Love music and smart home magic? Google Nest Audio hits all the right notes at the right price

Back in 2016, the first Google Home was launched and for a moment, it felt like everyone could have a taste of the future. This was a gizmo that could answer all your questions, announce your day’s appointments and play music — all you had to do was just ask.

These days though, smart speakers aren’t considered bleeding-edge tech anymore. 

A lot has happened since those coronavirus-free days too.

The search giant changed the name of its smart home appliance division to Google Nest. Other companies, from Apple to Samsung to Huawei, wanted in on the market as well, pushing out speakers built with proprietary virtual assistants of their own, though they never did come close to toppling the big boys in the scene: Google and Amazon. 

And now, there’s the Nest Audio ($139), Google's new smart speaker that’s designed with excellent sound delivery in mind — which is a strange thing to write down. Shouldn’t all speakers be built with great audio playback as a primary function? 

In any case, audio clarity isn’t the one playing second fiddle to the Google Assistant this time around. As its name suggests, the Nest Audio is the music-centric upgrade to the Google Home (or the Google Nest Mini for that matter). Treat it like a smaller, more manageable Google Home Max, that colossal block of a smart speaker from 2017. 

Like the Google Nest Wifi Router, the Nest Audio seeks to be a gadget that’s supposed to be something placed front-and-centre in homes. Fortunately, it looks nice enough to blend in with the rest of your furnishings. 

Looking less like the Google Home’s air-freshener profile and more like a minimalist shelf ornament, the Nest Audio looks nearly featureless as it's fully covered in a soft recycled fabric made from recycled plastic bottles.

It’s a bit of a bummer that Singapore’s not getting the full range available in the series like the sage green, sky blue and matte pink models, all of which would add a pop of subtle colour.

Alas, we’re stuck with the two choices sold here: chalk and charcoal, aka light or dark grey. Which is fine if you prefer not to have these upright rounded rectangles to stand out too much. 

Hidden underneath the fabric at the top of the Nest Audio are the touch controls — tapping the left and right corners adjust the volume while the centre portion will play or pause the music playback. Easy enough for anyone to handle.

For the privacy-concerned, there’s a physical microphone mute switch at the back so it won’t actively listen and take commands. 

Aside from the power plug-in port, there’s nothing else really, so you can’t jack in an auxiliary cord or an ethernet cable if you wanted to. Unnecessary, really, since you can just cast audio from a streaming app or just use your voice to request the song, album, artist or playlist you want to listen to. 

Now, about the sound — it’s loud. Like bother-your-neighbours loud. Louder than what the Google Home could deliver and at an even fuller, richer level too so music sounds crystal clear at any volume.  

Interestingly, the audio quality is consistent across genres. The vocal twangs and crisp guitars of Pinegrove sounded bright, while the various layers of jazzy instrumentation in Kamasi Washington classics were well-represented. I’m particularly impressed by the bass because this thing thumps like nobody’s business despite its size. 

If you have two Nest Audio units, you could pair them together for stereo sound to really fill the room with music. I’m not too sure if they could work as a home theatre audio system, but what I do know is that it’d make for a better music playback speaker to place on a shelf, console or nightstand. Probably best to leave the home theatre stuff to dedicated, hardwired boomboxes instead of using Chromecast. 

That’s pretty much it for the highlight feature. Enhanced audio quality aside, the Nest Audio is still very much a voice-controlled smart speaker — and a highly-capable one at that because of Google Assistant. 

You know the drill: say “OK Google” or “Hey Google” to activate the voice control function. It still does things like remind you of your calendar appointments, provide weather forecasts, set alarm and timers, ask questions, and control other smart home devices.

The command that you’ll probably be using the Nest Audio most for is asking it to play music off Spotify, or whatever your favoured streaming app is. And just like any other voice assistant, you’ll run into some annoyances when the speaker doesn’t really capture what you said (blame our non-Western accents for that). It still scores more hits than misses, though, so you shouldn’t get too frustrated. 

Overall, the Nest Audio is an easy recommendation to make if you’re looking to get a smart speaker or upgrade an old one. At $139, that makes this music-focused smart speaker far cheaper than the likes of the Sonos One, the JBL Link 10 and the LG WK7 — all of which are built with Google Assistant capabilities as well. If both music and smart home integration play a big part in your house as much as mine, the Nest Audio should strike the right chord with you too. 

ilyas@asiaone.com