The long-awaited $100 Google Home Speaker is finally here! The June 25 launch date and pre-orders are now live. After being announced back in October and teased last week, you can now reserve your Gemini-powered speakers from Google, and those who pre-order between now and 9/30 get 6 months of Google Home Premium service for free.
In case you forgot what it can do, the new Home Speaker can play music, control your smart home products, and access the power of Gemini and Gemini Live. The latter requires a Google Home Premium subscription, which is included with select Gemini AI subscription plans. The speaker also includes a light ring on its base, which displays when it’s listening, thinking, or responding.
As with every other Google smart home product, it includes a physical mute switch. Speaking of audio, its 360-degree sound can be grouped with other Nest and Cast-supported devices, can be paired with another Home Speaker for stereo sound, and a pair can provide spatial surround sound with a Google TV Streamer 4K. Currently, this spatial sound feature is only available for Google’s latest streaming box, as discussed during a briefing with Google.
Regarding its hardware, the Google Home Speaker comes in at 0.9 lbs, powered by a quad-core chip with NPU, 1GB of RAM, 4GB of storage, an RGB light ring for activity, a 58mm full-range driver for audio, three far-field mics, capacitive touch controls with a mute option, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and a Thread 1.3 border router with Matter support.
