arstechnica The Google Home sequel, the “Nest Audio,” is official for $99.99

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Google has announced a sequel to the original Google Home, which released four years ago. Meet the Google Nest Audio, the company's new mainstream smart speaker. The device is in stores now for $99.99, a price drop over the original $129 Google Home.

 

There's not much reason to upgrade a speaker, but a big part of the sales pitch here is that this should have better sound than the original Google Home. Google says the new speaker is 75 percent louder than the original Google Home, with 50 percent stronger bass. These speakers are packing some seriously beefy speaker equipment and are over double the weight of the original Google Home.

 

The speaker is also supposedly pretty smart. Google says, "Our Media EQ feature enables Nest Audio to automatically tune itself to whatever you're listening to: music, podcasts, audiobooks, or even a response from Google Assistant. And Ambient IQ lets Nest Audio also adjust the volume of Assistant, news, podcasts, and audiobooks based on the background noise in your home, so you can hear the weather forecast over a noisy dishwasher." Like the Nest Mini, this device features a next-gen, onboard version of the Google Assistant that "learns your most common music commands and responds two times faster than the original Google Home."

 

 

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My regular Google Home is serving me great, but I can really see the upgraded speakers and auto EQ functions being a benefit for those with larger open concept homes, or for outdoor areas.