridiculous. Google knows that I’m in the UK, but it’s very US-focused.

When I first upgraded the Nest Hub, I ran an experiment: I told it my wife was vegetarian, then tried to catch out Gemini by asking it to recommend a chicken dish for the two of us. Initially, the system failed, but Gemini must have been tweaked, because a couple of weeks later it remembered that my wife’s vegetarian and then suggested alternative dishes.

I asked the Google Home Speaker to recommend a chicken dish for my wife and me, and Gemini did straight away. So, I plugged the Nest Hub back in, and asked the same question, and got the same response with a chicken recipe. So, I asked Gemini what it remembered about my wife, and it responded to say it had a note saying that she’s vegetarian. So, I asked for a chicken dish recommendation again, and this time got the appropriate result.

It seems that Gemini isn’t as reliable when it comes to remembering information as Alexa+ is.

Alexa+ can also be sent PDFs or documents, pulling information from them. I asked Gemini if it could the same, and it suggested that I upload the information to our chat. I asked how, as it’s a voice speaker, and it told me that it doesn’t have an interface, so I could try reading the contents of the PDF out to it. No thank you.

After this particularly frustrating interaction, the speaker interrupted to rank the quality of the interaction, with 1 as the lowest. I said, “Minus 10 billion.” Gemini responded by listing some things that it can do. Dealing with the current issue clearly was not among the things.

A trick to catch out ropey AI is to ask how many letters are in a specific word. I asked Gemini, “How many ‘Ms’ are there in the word mammal?” The response was, “There are three megaseconds in the word mammal.” This makes absolutely no sense at all.

I asked Gemini, “How many megaseconds are there in the word mammal?” 

It said, “That is a bit of a trick question. Megasecond is a unit of time, not a word related to the spelling of mammal. As we discussed, there are three megaseconds in the word mammal, and a megasecond is exactly one million seconds. Would you like to know more about how time measurements work?”

The speaker was lucky at this point that it wasn’t booted straight into the bin. Sure, all voice assistants can struggle with some things, but answers like this are pure random word soup, devoid entirely of meaning.

Gemini can do some things quite well. I asked when England were next playing, and it said it was today (1 July 2026) against DR Congo. I asked Gemini to add this to my calendar, and it did, although this time Gemini referred to the game as “England vs Doctor Congo”.

The calendar appointment was set for an hour, even though football games are at least 90 minutes plus half-time. To be fair, Alexa+ also makes the same mistake, although it can say the country name correctly.

Only Google calendars are supported (of course). And you can’t use a Workspace account, which is why I’ve had to register a free Gmail account just to use with Google Home.

General queries are handled well. Gemini can tell me if the Central Line is running, or who was in a specific film. 

General smart home control works well, but Gemini can struggle with longer commands. Asking it to turn on a light and then turn it off again after five minutes didn’t quite work: the light turned on, but a five-minute timer was set. Turning the light on and then, in a separate command, asking Gemini to turn it off in five minutes worked.

I could string together a list of commands, such as asking to turn on a light and then the fan in my office. 

I tried a vaguer statement: “It’s hot in here.” I’ve got a Dreo TurboCool Misting Fan 765S in my office, linked to the Google Home app and placed in the same room as the Google Home Speaker, so I was expecting this to be turned on. 

The first time I tried, the speaker turned on the AC units in the Trusted Reviews Home Technology lab, but it did get the right action the second time that I tried.

I do find Gemini very slow to respond, particularly when it must go to the cloud. There can be big pauses, even when trying to do something similar. Alexa+ used to be like that, but it has got much better.

There are things that Gemini can’t do. Ask the Google Home Speaker to create a routine, for example, and it can’t.

It’s capable of searching video history for any cameras that you have. I asked Gemini if it could search video and it said yes, and asked what I wanted to search for. I said, “a cat.” Gemini thought about it and then told me that I don’t have the right subscription and would need Google Home Advanced.

If I had the right subscription and cameras, the speaker could show the video on a secondary device, but that’s not as useful as having a smart display.

Overall, the general usability of Gemini for Home isn’t very good, and Alexa+ is much, much better. Apple’s Siri isn’t particularly good at complicated commands, but it gets simple things right, and the HomePod mini has other advantages, including the clever hand-over features where you can tap your phone to the speaker to transfer a call or music.

And, the HomePod mini works well in a smart home environment has a hub, with Apple Home an excellent app for remote control and automation. Apple Home is better and easier to use than Google Home.

It’s good to see Thread built-in, so this device can be a Thread Border Router for connecting Matter devices directly to your network.

Sound quality

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

Inside the Google Home Speaker is a 58mm full-range driver, which has been built for omnidirectional sound. Audio should fill a room without being positional. In comparison, the Echo Dot Max has a 0.8-inch tweeter and a 2.5-inch woofer. And, the HomePod mini, although light on specs, as a full-range driver and two passive radiators.

All three speakers, on paper, are quite similar. Audio quality, in testing is similar, too, which means that the Google Home Speaker is a decent, compact speaker that lines up well against the competition.

Testing with Spotify, I could easily cast to the Google Home Speaker, although I was limited to the High sound quality; the HomePod mini I have handles Lossless.

The omnidirectional system works well. All too often a small speaker can be clearly located, and there’s a sweet spot to stand in to get the best audio, but the Google Home Speaker avoids this, neatly filling a room.

There’s no semblance of stereo separation (unless you buy two and stereo pair them). Playing the Foo Fighters’ Open Space, the opening guitar should swirl between left and right speakers, but on the Google Home Speaker it sounds more like the volume is going up and down. I’d say that the HomePod mini and Echo Dot Max handle this slightly better.

I played Rage Against the Machine’s Bombtrack, and the Google Home Speaker did a good job of handling the bass, with the drums kicking in with a thump.

With the bass heavy This Too Shall Pass by OK Go, the speaker manages to control the bass well without distortion. 

You do lose a bit of subtlety that better speakers can handle. Play Frank Sinatra’s That’s Life, and everything’s in the high-end, with the bass line barely audible. With Hell is For Heroes’ You Drove Me To It, it can get a bit harsh in the middle, particularly on higher volumes.

Certainly, the Google Home Speaker doesn’t sound as good as the Nest Audio, and it’s curious that Google hasn’t launched a new version of that. After all, the HomePod mini has the HomePod, and the Echo Dot Max has the Echo Studio.

Should you buy it?

FAQs

The post Google Home Speaker Review appeared first on Trusted Reviews.

Source link