Forget the Google Home Speaker, it’s time for a new Nest Hub

It’s here. It’s finally here. After (sneakily) teasing it alongside the Pixel 10 series last year, Google officially took the wraps off the new Google Home Speaker earlier this month, and it’s officially hitting store shelves this week.

Google says the new Home Speaker is built for the Gemini era, and on paper, the company has packed quite a lot into a product that costs just $100, which actually seems to be Google’s favorite price point these days (yes, Fitbit Air, I’m looking at you).

But is it actually the Google smart home product I’ve been waiting for all these years? Not really.

Look, I’m not saying the new Google Home Speaker is a bad upgrade over the older Nest Mini. In fact, one of my favorite changes is probably the simplest one: the colors. Google is finally offering more vibrant options that not only match its Pixel phones’ colors, but also don’t make your bedroom or living room look dull.

Beyond that, there are meaningful upgrades across the board. You’re getting improved sound quality with a larger driver and more bass, Gemini built right into the speaker, the ability to pair two speakers together for stereo audio, and Google’s new glowing light strip at the base, which seems to be becoming a signature design element across its hardware.

There’s very little to complain about here. Gemini can now handle much more complex requests than before. You no longer have to say separate commands to turn off the lights and start a timer. Instead, Gemini can handle complex tasks in one go. You can even ask questions like who was at your front door, and Gemini can summarize events from compatible cameras for you.

Of course, we’ll go deeper into how the new Google Home Speaker performs once we’ve had enough time with the device for our review. But is it really something that you need to get excited about right away and burn your cash or place your pre-order immediately? I don’t think so.

What I’m actually missing right now is a new Nest Hub. Google hasn’t updated the Nest Hub in over five years. We got the second-generation Google Nest Hub in 2021, and that was the last time we saw Google make a proper smart display.

Sure, we got the Pixel Tablet in between that offered the ability of a smart home speaker with the dock, while also being a tablet that could be removed and used separately. But then again, as Google does with most of its products that make sense, the company killed it off out of nowhere.

The Nest Hub is probably the most-used smart home device in my house. It’s simply more useful than a standalone speaker for things like checking who’s at the door, setting timers, looking at the weather, controlling smart home devices, or even just having Google Photos cycle through old memories throughout the day.

It’s pretty clear that a smart display is a better form factor for those tasks. Sometimes you want to see information, not just hear it from a random orb sitting in your living area.

That said, every time I look at my Nest Hub, it feels outdated. The bezels are huge, the display quality isn’t exactly impressive anymore, and the whole thing looks like a smart home device from a different era.

And that’s what makes the timing of the Google Home Speaker launch feel so strange. Because if there was ever a moment when Google should be investing in smart displays again, it’s right now.

We’re finally entering Google’s Gemini-powered smart home era, yet the product that feels most suited for Gemini, a smart display, is nowhere to be seen. Sure, Google has updated existing Nest Hub devices with Gemini for Home, but it really feels like the time for new hardware.

Google showcased at Google I/O that Search is expanding to build its own dashboard on the go, which can show you the information you need in a custom interface. But for that experience to happen, you need a display in the first place, and that is what we’re missing right now.

Gemini can be far more useful when it shows information in real time rather than simply reading it back to you. Whether that’s keeping track of a delivery package or showing you the recipes, a display unlocks experiences that a speaker simply can’t.

I’m not discarding the new Google Home speaker outright. It genuinely has the ability to be a great device, and the price tag is lucrative in itself. But AI assistants are far more useful now that they can showcase information in real time instead of just speaking it back to you.

The good news is that there are signs Google isn’t done with the category. Google’s Head of Home and Nest, Anish Kattukaran, has suggested the company remains committed to smart displays. Even the press release, if you read the Google Home speaker announcement carefully, refers to this as Google’s “first” audio device built for Gemini.

So there’s still hope. But if anyone at Google is reading this, I’d honestly be happy with a teaser right now. Just show us that a new Nest Hub, or whatever ends up replacing it, is coming. Because if there was ever a time for Google to build a Gemini-first smart display, it’s now.