If you’ve been waiting for a new Google smart speaker, congratulations: you have outlasted a pandemic, four generations of AirPods, and a complete reinvention of Google’s AI strategy. The last time Google launched a standalone smart speaker, the Nest Audio in September 2020, Gemini didn’t exist yet, and AI assistants were still mostly novelties. Nearly six years later, the Google Home Speaker is finally arriving, and it’s been rebuilt from the ground up around Gemini.
Price: £99.99 (About $135)
Where to Buy: Google Store
Google announced the device on October 1, 2025, as part of its fall Nest update. It carries a familiar $99.99 price tag (£99.99 in the UK), but the official “Spring 2026” window has quietly slipped: a Best Buy Canada product page recently surfaced a June 25, 2026 release date, which would put the launch just days past the technical end of spring. Google hasn’t confirmed the date on its own store yet, but with hardware this far along, the holdup almost certainly sits with Gemini for Home, which is still rolling out through an Early Access program.
A speaker designed around a chatbot
Where the Nest Audio was a pillow-shaped Assistant box, the Google Home Speaker, its long-awaited Nest Audio successor, is shaped, sold, and marketed as a Gemini endpoint first and a speaker second. Google says the device uses custom processing tuned for Gemini’s advanced AI, enabling “faster, more fluid” interactions, the kind of latency you need for a smart speaker to feel conversational instead of transactional.
Out of the box, owners get Gemini for Home, which handles everyday tasks, smart home control, timers, broadcasts, and media playback. The bigger upgrade lives behind a subscription: Gemini Live, included free for six months via a Google Home Premium Standard trial (a $60 / £48 value). Gemini Live is the conversational mode you’ve seen on Pixel: interrupt mid-sentence, ask follow-up questions, brainstorm, or talk an idea through. On a countertop speaker, it’s a meaningfully different experience from the old “Hey Google, set a timer” loop.
After the trial, Google Home Premium runs $10/month or $100/year for Standard and $20/month or $200/year for Advanced in the US, with the UK at £8/£80 and £16/£160 for the same tiers.
The Advanced tier layers on two features Google is promising for early 2026: searchable video history with Ask Home (“did the dog walker come today?”) and Home Brief, a daily summary of what happened at home while you were out. Both are clearly the pitch for owners who already live inside the Nest ecosystem.
Hardware: 360° audio, a glowing base, and four nice colors
Design and controls
The Google Home Speaker is small, soft, and rounded, wrapped almost entirely in a knitted fabric mesh, with a status light ring at the base and a physical microphone mute switch. The light ring shows when Gemini is listening, thinking, reasoning, responding, or in Gemini Live mode.
Colors and sustainability
It’ll come in four colors that look pulled straight from a Pixel marketing deck: Berry (pink-red), Hazel (charcoal-gray), Jade (soft green), and Porcelain (warm white).[2] Google is leaning hard on sustainability here too. The speaker is made with recycled materials, and its mesh is woven using a 3D knitting process the company says reduces fabric waste.
Sound and audio modes
On the audio side, expect balanced 360-degree sound designed to play evenly no matter where you place the speaker in the room. A few practical extras matter more than the marketing copy lets on: two units can be set up as a stereo pair, and pairing them with the Google TV Streamer unlocks a home theater mode with spatial surround sound. The speaker also slots into multi-room groups with existing Nest speakers and displays.
Availability and the bigger picture
At launch, the Google Home Speaker will be sold in 19 countries: the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.
It’s tempting to treat this as just another speaker refresh, but it’s really a referendum on whether Google still cares about the smart home. The original Google Home (2016), the Mini, the Max, the Hub, and the Nest rebrand all pointed toward a unified ambient-computing strategy that quietly stalled out. The Home Speaker’s return isn’t because Google suddenly fell back in love with hardware. It’s because Gemini needed a place to live in the kitchen, the bedroom, and the hallway. As Yanko Design put it, the speaker is back on the counter; the real question is whether Google stays in the room this time.
Should you buy one?
For $99.99, the Google Home Speaker is positioned almost exactly where the Nest Audio was: a mid-tier, design-forward voice speaker that lives or dies by its assistant. The difference is that this time the assistant is genuinely new, not just a rebrand. If you’re already invested in Nest cameras, Google TV, or Pixel, this is the most natural addition to your home in years. If you’re an Alexa or HomePod household, the Premium subscription math gets harder fast.
Price: £99.99 (About $135)
Where to Buy: Google Store
We’ll have a full review once units ship. For now, pre-launch interest pages are live on the Google Store and Best Buy, with Google still officially saying “Spring 2026” and retailers quietly whispering June 25.
Zip Ties Assorted Sizes(4”+6”+8”+12”), 400 Pack, Black Cable Ties, UV Resistant Wire Ties by ANOSON
(as of June 5, 2026 05:21 GMT -05:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)
