Google’s first new smart speaker in six years has landed with a familiar smart-home problem: the box looks more convincing than the brain inside it.
In a review published July 1, The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison Tuohy gave the Google Home Speaker a score of 6, praising the $99.99 device’s design and audio for its size while faulting Gemini for Home, Google’s new voice assistant layer for the smart home, as unfinished. For anyone hoping generative AI would make countertop speakers useful beyond music, timers and light switches, that is the annoying bit.
The device is Google’s first smart speaker described as being built for Gemini. According to The Verge, that makes it the clearest sign in years that Google is again paying attention to the smart home after a long hardware gap. Amazon already moved first in this cycle, introducing new hardware tied to a rebuilt Alexa last fall.
Good hardware, messier assistant
Tuohy’s review says the Google Home Speaker mostly gets the physical product right. The speaker is small enough to sit unobtrusively in a room, large enough to produce respectable sound for its size, and priced low enough that buying more than one is plausible. The review lists the speaker at $100 from Google and Best Buy, and $98 from Home Depot.
The Verge also called out the device’s looks, including a clean design, a subtle light ring and a soft green “jade” color shown alongside Amazon’s Echo Dot Max and Apple’s HomePod Mini. The speaker also comes in berry, porcelain and hazel, according to the review’s image caption.
The hardware feature list is more than a fabric-wrapped puck with a microphone. The Verge says the Google Home Speaker can act as a smart home controller for Matter and Thread, the standards meant to make devices from different companies behave less like resentful coworkers. It can also pair with the Google TV Streamer.
The review’s positives include good sound for the speaker’s size, an appealing design, impressive conversational understanding from Gemini, Matter and Thread support, and Google TV Streamer pairing.
Gemini is the weak link
The bad column is where Google’s AI pitch runs into the kitchen counter. Tuohy says Gemini is slow and unreliable, and that several features are behind a paywall. The review also says the new speaker does not sound as good as the Nest Audio, the Google speaker it replaces.
That distinction matters. Google is not only selling another smart speaker. It is selling the idea that Gemini for Home can make a voice assistant feel less brittle than the old command-and-response model. The Verge’s assessment is that Gemini’s ability to understand conversational requests is promising, but the actual experience is not dependable enough yet.
So the score reads less like a rejection of the device than a warning label on the software strategy. Google appears to have built a competent $99.99 speaker with useful smart-home radios and a design that does not scream for attention. The assistant meant to justify the comeback still needs work, according to The Verge, which is a rough place to be when the assistant is the whole sales pitch.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.
