Best for sound quality
Google is taking a two-pronged approach to its latest smart speaker. He is both a “first speaker” and the first speaker “Built for Gemini”. With better sound quality and better native AI processing, this is the speaker of the future.
Pros
- Beautiful design and construction
- The speaker quality is absolutely impressive
- Can be used as TV surround sound speakers
- Understands complex queries seamlessly
- Deep integration into the Google Home ecosystem
- Thread border router with Matter support
Cons
- The USB-C cable is hardwired
- Some responses are very slow
Loudspeaker anywhere
The Nest Mini is designed to give you instant access to Google Assistant anywhere in your home, and it doubles as an impressive little speaker that can easily be mounted on any wall. Unfortunately, it is both outdated and no longer available, and many Gemini commands can be quite slow.
Pros
- Great value (if you can still find it)
- Rear mounted mounting hole
- Small size
Cons
- Slow helper/Gemini responses
- Sound quality is not great (especially bass)
- Proprietary barrel plug electrical connector
Google’s Nest Mini speaker was announced alongside the Pixel 4, which should give you a good idea of how old the speaker is at this point. While smart home speakers are never meant to be updated every year like phones are, the Nest Mini’s hardware is showing its age. Twins period. Most commands take a noticeable amount of time to process, and since the sound quality is never top notch, you’ll probably want to consider upgrading by this point anyway.
This is where Google Home Speaker comes into play. Google has ditched the Nest name for its latest speaker, which includes Gemini integration and a powerful new speaker system. At $99, it’s twice the price of the Nest Mini when it launched, and while it’s certainly a great upgrade for any Nest Mini owner, there may still be a few reasons to keep the Nest Mini in the right room.
Google Home Speaker (2026) and Nest Mini: Design
My favorite Nest Mini feature was definitely the mounting hole on the back. This ingenious little rod allows you to hang it on any wall and quietly adds a speaker to any room. Whether you let the cord hang free (as pictured above) or went more professional with it and concealed it, the Nest Mini was a great addition to any room.
The Google Home Speaker doesn’t have this mounting hole, so it’s not easy to hang on the wall, but it’s a great addition to any shelf or nightstand thanks to its homey texture and colors. It uses a similar textile look to the Nest Mini, plus the same LED volume buttons on top and a thick rubber non-stick pad on the bottom to keep it from sliding or bumping around.
You’ll also find a hardware mute switch on the bottom of both speakers, so you can be sure of your privacy if you just want them to act as speakers (and not a Gemini-powered assistant).
When you’re talking to the Nest Mini, a set of LEDs at the top light up to let you know it’s listening or processing a command. The Google Home Speaker spruces this up a bit more with an LED ring on the bottom, which has a unique glow that’s more obvious than the Nest Mini, especially since it tends to blend in well with the decor on the shelves.
Both speakers have poor choices for power cables, which isn’t just annoying. The Nest Mini had a special barrel plug, which means you’ll have to buy a new charger if something happens. The Google Home Speaker uses a USB-C charging brick, but the cable is attached to the speaker, so you’ll likely need to buy a USB-C one. brand new if anything to it.
Both cords are about the same length (~6.5 feet) and since they are either proprietary or non-replaceable, you will need to choose a location close to an outlet or extension cord.
Google Home Speaker (2026) and Nest Mini: Sound quality and connectivity
While the Nest Mini’s sound quality was better than the original Google Home Mini speaker, neither model offered perfect sound. They were too small for that. Google Home Speaker significantly improves sound quality this time around, and does so without drastically changing the speaker footprint.
This is because although the Google Home Speaker is almost twice as tall as the Nest Mini speaker (42mm vs. 86mm), it also has roughly the same diameter (96mm vs. 106mm). It’s a very easy size to fit on a bookshelf or an equally small space (as evidenced in the photo above).
The Google Home Speaker also features a comprehensive 58mm full-range audio driver that delivers 360-degree sound that sounds great no matter where the “front” of the speaker is. The Nest Mini has a similar 360-degree design, but the 40mm driver and significantly lighter weight (181g vs 408g) means the Google Home Speaker’s bass quality simply sounds better.
Both speakers support the Google Cast protocol and multi-room speaker capabilities, so you can stream almost any audio source to them, but the Google Home Speaker supports Google’s new surround sound mode. This allows you to connect multiple Google Home speakers to yourself Google TV streamer for surround sound while watching TV, it provides a great way to ditch the soundbar (or old wired audio system) for something more refined.
Google Home Speaker also supports faster wireless connectivity via Wi-Fi 6 (Nest Mini is Wi-Fi 5), better Bluetooth quality via Bluetooth 5.4 (compared to Bluetooth 5.0 on Nest Mini), and full support such as Thread hub The relation of matter.
This last part makes the Google Home Speaker a better choice for smart home connectivity, as it allows newer smart home devices to connect via the local Thread network for faster local commands.
Google Home Speaker (2026) and Nest Mini: AI capabilities and features
The Nest Mini was launched primarily as a cloud-centric computing device, often offloading even the most basic commands to Google Assistant in the cloud. Over time, the Nest Mini began to feel slower and slower as Google moved many commands to the Twins.
Google Home Speaker is designed to solve this problem, but it doesn’t do it as well as I’d hoped. The newer 2.0GHz CPU with built-in NPU is designed to handle more tasks and commands locally, but my experience with the speaker showed that Google still offloads many commands to the cloud.
|
Category |
Google Home Speaker |
Nest Mini |
|---|---|---|
|
Speaker |
Versatile 58mm full-range driver |
360 degree sound with 40mm driver |
|
Microphone |
3 far field microphones, |
3 far field microphones, |
|
Dimensions |
86.6mm/3.4in high x 107mm/4.2in dia |
42mm/1.65in high x 98mm/3.85mm diameter |
|
Weight |
396 g |
181 g |
|
Power adapter |
30W USB-C PC/PPS charger |
15W barrel plug adapter |
|
RAM |
1 GB LPDDR4 |
1 GB of RAM |
|
Storage |
4 GB eMMC |
4 GB eMMC |
|
Processor |
Quad-core A55 2.0 GHz with NPU |
Quad-core A53 1.4Ghz with ML hardware engine |
|
Connection |
Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, Thread 1.3 border router (2.4GHz), Matter, Google Cast |
Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.0, Google Cast |
|
Colors |
Globally: Hazel, Porcelain US exclusive: Jade, Berry |
Chalk, Coal, Coral, Sky |
This results in a speaker that executes many commands quickly (and some immediately), but some commands are still absurdly slow. Even simple commands like setting a timer can take 20 seconds or more. While this is likely a bug with Google Home Speaker at launch, it still shows that Google doesn’t retain as many native commands as I’d like.
Since both devices support Gemini, there is no functional difference in the ability of these speakers to use Google’s AI-powered assistant. The difference is mostly about speed, hopefully Google will continue to improve and tweak the new speaker with future software updates.
Google Home Speaker (2026) vs. Nest Mini: Which should you buy?
While newer isn’t always better (especially when it’s twice the price), Google is no longer selling the Nest Mini. You can always buy a Second hand appliance on eBay and try your luck, especially if you want to hang a little speaker on the wall.
Otherwise, the Google Home Speaker is an easy choice. It has significantly better sound quality, Matter and Thread support, Wi-Fi 6, newer Bluetooth for better audio quality, surround sound support with Google TV Streamers, and a better processor for faster smart home and Gemini queries.
