Google Home Speaker review: A modest update for the Gemini era - Engadget

The question is whether Gemini is a good enough smart home assistant. Somehow, it's been almost nine months since Google first revealed its latest smart speaker, the boringly-named Google Home Speaker. I don't understand why it took the company so long to get it to market, as there's nothing that particularly changes the game here hardware-wise. The $99 orb looks a lot like Apple's HomePod mini, with a speaker that fires audio in 360 degrees and microphones so you can chat with Google Assistant Gemini for Home. It's the definition of an expected, iterative piece of hardware — but on the other hand, it's been almost six years since Google released the Nest Audio and seven since the Nest Home Mini. Given that timeframe, Google is overdue for some updated hardware, just to make sure the "smart" part of the speaker stays current. The bigger question is whether or not Gemini for Home is a good enough assistant to run your smart home. The Google Home Speaker replaces both the $99 Nest Audio and $49 Nest Mini, so Google effectively doubled the price of its entry-level speaker. That's a bummer, but the Google Home Speaker provides a massive upgrade if you care at all about audio quality. T