Google’s first smart speaker in six years arrives next week

Google will begin shipping its first new smart speaker in six years on June 29, with preorders opening June 17. The $99 Google Home Speaker is built for the Gemini for Home assistant and requires a subscription for some features. The device, announced nine months ago, arrives with no hardware changes from its initial reveal. It retains a rounded design with touch-capacitive buttons on top, a status light ring at the bottom, and four color options — porcelain, hazel, jade, and berry — the last two exclusive to the United States [1]. The speaker delivers 360-degree sound, can be paired for stereo, and can connect to a Google TV Streamer for spatial surround sound, a configuration not offered on previous Google speakers [1]. Anish Kattukaran, chief product officer for Google Home, said the speaker runs local models for noise cancellation, echo suppression, and sound separation so Gemini can hear commands despite background noise [1]. The company reports a 40 percent improvement in latency for smart home and basic media commands, more than 25,000 reported issues fixed, and over 50 new features and improvements shipped during the delay [1]. The speaker functions as a Matter controller and Thread Border Router, though it ships with Thread 1.3 rather than the newer 1.4 specification [1]. Google’s smart speaker line began with the original Google Home in November 2016, later rebranded under the Google Nest banner in May 2019 alongside products like the Nest Hub Max [2]. The new Home Speaker is smaller than the Nest Audio, Google’s previous flagship, and the company describes it as “a massive audio upgrade over the Nest Mini” rather than a successor to the Nest Audio’s sound quality [1]. Gemini for Home has been available on Nest speakers through an early access program. Kattukaran said the assistant can understand natural language commands, handle complex questions, and follow along if a user changes thought mid-sentence [1]. A Google Home Premium subscription, starting at $10 per month, is required to use Gemini Live, which Kattukaran called “the most conversational experience you can have with Gemini.” The subscription also enables AI-powered search on Google Nest cameras and a daily summary feature called Google Home Brief [1]. Purchases made before mid-September include six months of the subscription at no additional cost [1].