What you need to know
- Google Home Speaker users have reported a glaring problem: their device’s support has become incredibly slow.
- Other users have experienced the same thing; however, this lag issue affects more than the Home Speaker, as other Nest devices also struggle.
- Google has responded to this thread and said a fix has been made “ASAP”.
Google’s latest smart speaker is off to a flying start, but users are reporting anything but good news as problems crop up.
Earlier this week reports surfaced From user Home Speaker on the Google Home subreddit ( Android Police). The root of their reports is that the Speaker of the House is strangely slow. They say, “The first day went smoothly… the second day, every question (even ‘hello’) took at least 30 seconds to answer.” Troubleshooting did not provide any relief from this problem.
Users started flocking to the thread and reported that others with Home Speakers were experiencing the same problem. The publication saw another thread from a user that opened up this issue extensively. It’s not just a Home Speaker problem, it’s more of a Google smart home problem has a number of effects of its products. User says “Everything is timed out”.
They add that all of their smart home devices struggle with delayed or sluggish response times. Resetting doesn’t seem to offer any help in fixing the problem. One user said: “Definitely noticed this after the update. Especially for simpler tasks that are faster, like turning on light, switching to warm white, setting to 50%.” A later report said that they didn’t see anything out of date, but instead that their streamed content (like music) stopped halfway through.
Google has become aware of this smart home problem. A community member says the company is “working on a fix ASAP.” There’s no exact time frame for when we might see this, so users will have to tough it out as best they can.
Updates have been made to do the opposite
Android Central’s Take
It’s a little strange to see problems with something that Google is trying to make faster. It’s like being caught in the strangest hurricane. An update will likely be required to fix this issue, the only question is when will we see it?
It’s interesting to see users bring up the fact that the Home Speaker “used to be” snappy with response times for mundane tasks. Google provided an update for TwinsIn March, home help accelerated their responses by ~30% to ~40%. This patch reduced the delay between the user giving the task and Gemini responding/following it.
It was Google’s smart speakers brought into focus a week ago as the company resolved a long-running SiriusXM radio issue. Users were getting SiriusXM errors on their smart speakers, saying “I was looking for this, but it’s either not available or can’t be played right now.” SiriusXM will work through the user’s phone, not Google’s smart home devices. After the Google patch, everything seems fine.
