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The best for audio quality
Google is taking a two-pronged approach for its latest smart speaker. It’s both a “speaker first” and simultaneously the first speaker “built for Gemini.” With better audio quality and better local AI processing, this is the speaker for the future.
The anywhere speaker
Nest Mini was designed to give you instant access to Google Assistant anywhere in your home, and it doubles as an impressive little speaker that can be easily mounted on any wall. Unfortunately, it’s both out of date and no longer for sale, and many Gemini commands can be quite slow.
Google’s Nest Mini speaker was announced alongside the Pixel 4, which should give you a good idea of how old the speaker is at this point. While smart home speakers were never designed to be updated annually the way phones are, the Nest Mini’s hardware is showing its age in the Gemini era. Most commands take a notable amount of time to process, and since the audio quality was never top-tier to begin with, it’s likely you’re considering an upgrade by this point, anyway.
That’s where the Google Home Speaker comes in. Google has dropped the Nest name for its latest speaker, going all-in on Gemini integration and a powerful new speaker system. At $99, it’s twice the price of the Nest Mini when it launched, and while it’s certainly an excellent upgrade for every Nest Mini owner, there might still be a few reasons to keep that Nest Mini in the right room.
My favorite Nest Mini feature was, undoubtedly, the mounting hole on the back. This ingenious little dimple lets it be hung on any wall, discreetly adding a speaker to any room you want. Whether you had the cord hanging freely (as in the picture above) or you got more professional with it and hid it, the Nest Mini was a great addition to any room.
The Google Home Speaker doesn’t have this mounting hole, so it’s not easy to hang on a wall, but it’s a great addition to any shelf or nightstand thanks to its homey texture and colors. It uses a similar textile look to the Nest Mini, plus the same LED volume adjustment buttons on top and a thick rubber nonstick pad on the bottom to keep it from sliding or being bumped around.
You’ll also find a hardware mute switch on the bottom of both speakers, so you can feel confident in your privacy if you just want these to act as speakers (and not a Gemini-powered assistant).
While talking to the Nest Mini, an array of LEDs lights up on top to let you know it’s listening or processing a command. The Google Home Speaker spruces this up a bit with an LED ring on the bottom, which features a unique glow that’s more obvious than the Nest Mini, which is particularly important since it tends to blend in well with decor on shelves.
Both speakers feature poor choices for power cabling, which is more than just annoying. The Nest Mini featured a proprietary barrel plug, which meant you needed to buy a new charger if something happened to it. The Google Home Speaker uses a USB-C charging brick, but the cable is hardwired into the speaker, so you’ll likely have to buy a whole new one if something happens to this one.
Both wires are about the same length (~6.5 ft), and since they’re either proprietary or non-replaceable, you’ll have to choose a location close to an outlet or extension cord.
Although Nest Mini’s sound quality was an improvement over the original Google Home Mini speaker, neither model offered stellar sound. They were simply too small for that. The Google Home Speaker substantially upgrades the audio quality this time around, and it does so without drastically altering the speaker’s footprint.
That’s because, while the Google Home Speaker is about twice as high as the Nest Mini speaker (42mm vs 86mm), it’s also about the same diameter (96mm vs 106mm). That’s a very easy size to stuff into a bookshelf or a similarly small space (as evidenced in the photo above).
The Google Home Speaker also features an omnidirectional 58mm full-range audio driver, delivering 360-degree audio that sounds great no matter where the “front” of the speaker is. Nest Mini features a similar 360-degree design, but the 40mm driver and substantially lighter weight (181g vs 408g) mean the Google Home Speaker’s bass quality simply sounds better.
Both speakers support the Google Cast protocol and multi-room speaker capability, so you can cast nearly any audio source to them, but the Google Home Speaker supports Google’s new surround sound mode. That lets you connect multiple Google Home speakers to your Google TV streamer for surround sound while watching TV, giving you a great way to ditch the soundbar (or an older wired audio system) for something chicer.
The Google Home Speaker also supports faster wireless connectivity via Wi-Fi 6 (Nest Mini is Wi-Fi 5), better Bluetooth quality via Bluetooth 5.4 (vs Bluetooth 5.0 on Nest Mini), and full support as a Thread hub for Matter connectivity.
That last part ensures that the Google Home Speaker is a better choice for smart home connectivity, as it allows newer smart home devices to connect through a local Thread network for faster local commands.
Nest Mini was launched as a mostly cloud-centric computing device, often offloading even the most basic commands to Google Assistant in the cloud. Over time, as Google has migrated many commands to Gemini, Nest Mini has started to feel slower and slower.
The Google Home Speaker was built to help fix this problem, but it doesn’t do it quite as well as I had hoped. The newer 2.0GHz CPU with a built-in NPU is designed to process more tasks and commands locally, but my experience with the speaker has shown that Google still offloads many commands to the cloud.
|
Category |
Google Home Speaker |
Nest Mini |
|---|---|---|
|
Speaker |
Omni-directional 58mm full-range driver |
360-degree sound with 40mm driver |
|
Microphone |
3 far-field mics, |
3 far-field mics, |
|
Dimensions |
86.6mm/3.4in high x 107mm/4.2in diameter |
42mm/1.65in high x 98mm/3.85mm diameter |
|
Weight |
396g |
181g |
|
Power adapter |
30W USB-C PC/PPS charger |
15W barrel plug adapter |
|
RAM |
1GB LPDDR4 |
1GB RAM |
|
Storage |
4GB EMMC |
4GB EMMC |
|
Processor |
Quad-core A55 2.0 GHz with NPU |
Quad-core A53 1.4Ghz with ML hardware engine |
|
Connectivity |
Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, Thread 1.3 border router (2.4GHz), Matter, Google Cast |
Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.0, Google Cast |
|
Colors |
Globally: Hazel, Porcelain U.S. exclusive: Jade, Berry |
Chalk, Charcoal, Coral, Sky |
This results in a speaker that executes many commands fast (and some near instantly), but some commands are still absurdly slow. Even simple commands, like setting a timer, might take 20 seconds or more to execute if something goes awry. While this is likely just a bug happening with the Google Home Speaker at launch, it still shows that Google isn’t keeping as many commands local as I’d like.
Since both devices support Gemini, there’s no functional difference in these speakers’ ability to use Google’s AI-powered assistant. The difference is mainly down to speed, something I hope Google will continue to improve and tweak in the new speaker with future software updates.
While newer isn’t always better (especially when it’s double the price), Google no longer sells the Nest Mini. You could always pick up a second-hand unit on eBay and try your luck, especially if you just want a little speaker to hang on a wall.
Otherwise, the Google Home Speaker is an easy choice. It’s got substantially better audio quality, support for Matter and Thread, Wi-Fi 6, newer Bluetooth for better audio quality, surround sound support with Google TV Streamers, and a better processor for faster smart home and Gemini queries.
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