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Announced last week during a virtual event alongside the new Pixel phones and the Chromecast with Google TV, Google Nest Audio is the new version of what used to be called Google Home, offering a more attractive form factor, better sound, and, go figure. “Lower price than its predecessor.” I ordered a pair right away, intrigued by Google’s ongoing efforts to take over and undermine Sonos.
The quick conclusion: Google Nest Audio is a nice advance over Google Home. But it’s no match for any Sonos speaker, including the identically priced Symfonisk Wi-Fi bookshelf speaker from IKEA. And Google still doesn’t offer a viable home theater setup with surround sound, while competitors like Amazon, Roku, and Sonos do. I’m curious that you haven’t introduced such a system alongside Chromecast with Google TV.
Regardless, the Google Home was still ready for a makeover, given that it is nearing its fourth anniversary next month. As with other smart home products from Google, it has been rebranded under the Nest brand, which is fine. And you’ve picked up the nice cloth exterior found on the Google Home Mini / Nest Mini and Google Home Max. I quite like the look.
More important, of course, is the quality of the sound. It’s good. I’ve seen multiple reviews claiming that Google somehow pulled it off with Nest Audio, but that’s a stretch. In fact, my initial audio test was a bit disappointing and I had to go back to using my old Google Home pair to see if I was missing anything.
But after playing around with the EQ settings a bit, that is, I increased the bass and treble, and with a more varied selection of music over time, it became clear that Nest Audio really is a huge improvement. (I had previously optimized the sound for my Google Home pair.) But that’s a low bar: Google Home is by no means impressive from a sound quality perspective.
The key to this improvement is pretty obvious: Nest Audio is slightly larger than Google Home and has larger components (a 75mm woofer and a 19mm tweeter) inside.
What Nest Audio hypocrisy to do is fill a large room with sound, even with a stereo pair. It also doesn’t compare to the audio quality found in Sonos’ cheaper home speakers, the aforementioned $ 99 IKEA Symfonisk Wi-Fi Bookshelf Speaker and the Sonos One SL ($ 179). Those nearly identical Sonos speakers deliver deeper bass and clearer, richer overall sound. They are as big an update on Nest Audio as Nest Audio is on Google Home.
What you don’t get with Sonos, of course, is access to the open Google Cast ecosystem. I like being able to stream music directly from the apps I use and not being forced to use the mediocre Sonos app. Of course, some applications, such as Spotify and Audible, do support that functionality. But I switched to YouTube Music this year and that app didn’t.
One thing I’ve already done is mute the mics – Google provides a handy hardware switch for this purpose on the back, and we certainly don’t need another device listening to us all the time.
Given that, I’ll probably stick with these speakers. I had previously retired my Google Home and Home Mini smart speakers, and put a couple of those Symfonisk speakers in the kitchen. But I’ve since moved them into the living room, where they are used as surround speakers with my Sonos Beam in a home theater setup. So I had temporarily returned the Google Home pair until the Nest Audio speakers arrived.
Google Nest Audio comes in four colors Chalk, Charcoal, Sage, Sand, Sky, and I chose Chalk to blend a bit with our white kitchen tiles. The old Google Home could have matched the color scheme a bit better, actually, but I like the Nest color options. And the price is good: Google Nest Audio is normally $ 99, but I got mine from Best Buy, which was offering them for only $ 89 each. The original Google Home cost $ 129.
On that note, if you’re still using the original Google Home speaker, this is a great upgrade. And if you’re in the Google ecosystem and want to add some decent speakers elsewhere in your house, you could do worse. But now I wonder when or if Google will update the Home Max. And when will you jump on the home theater train and make your Chromecast with Google TV even more interesting. We’ll see.
