Google’s first smart speaker in six years arrives next week

The Google Home Speaker is designed for Gemini for Home and its more conversational smart home assistant.

The Google Home Speaker is designed for Gemini for Home and its more conversational smart home assistant.

Google’s first new smart speaker in six years starts shipping on June 29th, narrowly missing its promised spring launch window. Preorders for the Google Home Speaker open today, June 17th.

Nothing has changed hardware-wise in the nine months since the $99 speaker was announced. It has the same slightly squished round design, with touch-capacitive buttons on top and a light ring at the bottom to indicate status. And it still comes in four colors: porcelain (white), hazel (black), jade (green), and berry (red). The last two are US-only.

The Home Speaker is Google’s first audio device designed specifically for Gemini for Home. You can use Gemini for Home on other Google Nest speakers and smart displays, but Anish Kattukaran, chief product officer for Google Home, said this device delivers the experience best. In a briefing earlier this month, he said the speaker runs local models for noise cancellation, echo suppression, and sound separation to ensure Gemini can hear commands despite background noise.

Gemini for Home has been available on Nest speakers for several months through an early access program. Compared to Google Assistant, Gemini is a more natural conversational assistant. It can understand natural language commands, handle more complex questions, and follow along if you, um, err, or change your thought mid-sentence. It can also talk back and forth in a limited capacity without you needing to repeat the wake word.

The Google Home Speaker is smaller than the Nest Audio, Google’s previous flagship smart speaker. Kattukaran says the company heard feedback that the taller Nest Audio was difficult to place around the home. Google isn’t claiming the new speaker matches the Nest Audio’s sound quality. Instead, the company is emphasizing that it’s “a massive audio upgrade over the Nest Mini.” It does have 360 audio, so it should sound uniform from any point in the room.

You’ll be able to pair two Google Home speakers for stereo sound, or connect them to the Google TV Streamer streaming device and use them for spatial surround sound. This isn’t something Google has offered on its previous smart speakers.

The speaker is also a Matter controller and Thread border router, so it can help you connect smart home devices like lights, locks, and plugs to your Google Home. However, it’s running Thread 1.3 at launch, rather than the newer Thread 1.4 specification.

Considering there are no hardware changes, why did it take so long to launch this device? Kattukaran says Google has used the time to improve Gemini for Home — improving latency for smart home and basic media commands by up to 40 percent, fixing over 25,000 reported issues, and shipping more than 50 new features and improvements.

When you buy a Google Home Speaker before mid-September, you’ll get six months of Google Home Premium included. Google Home Premium starts at $10 per month and is required to use Gemini Live, which Kattukaran calls “the most conversational experience you can have with Gemini.” It also unlocks access to AI-powered search on Google Nest cameras, so you can ask the speaker when it last saw your cat, and to Google Home Brief, which summarizes activity around your house at the end of each day.

With the Google Home Speaker, Google is making its strongest case yet that Gemini belongs in your smart home. I’ll be testing whether it can deliver on that promise when the speaker arrives next week.

• Jennifer Pattison Tuohy