Stephen Schenck / Android Authority
Yesterday was a big day for Google Home. In fact, I may go as far as to say it was one of the most critical moments for the platform in years. Between the long-awaited Gemini rollout, redesigned Home app, new Nest cameras, and really impressive Ask Home capabilities, Google’s smart home ambitions have never looked brighter.
However, for everything Google seems to have gotten right with this next chapter of Google Home, there’s one area that still feels noticeably lacking: hardware. Specifically, smart speaker and smart display hardware.
This is an area where Google has long struggled, and while it is taking steps to improve, I think it’s time for Google to acknowledge that it’s still not doing enough.
What do you think about the Google Home hardware situation? 18 votes I'm fine with it. The Google Home Speaker looks good. 11 % The new speaker seems fine, but the release date kills it for me. 17 % I was hoping for more speakers and/or new smart displays. 72 % Other (let us know in the comments). 0 %
The new Google Home Speaker is already off to a weird start
Among all of the Google Home news yesterday, Google announced a new smart speaker. It’s called the Google Home Speaker, and overall, it looks like a solid offering. It has a nice mesh design that comes in good colors, 360 audio, stereo pairing, and custom processing to handle Gemini commands as quickly as possible. And you get all of that for the very reasonable price of $99.
I recently wrote about my excitement for the new Google Home Speaker, so why am I suddenly so down on it? The speaker itself still sounds promising, but it’s Google’s release strategy that I just can’t wrap my head around.
Leading up to yesterday’s announcement, we expected this new speaker to be released sometime this year, presumably in October or November. However, Google has decided not to do that. Instead, the Google Home Speaker won’t go on sale until Spring 2026.
At the earliest, that means the Google Home Speaker will hit store shelves in approximately five months. However, if Google doesn’t release the speaker until late spring, we could be waiting up to eight months.
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