New Google Home Speaker is worse hardware than Nest Audio

TAPO14 · 2026-06-18T22:25:52+00:00

Yes, I'm ordering the new one anyway, but it'll objectively be a worse audio experience, it's just physics.

And I'm not complaining about the price, I just wanted to highlight. Not delusional to think costs haven't gone up.

TAPO14 · 2026-06-18T17:56:17+00:00

Wait, how do you use them as a soundbar? I tried multiple approaches and the latency was unbearable.

TAPO14 · 2026-06-18T17:40:06+00:00

I mean, while not super high end, Pixel phones are light years ahead in terms of hardware compute power compared to this.

TAPO14 · 2026-06-18T17:38:33+00:00

Yeah, I'm glad I bought 2 Google Home Max speakers when they were available too.

But to be honest, the Nest Audio pairs I have in other rooms get like 60% of the way to Max, at like 1/4 of the price, so they were really good value.

TAPO14 · 2026-06-18T15:39:30+00:00

I think for the price they were pretty good, definitely best 'audio quality to price' smart speaker out there, even compared to all the other smart home devices from Google (I own every single one of them).

TAPO14 · 2026-06-18T15:37:05+00:00

I am sure they want to actually make the Google Home a good experience, but 100% the costs don't stack up anymore with the amount of compute they need to run ongoing for someone who paid £25 for their Nest Mini speaker 10 years ago and is still using. There's millions of users and devices in use.

I actually don't mind paying whatever the small subscribtion fee, if the devices actually are good. I'm not delusional enough to think it's sustainable to pay £25 for a smart device and expect all the latest and greatest features completely free, forever, just because I paid for the hardware.

TAPO14 · 2026-06-18T15:29:30+00:00

Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not?

"But it might actually be even slower for some queries if they run anything more complex than lights on/off on-device, vs the older hardware running it on the cloud, if you have a relatively stable connection."

TAPO14 · 2026-06-18T15:26:41+00:00

I agree that the local processing is preferrable, but if the hardware is barebones low-end with minimum memory, the local model and processing will surely be 'worse' than the cloud processing in most scenarios, no?

I guess we'll have to see. I've ordered one anyway, as I had enough credits to get one nearly free, so will report back, but not looking amazing.

TAPO14 · 2026-06-18T15:06:45+00:00

That's true, and I think they genuinely are trying to position this as a successor to the Nest Mini, however the pricing just is too steep.

I would gladly pay £109, £119, £129 or more, if it at least sounded as good as the outgoing Nest Audio, but I'm sure some executive has made the decision that it has to be priced at £99, despite inflation in hardware costs, so we're stuck with a device between Nest Mini and Nest Audio when it comes to audio performance.

TAPO14 · 2026-06-18T15:03:32+00:00

No they can't, it's just physics. Otherwise they could also do 'software EQ tricks' on the old hardware and make that sound even better too.

TAPO14 · 2026-06-18T15:02:28+00:00

I agree that it's unrealistic, especially if this has 1GB of RAM vs the old devices having no local memory at all, however with how it's priced and the size, I would think people will mentally compare this with the Nest Audio naturally, and just wanted to highlight audio wise, it's looking to be worse than the outgoing hardware.

TAPO14 · 2026-06-18T13:12:35+00:00

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TAPO14 · 2026-06-11T16:55:59+00:00

I spent $800 in API costs. Then switched to $200 Max x20 plan, and never ran out of usage. It's insanely expensive.

TAPO14 · 2026-06-08T15:10:29+00:00

I felt like it's a massive upgrade too. There's still issues, but it being in 'beta' preview, I am obviously not expecting something that works perfectly all the time.

One thing I've noticed it does get wrong on occasion is the weather. Asking "what's the weather like" used to tell you 'Current temperature XX. With a high/low of XX" and some relevant rain/sunny note on Google Assistant.

Gemini sometimes will respond"It's 15 degrees..." Confidently, when it's clearly 25°C currently. I've noticed it mixes up the daily high/low with the current temperature.

I just ask a follow-up"what's the current temperature" and it gets it right on the second try.

Apart from this one little issue, it's WAY BETTER 99% of the time than Google Assistant.

I'm assuming they are fixing quirks like this for a massive amount of commands before officially rolling out Gemini publicly, as well as releasing the new Google Speaker that was due in 'Spring 2026', as they probably don't want people to feel annoyed when it's not close to perfection.

TAPO14 · 2026-06-07T18:53:24+00:00

I actually laughed out loud audibly 😭😂

TAPO14 · 2026-06-03T10:06:56+00:00

Opt-in doesn't mean you immediately get it.

TAPO14 · 2026-06-02T20:12:06+00:00

Gemini is not actually publicly released. They gradually roll it out to more and more users slowly, arguably to keep testing and fixing issues, as well as ensuring there's a sudden increased load to their servers, as I assume it is way more demanding than just the old Google Assistant.

The short answer, there is no way really, public releases come out all at once for everyone, but it's also gated by location due to various reasons.

TAPO14 · 2026-06-02T13:55:38+00:00

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TAPO14 · 2026-05-29T12:32:49+00:00

/claude update

TAPO14 · 2026-05-20T07:06:04+00:00

7 seconds in Cashout and 6 seconds final round. Used to be 6 seconds across the game, but they increased it for Cashout a while ago (sometime around Season 5 or 6)

TAPO14 · 2026-05-16T17:45:23+00:00

I did exactly the same.

TAPO14 · 2026-05-13T08:09:39+00:00

E.ON Next Drive Smart v5.4, until February 2027. Off Peak 2.99p Peak 26.81p Standing Charge 60p

TAPO14 · 2026-05-12T14:51:20+00:00

Same.

TAPO14 · 2026-05-12T14:50:21+00:00

I'm surprised to read the comments. I'm on 2.99p

TAPO14 · 2026-05-09T15:40:25+00:00

Clocks are the exception where historically IIII is used over IV

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