The Home Speaker is the unsuitable $99 Google Home gadget to purchase in 2026

With the launch of the Home Speaker, Google trimmed down its sensible speaker and show lineup. The Google Home Speaker prices $99 and replaces the now-discontinued Nest Mini and Nest Audio audio system. If you’re available in the market for a brand new sensible dwelling controller suitable with Google Home, the Home Speaker is your least expensive choice. However, there’s one other $99 sensible dwelling controller that may be a higher addition to your Google Home than the Home Speaker: the second-generation Nest Hub.

Google’s second-generation Nest Hub is considerably of an afterthought in 2026 due to its age. The sensible show was refreshed 5 years in the past, however it shouldn’t be written off simply but. Google nonetheless sells and formally helps the Nest Hub, and it runs the identical Gemini chatbot because the brand-new Home Speaker.

In reality, I put my Nest Hub up in opposition to the Home Speaker, and I all the time need the show to answer my requests as an alternative of the speaker. If I might solely have one managing my dwelling, I’d decide the Nest Hub over the Home Speaker.

The apparent benefit of a sensible show is that it may possibly play movies and present visible data. I get pleasure from casting video podcasts, streaming providers, and YouTube movies to my Nest Hub to look at at my desk or in my kitchen. Plus, with the ability to look on the climate, date, and time is all the time neat. Beyond content material consumption and glanceability, the Nest Hub can be a greater sensible dwelling controller than the Home Speaker.

The second-generation Nest Hub’s underrated {hardware} helps clarify why. Aside from the 7-inch touchscreen show and 43.5mm full-range speaker driver, the Nest Hub additionally packs a trio of sensible sensors. There’s a temperature sensor, an ambient mild sensor, and a Soli sensor inside — none of that are discovered within the Home Speaker. While all three sensors are helpful, the Soli sensor stands out. It detects motion and respiration, making gesture management, presence sensing, and even sleep sensing attainable.

Otherwise, the Nest Hub and the Home Speaker are fairly comparable. Both sensible dwelling controllers use three far-field microphones for voice pickup, and so they every have a bodily mute swap. The Home Speaker has the benefit of a bigger, omnidirectional 58mm full-range driver. It sounds higher than the Nest Hub, though I’m unsure if sound high quality alone is sufficient to persuade me to go away options like ultrasound sensing, sleep sensing, and fast gestures behind.

As I used the Nest Hub and the Home Speaker side-by-side, I valued seeing visible confirmations {that a} sensible dwelling command was executed correctly. When I modified the temperature setting on my Nest Thermostat utilizing my voice, I’d see the change take impact on my Nest Hub display. If I determine the temperature I requested isn’t fairly proper, I’ve a slider and handbook controls robotically opened on the Nest Hub’s touchscreen. By comparability, having to make use of my voice for each Home Speaker command was tiring after some time — particularly contemplating Gemini’s propensity to answer with long-winded solutions.

My favourite methods to make use of the Nest Hub’s display in my dwelling had nothing to do with casting movies. They concerned mundane requests that had been extra handy to observe because of the onboard touchscreen. Both the Nest Hub and Home Speaker can recite a recipe, however just one can show it so I can observe alongside whereas making dinner. I can ask the Nest Hub and Home Speaker to check my Nest Wi-Fi Pro connection, however just one can present me the velocity check outcomes on the display.

The identical requests end in fully completely different experiences relying on whether or not you employ a sensible show or a sensible speaker. Since the Nest Hub and Home Speaker are each priced at $99, I wouldn’t wish to select the latter and miss out on the previous’s additional performance.

Google Home customers who solely want a sensible gadget to regulate the lights or stream music might discover the Home Speaker extra helpful. The deeper you get into the Google Home and Nest ecosystem, the extra priceless a sensible show turns into. Just a few of the visible experiences that offered me on the Nest Hub had been attainable as a result of I personal a Nest Thermostat and Nest Wi-Fi Pro router. The ones that sealed the deal built-in with my Nest Battery Doorbell and Nest Cam Indoor safety cameras.

Gemini for Home is unimaginable at analyzing what your cameras see. The information is used to tell AI-summarized notifications and recaps, however they aren’t very useful. Instead, Gemini for Home is finest at answering particular questions utilizing your Nest digicam recordings. I’ll often ask what time a package deal was delivered, and I can specify which provider dropped it off. The Home Speaker solutions the query, however the Nest Hub robotically surfaces the occasion recording, full with a timecode and video of the drop-off.

I might pull out my cellphone and seek for the occasion clip myself, however having a Nest Hub round streamlines the method. If I ask a extra imprecise query, the Home Speaker would possibly battle with it. The Nest Hub, because of its show, exhibits me a listing of attainable video recordings associated to my request. I can scroll by way of the associated occasions and faucet each to look at the video recording. After getting used to utilizing a Nest Hub to overview my Nest cameras, I wouldn’t wish to use them with solely a sensible speaker.

I’ve used Nest Hub shows so as to add a peephole and doorbell chime to any room. With a sensible show and my Nest Battery Doorbell, I can view a dwell feed of who’s exterior when the doorbell rings — and listen to it from wherever. Without it, I’d don’t know when somebody is knocking on the entrance door from deep inside my residence. It’s true that the Home Speaker can do a few of these issues, like make audio bulletins. The frequent denominator is that Home Speaker options really feel half-baked after utilizing a Nest Hub show for a similar requests.

The Google Home Speaker is louder, sleeker, and better-sounding than any Nest Hub. The tiny orb-shaped speaker can mix into any area, and it doesn’t scream “smart.” Meanwhile, the Nest Hub sacrifices sound high quality to supply all its different options, and there’s no mistaking it for stylish dwelling decor. That’s about all of the reward I’ve to offer for the Home Speaker, no less than compared to the Google Nest Hub. The former’s performance is extra akin to the $50 Nest Mini it changed, whereas the Nest Hub’s capabilities make it worthy of its $99 worth level.

I anticipated the Home Speaker to impress me with its quad-core A55 processor and NPU, that are designed for Gemini. In actuality, I didn’t discover my Nest Hub responding that a lot slower than the Home Speaker. I used to be prepared to attend both means, as a result of the improved expertise delivered by the Nest Hub’s display rewarded my persistence.