Google just shipped its first new smart speaker in six years, and the pitch is bigger than a fresh paint job. The $100 Google Home Speaker is built almost entirely around Gemini for Home, the AI assistant that’s replacing Google Assistant across the company’s smart speaker lineup. The hardware itself — better sound, faster processing, a redesigned light ring — is mostly there to support that transition. Whether the software is actually ready for the spotlight is a different story, and reviewers who’ve spent time with it are landing on a similar answer: closer, but not quite.

A Real Hardware Upgrade

On pure specs, the Home Speaker is a clear step up from the aging Nest Mini it replaces. It packs a larger full-range driver, up from the Nest Mini’s smaller unit, and reviewers have described the sound as noticeably fuller and more room-filling for a speaker of its size, even if it doesn’t quite match the two-driver setup of the pricier Nest Audio it’s positioned to eventually replace. The design leans into a soft, mesh-covered “mushroom” shape that fits in more like a piece of decor than a gadget, and Wi-Fi 6 support helps requests process with noticeably less lag than on older Nest hardware.

There’s also a new trick unique to this generation: pairing two Home Speakers with a Google TV Streamer to create a plug-and-play surround setup for a TV, complete with spatial audio support — something older Nest speakers can’t do. Not every design choice landed well, though. The power cable is now permanently attached rather than removable, a step back from the Nest Audio that leaves buyers with no fix if the cord ever gets damaged. And in the U.S., buyers get four color options; in markets like the U.K., that shrinks down to just two, a decision that’s puzzled more than one reviewer.

Gemini for Home: Smarter, But Not Smart Enough

The bigger story is what’s happening under the hood. Gemini for Home officially replaces Google Assistant on the new speaker, and it’s meant to feel less like a command-response tool and more like an actual conversation partner. A new mode called Gemini Live pushes that idea further, letting people have an open-ended, back-and-forth conversation with the assistant on basically any topic just by saying “let’s chat live.” It’s a meaningfully different experience from the standard assistant mode, which still only uses a lighter touch of Gemini’s capabilities.

The catch is that Gemini Live isn’t included for free. Google is, for the first time, putting real smart-home assistant features behind a subscription. A $10-a-month tier unlocks Gemini Live along with more detailed camera alerts (describing, say, a person walking past a specific spot rather than just flagging generic motion) and 30 days of stored video history. A $20-a-month tier adds a “home brief” feature that summarizes what happened around the house while you were out, pulling from camera footage and other connected devices.

Even with that premium tier turned on, the experience isn’t as polished as the pitch suggests. One recurring problem reviewers ran into: Gemini Live occasionally stumbles on conversations that should be simple, including basic follow-up questions about topics the person had just brought up themselves. It’s the kind of hiccup that undercuts the entire promise of a more natural, human-feeling assistant — if it can’t reliably track a conversation a person is having about their own backyard, it’s hard to trust it with more complex requests. Other outlets that tested the speaker ran into similar issues, including moments where the assistant gave answers that didn’t logically follow the question at all.

So, Is It Worth Buying?

Judged purely as a speaker, the Google Home Speaker is a solid, if unspectacular, upgrade — better sound, faster responses, and a nicer design than what it replaces, at a price that isn’t unreasonable for the category. The problem is that Google isn’t really selling a speaker here; it’s selling Gemini, and that part of the experience still isn’t fully baked. Worse, since Gemini for Home is rolling out to existing Nest and Home speakers as a software update, buyers don’t necessarily need the new hardware to get most of what it offers, undercutting the case for buying one at all right now.

For anyone whose old Nest speaker is on its last legs, the new Home Speaker is a fine one-to-one replacement. But anyone expecting AI to be the selling point that finally makes a smart speaker feel effortless may want to wait for Gemini for Home to close a few more of its remaining gaps first.