My first impression when I pulled the nest Audio Dio out of its box was “Wow, this thing is small.” From the pictures and videos, it looked like a smaller version of Home Max, which is still true as I saw it in real life. But it’s less than 7 inches and only 3 inches thick – unlike the Max, the Nest Audio Dio can fit anywhere you want to place it. Like all of Google’s current speakers, it’s packed with audio dio-transparent fabric that comes in five colors (I found the boring but versatile “chalk” option). The front has four LEDs when you talk to the speaker and the rear has a power port and mute switch. Finally, there are invisible touch-sensitive buttons at the top to play or pause the play dio and adjust the volume.
Nathan Ingraham / Engadet
From a feature and setup standpoint, Nest Audio Dio is essentially the same as Nest Mini and other Google-branded smart speakers. Plug it in and the Google Home smartphone app will guide you through the setup process that links to your Google Account and lets you choose your favorite music services. Once that’s done, you can ask Google to play whatever you like or cast songs to speakers from a variety of apps.
The Nest Audio Dio has the same features as the Cheap Nest Mini, so what I’m focusing on here is the quality of the music. Initially, the small size made me question how good it really is, and it was raised in my initial testing. It’s a huge upgrade to a smaller speaker like the Mini or Echo Dot, but it’s also a little underwhelming considering that Google is selling it as an audio Dio-First device. In particular, I found the music to be a bit muddy, without a defined height.
The good news is that it is properly loud and can fill small and medium sized rooms with noise, although you will probably have to push the volume up to the past 50 percent. Luckily, Nest Audio Dio holds up well in high volume, without any significant distortion. And over time, I noticed that the quality of the swamp was low in the beginning – it could just be that I got used to the speaker’s characteristics, or it could be that the Node Audio Dio’s automatic tuning feature was improving the audio listening quality.
