Google’s new smart speaker with Gemini

It’s been a while since Google released a new smart speaker for the home, and that means this is the first speaker built for Gemini. Even Google’s existing speaker has been updated to Gemini, but the new speaker must be improved so that it hears your voice even when there are more disturbing sounds in the environment and it has a light ring with pulsating lights in different colors at the bottom. There you see, for example, when Gemini hears your voice and thus confirms that what you say is actually going through. With a physical button on the speaker, you can manually turn off the microphone when you prefer, so that the speaker is not listening.

In addition to being a smart speaker that you can talk to and where Gemini gives you answers and can help you control your smart home, the Google Home Speaker is also a compact speaker to listen to music with and it has 360 sound so that it can be placed more freely without the sound being negatively affected. In other words, it is a replacement for Nest Audio but in a more compact format and hopefully with better music sound, something we had remarks about when we tested Nest Audio in 2020. However, the speaker element in the Google Home Speaker is smaller than those in the predecessor. As mentioned, the Google Home Speaker can be connected in stereo but can also be added to speaker groups with other compatible speakers.

Smarter interpretation of what connected cameras have seen

Google Home Speaker, and for that matter also existing speakers, benefit from the updates that Gemini gets connected to the home. They’re coming out this spring and mean, for example, that you’ll get smarter summaries and interpretation of what connected Nest cameras have seen. For example, you can ask for a smart summary of the day as seen by the cameras and get an answer that a delivery person left the bakery, the dog was on the sofa and what happened when the vase that is now broken on the kitchen floor ended up there.

Home Brief, which Google calls the summary you can get of what happened during the day, is a feature of Google Home Premium. When you buy the speaker, a 6-month subscription to Home Premium Standard is included. Then you also get 30 days of video history for connected cameras, Gemini Live for more natural conversations and smarter alerts from your cameras. The Home Premium Standard subscription is included if you have Google AI Pro, but otherwise costs SEK 100 a month. Google also has Google Home Premium Advanced (included in Google AI Ultra), which provides longer video history and more detailed descriptions.