Google just ended a six-year drought in its smart speaker lineup, and it picked an odd way to celebrate: it killed the name that made the category recognizable in the first place. The new Google Home Speaker drops "Nest" from the branding, drops Google Assistant entirely, and rebuilds the whole experience around Gemini. It's the company's first standalone smart speaker since the Nest Audio shipped back in 2020, and the bet is that conversational AI, not incremental audio upgrades, is what finally gets people to put a new speaker on the counter.
Pricing
There's only one hardware configuration, but the real pricing story is the subscription sitting behind it.
| Tier | Price | What you get | |---|---|---| | Google Home Speaker (hardware) | $99.99 | Gemini for Home, 360° audio, Matter/Thread support, basic voice control | | Google Home Premium | $10/month (after a free trial period) | Gemini Live, Camera History Search, Home Briefs, and other advanced AI features |
The speaker itself undercuts most AI-forward competitors on paper, but Google is fairly upfront that the headline features — actual free-flowing conversation, searchable camera history, and automated recap briefs — sit behind that Premium subscription. Buy two speakers to run stereo audio and the true first-year cost climbs well past the sticker price.
Design
Google kept the silhouette familiar — it's a similar shape and footprint to the old Nest Audio — but changed just about everything else. The body is wrapped in a 3D-knitted textile made from recycled materials, a manufacturing process Google says cuts down on fabric waste compared to older speaker mesh. A light ring sits at the base and glows to show when Gemini is listening, thinking, or responding, instead of the small dot indicator on previous Nest speakers.
It ships in four colorways: Porcelain and Hazel everywhere, with Jade and Berry reserved for the US market. There's a physical mute switch behind the front grille for cutting the microphones without digging into an app.
Specs
- Assistant: Gemini for Home (replaces Google Assistant entirely on this device)
- Processing: Dedicated NPU for on-device AI processing — a first for a Google Home/Nest speaker
- Driver: 58mm driver, roughly double the size of the one in the Nest Mini
- Audio: Balanced 360° sound with roughly 2.5x the bass output of the Nest Mini
- Microphones: Three far-field mics with adaptive processing, plus a hardware mute switch
- Connectivity: Matter and Thread 1.3 support at launch
- Pairing: Two units can be linked for stereo output, or paired with a Google TV Streamer for home-theater-style surround sound
- Materials: 3D-knitted textile shell made from recycled materials
- Price: $99.99 (hardware only)
New features
The pitch is less about the speaker box and more about what's talking back. Gemini for Home swaps out Assistant's rigid command structure for something closer to actual conversation:
- No more exact phrasing: you can say "turn off everything except the kitchen light" instead of hunting for the one command that works.
- Multi-step requests: "dim the kitchen lights, play something relaxing, and set a 20-minute timer" gets handled as one instruction rather than three.
- Mid-sentence corrections: say the wrong thing and just correct yourself — Gemini follows along instead of executing the first, wrong command.
- Continued Conversation: the mic stays open briefly after a response, so follow-up questions don't need a fresh "Hey Google" every time. This is now available in every supported language.
- Reasoning across steps: ask something like "what's the weather going to be for my team's next game" and Gemini works out the schedule, the location, and the forecast in one pass.
- Premium-gated extras: Gemini Live for open-ended chat, Camera History Search that can answer questions like "did the dog get on the couch today?" using connected Nest cams, and Home Briefs that summarize what happened at home while you were out.
How it stacks up
Against the current smart speaker field, the Home Speaker is priced to compete rather than to lead:
- Vs. Amazon Echo Dot Max: Amazon's speaker edges it out on raw audio quality according to early reviews, though the Home Speaker counters with deeper reasoning and multi-step command handling.
- Vs. Apple HomePod mini: Apple's speaker remains the tighter pick for households already locked into Apple's ecosystem, but it can't match Gemini's conversational range or third-party smart home breadth.
- Vs. Sonos Era 100: Sonos still wins on pure sound engineering for the price, but offers nothing close to Gemini's assistant-first design.
The bigger differentiator isn't really audio hardware at all — it's whether Google can keep Gemini reliable and fast enough on a $99 device to justify skipping a normal Bluetooth speaker entirely.
Release timeline
- October 2025: Google previews the device alongside a broader Gemini-for-Home hardware refresh.
- June 17, 2026: Official unveiling and pre-orders open across 18 countries.
- June 25, 2026: Google Home Speaker goes on sale at $99.99; Nest Mini and Nest Audio are officially discontinued.
- Ongoing: Google Home Premium subscription rolls out as the gateway to Gemini Live, Camera History Search, and Home Briefs.
Six years is a long time to leave a hardware category alone, especially while Amazon, Apple, and Sonos kept shipping. Whether Google actually sticks with this one — instead of quietly letting it fade the way it has with past smart home efforts — is the question that'll matter more than any spec on this list.