Smart speakers have spent the past few years searching for a compelling second act. Beyond music, timers, and controlling your lights, they’ve struggled to justify taking up space on the kitchen counter. AI promised to change that.

Amazon debuted its new hardware powered by a revamped Alexa last fall, and now it’s finally Google’s turn. The Google Home Speaker is the company’s first new smart speaker in six years and its first “built for Gemini.” After years of neglect, Google appears to be finally getting serious about the smart home — again. The new speaker is the clearest sign yet. Gemini for Home, however, still feels unfinished.

As a piece of hardware, the $99.99 Google Home Speaker is a delightful device. It is the Goldilocks of smart speakers: big enough to sound good, small enough to blend into a room, attractive without drawing attention, and inexpensive enough to consider buying more than one.

The Home Speaker fits in seamlessly everywhere I tested it: bedside table, kitchen counter, or two paired under the TV. The soft green jade color blends in without being dull. My only disappointment is the lack of a color-matched cable, something both Apple’s HomePod Mini and Amazon’s Echo Dot Max offer. (Oh, and while the cable finally uses USB-C for the wall brick, it’s not removable from the speaker itself, which is an issue if you want a longer cable run or if it ever starts to fray.)

There are no visible controls to mar the mesh fabric-covered body, and the activity indicator light ring encircling the base is subtle enough not to be distracting. If it is — for example, when using two speakers under a TV in a dark room — you can turn the light off in settings, something no other speaker offers. The invisible controls, which frustrated me on previous Google speakers, are much more responsive. A tap on top stops or starts the sound or quickly shuts up the assistant, and a tap on either side raises or lowers the volume, with faint glowing white dots to show you hit the right spot.

As my colleague David Pierce wrote in his hands-on with the speaker, the sound is good for its softball size. I enjoyed listening to music and podcasts on it. As expected, side by side with the Nest Audio — Google’s larger, previous-generation speaker, which was also priced at $99.99 — the Home Speaker doesn’t sound as good. The Audio had both a woofer and a tweeter; the new speaker has just a single driver, and its bass is thinner since it’s smaller. But the smaller size makes it easier to find a spot for it around the home. It does offer 360-degree sound, which the Audio didn’t, and it’s a huge upgrade to the smaller, prior-gen Nest Mini.

I had two review units, so I was able to test the Home Speaker’s stereo pairing feature, and it was a significant upgrade. At 80 percent volume, the new Taylor Swift song was clear, crisp, and super loud — house-filling loud. Bass, however, is barely there; Bad Bunny and Rosalía’s vocals soar in “La Noche de Anoche,” but when the boom is supposed to come in, it’s more like a bump.

Compared to the competition — the $99.99 Echo Dot Max and the now pricier $129 HomePod Mini — the Home Speaker came in a close third on audio quality for me (David preferred it over the Max). Testing Taylor Swift’s “…Ready for It?” on the Max brought a hint more bass and a fuller sound, while the Mini is quieter but cleaner. The Home Speaker is loud and clear and holds its own on mids and vocals, though they stretch a little thin at times, and, as mentioned, the bass falls short — which it does on most speakers this size.

This is the first Google smart speaker you can pair with a Google TV Streamer (and only a Streamer) as an audio output. You can use just one, but adding two gets you simulated spatial audio. My experience was mostly good. The sound synced well with no dropouts. Streaming YouTube was great; the voices came through loud and clear. During a Game of Thrones re-watch, the screams of agony were suitably bone-chilling. But watching the World Cup, it sounded like the commentators were talking in a tin can, necessitating a switch back to my (much more expensive) Sonos system.

If you’re just using your TV speakers, a pair of Home Speakers will be an upgrade. But it only works with content played through the Streamer — if you switch to another HDMI input, the audio switches away from the Home Speaker.

The Home Speaker also listens well, which is an important ability for a smart speaker. It has three far-field microphones and a neural processing unit that handles background noise. It did well in every scenario I tested, hearing me even from across the room or when it was playing loud music. It was more responsive than the HomePod Mini, but a tad less than the Echo Dot Max.

As with the competition, the Home Speaker is a Matter controller, so you can use it to add and control Matter devices through Google Home. It’s also the first Google Home audio speaker that can act as a Thread border router. (It’s on Thread 1.3 for now, but Google tells me it’s working on supporting Thread 1.4, which will make it easier for Thread border routers from different manufacturers to work together.)

If you’re considering a Home Speaker, the hardware is the main reason to buy one. On the software side, Gemini for Home — Google’s new smart home voice assistant powered by Gemini models and designed to be more conversational, more useful, and smarter — works on all Google Home speakers. In my testing, it was mostly the same experience on the Nest Audio, Nest Hub (2nd gen), and Nest Hub Max.

That’s good news — Google isn’t locking its newest AI features to new hardware. But it also means there’s little reason to upgrade to the new speaker if you’re happy with what you have.

As it’s built for Gemini for Home, I had expected the Home Speaker to be noticeably snappier than current models, but it wasn’t any faster than the Nest Audio when responding to commands. Occasionally, some requests that require the cloud took close to 10 seconds, and even local commands like “Turn on the lights” sometimes lagged just as long.

While Gemini handled complex requests well — I asked it to turn off one room, set the thermostat, and turn on the lights in another room in one sentence — it took 10 seconds to do so. Alexa Plus completed the same request in under three. (To be fair, Alexa used to be painfully slow, but it has improved substantially.)

Speed aside, Gemini was very good with natural conversational control. I could say “Hey Google, I’m cooking and I don’t want to get too hot,” and it knew to turn down the AC. “Hey Google, it’s too dark in here,” and it brightened the lights. When I said I thought there was someone outside, it offered to show my camera feed on a smart display and check my locks. These feel like genuine quality-of-life improvements because they make voice control easier.

I like that you don’t have to repeat “Hey Google” during the same conversation, but Gemini has the memory of a goldfish. While following a recipe, Gemini started walking me through making a cherry tomato pasta sauce until I paused too long and it completely lost the thread.

Gemini Live fixes some of this by keeping the conversation open until you tell it to stop and remembering previous chats. But this experience feels bolted on. You invoke it differently, by saying “Hey Google, let’s chat,” and unlike Gemini for Home, it can’t take any actions for you (it punts them to Home); it’s just for chatting with. Gemini Live is also behind a $10-a-month Google Home Premium subscription.

For general knowledge, Gemini is excellent. It’s substantially better than Google Assistant ever was. I couldn’t stump it with questions about the World Cup’s bewildering brackets, and I was genuinely impressed when I asked which of the matches that had already been played today were worth watching. It summarized them without revealing the score — correctly inferring that I planned to watch them.

As a household assistant, it feels less dependable. Mid-cook, I’d ask “When do I add the tomatoes?” only to be told Gemini couldn’t answer until it verified my voice. This same thing happened fairly regularly when adding items to my shopping list — despite Google’s Voice Match being set up.

The biggest problem with Gemini for Home is that I can’t trust it. Like most LLMs, Gemini is often confidently wrong. It announced the correct title when I asked for “La Noche de Anoche,” then played an entirely different song. Then, when I told it it was wrong, it played another incorrect song.

When I asked if I could change the Home Speaker’s voice, it repeatedly insisted it had no alternative voice options; it does. Then the same query on the Nest Hub Max caused it to apparently hallucinate a list of names, including Dimitrix, Impetus, Cameo, and Russell Gethy. (The actual Gemini for Home voices are named after plants.)

At one point, it misinterpreted a command to adjust the thermostat as a security request, telling me instead that if I wanted a summary of what was happening in my home, I needed to upgrade to Google Home Premium Advanced. It then proceeded to spell out the upgrade URL.

TV controls were the least reliable. Sometimes “Turn on the TV and play YouTube TV” worked. Sometimes Gemini claimed content wasn’t available when it was. Occasionally it announced “Turning on the Living Room TV and launching ESPN,” and then did nothing.

I’ve seen similar hiccups with Alexa Plus. They’re part of the current tradeoffs that have come with replacing rigid command-and-control voice assistants with more powerful, flexible LLMs. In the home, when these mistakes happen enough, they undermine the convenience.

After spending five days testing Gemini for Home in the Home Speaker, I give the edge to Alexa Plus and its Echo Dot Max. While Gemini for Home’s inference skills were superior in my testing, Alexa Plus has narrowed the gap significantly when it comes to general knowledge. It also has better smart home controls, and I can ask it to set up routines with my voice, something Google doesn’t offer.

Both let you use natural language to query and control your home and skip repeating the wake word. But Alexa handles it more smoothly and remembers context and past conversations better. I do prefer Gemini’s voices. My pick, Violet — bright and British — is perfect: no-nonsense without overt personality. I’ve yet to find an Alexa Plus voice I’m comfortable with.

What Google Home doesn’t have is ads, something Amazon has introduced to its Echo Show smart displays. But with Gemini for Home, Google is putting some voice assistant and smart home features behind a paywall for the first time. Access to Gemini Live and Help me create, which lets you use natural language to build smart home automations in the app, requires the $10-a-month Standard plan. The $20-a-month Advanced tier adds Home Brief and AI-powered Nest camera features that tie into the Home Speaker.

With the Home Speaker, Google built the smart speaker its ecosystem needed: good sound, a cleaner, more modern design, and the radios and processing power to anchor a modern smart home. But Gemini for Home isn’t there yet as an assistant. It’s easier to talk to than Google Assistant ever was, and a lot smarter. But today it’s slow and less reliable. Add the subscription requirement for some of its more interesting features, and the result is a great smart speaker waiting for its AI to catch up.

Photos and videos by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

• Jennifer Pattison Tuohy