Smart speakers haven’t changed much in years. Sure, they’ve gotten a little better at answering questions and controlling smart home gadgets, but the overall experience has felt largely the same.
Google is hoping artificial intelligence can change that.
The company has unveiled the Google Home Speaker, a new $99.99 smart speaker that serves as the first device built specifically around Gemini. Available for pre-order now and arriving June 25, Google says the speaker delivers a more natural voice assistant experience that requires less memorization and fewer carefully worded commands.
In other words, Google wants you to talk to your smart speaker like a person instead of a machine.
According to the company, Gemini for Home can understand more conversational requests, handle multiple commands at once, and even recover when users change their minds halfway through a sentence. Rather than issuing a series of rigid commands, users can make more complex requests such as turning off every light except a bedside lamp or asking about the weather during an upcoming baseball game.
Google is also introducing what it calls “Continued Conversation,” allowing follow-up questions without repeatedly saying the wake phrase. The company says Gemini can maintain conversational context for short periods, making interactions feel more natural.
Some of the more advanced AI features, however, are locked behind Google Home Premium. Subscribers gain access to Gemini Live for open-ended conversations, Camera History Search for Nest cameras, and Home Briefs, which can summarize activity that occurred around the home while users were away.
As for the hardware itself, the Google Home Speaker is relatively straightforward. It features a 58mm full-range driver designed to provide 360-degree audio, three far-field microphones, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, Matter support, and Thread border router functionality. Inside is a quad-core processor paired with 1GB of memory and 4GB of storage.
Google says users can pair up to two speakers with a Google TV Streamer to create a surround sound setup for movies and TV shows.
The device is available in Hazel and Porcelain globally, while U.S. buyers can also choose Jade and Berry color options. Google says the speaker contains at least 37 percent recycled materials by weight and ships in plastic-free packaging.
I should mention that I’m already a big fan of Google’s smart speakers. I have several older Google Home and Nest speakers scattered throughout my house, and I use them every day. Whether I’m turning lights on and off, asking random questions, checking the weather, setting timers while cooking, or streaming music, they’ve become one of those technologies I barely think about anymore because they fit so naturally into my routine. I’ve also always been impressed by how good they sound for the money.
That’s why this announcement caught my attention. What’s most interesting here isn’t the hardware. At $99.99, there’s nothing particularly groundbreaking about the speaker itself. The real test is whether Gemini can finally deliver on the promise that voice assistants have been making for more than a decade.
As someone who already relies on Google speakers daily, I’m genuinely curious to see whether Gemini makes them noticeably smarter or simply adds another layer of AI marketing. If Google’s AI can truly understand people the way the company claims, this could be the most meaningful smart speaker upgrade we’ve seen in years. If not, it may end up being just another speaker with a chatbot bolted onto it.
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