Customer Ratings & Reviews

I've been testing the new Google Home Speaker for about a week now, and it's a mixed bag—though mostly a positive one. The hardware is genuinely impressive for $99. The 360-degree sound fills a room nicely, with surprisingly punchy bass for such a compact orb. The design is clean and unobtrusive, and the light ring underneath is a nice touch for visual feedback when it's actually listening. What's really useful is Gemini's conversational understanding. It handles natural commands effortlessly. I can stumble through a request or chain multiple instructions together, and it just works. The Continued Conversation feature keeps the mic open for follow-ups without repeating the wake word, which feels genuinely intuitive. However, Gemini is clearly still a work in progress. Response times are inconsistent (read: often) some commands are near-instant, while simple tasks like setting a timer can take 20 seconds. Occasionally, it confidently gets things wrong, like playing the wrong song or hallucinating voice options. Some of the best features are also paywalled behind the $10/month Google Home Premium subscription, which I haven't decided if it'd be worth keeping around. (It comes with 6 months free) I'm hopeful these kinks will smooth out with updates, but for now, it's a speaker with great bones and an assistant that's still finding its footing.

Sound Quality, Design, Color, ease of setup, response

I bought this speaker to replace the one below it in quality sound. The rectangle style. This one truly has better sound to it. Its not as loud as the other one but the quality of sound makes up for it. It was super easy to add to my Google Nest.

The sound quality is good, the design is very cute, the size is perfect for the bedroom, and the audio performance is excellent.

The new Google speaker sounds quite nice for playing youtube music. Its chatty conversational google assistant is helpful in providing more than the basic answer. Hence closer to a real "assistant". I am very happy with it.

I mainly use for Gemini and it’s been nice for quick questions and such. Love the green!

Not sure what i was expecting. Very similar to a better alexa is the way i would describe. For sure better than the Alexa - especially wityh understanding commands and not having to use certain phrases to trigger actions - but aside from that nothing special. I find myself using my phone more - especially with gemini on my phone itself. Speaker is just okay. Kinda surprised it wasnt better. Idk feel like google usually does great - this was a bit of a let down in what i was thinking vs reality. I do however, think that as gemini improves (which they are very focused on - good for this speaker) this will get better. Though its very linked to that imo. If you ask your speaker questions vs searching phone - get it, its prob worth and significantly (!!!) better than alexa at "whats going today - why is there so much traffic" "can you make a return at best buy without the box" type q's where alexa fails completely.

Helps fill the room with our speaker group including a Nest Mini and Nest Hub. Looking forward to adding a soundbar.

I had an old google home for years which I loved but this is a huge improvement! The color is gorgeous as well.