Default
Door staff@engadget.com (Nathan Ingraham) - 29 Sep 2026
Read our full review here.
Google's main pitch for the Home speaker is a way to get Gemini off your phone and into your house, serving as a voice-enabled assistant like the Google Assistant before it. Smart home controls are a big part of the equation — especially since Google now sells a few different subscriptions that add features like sound detection or the ability to voice-search your video history. Fortunately, if your main concern is multi-room music, no subscription is needed beyond one to your music service of choice. Google Home works with all the expected players like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music and a few others.
Unsurprisingly, everything you want to do with the Google Home speaker is set up in the recently-redesigned Google Home app. That's how you'll get the speaker online the first time and pick your preferred music services. You'll obviously need a Google account to use this device, which isn't a deal-breaker for most people — but if you're intent on de-Googling your life, this isn't the speaker for you.
Once it's set up, you can use Gemini to ask the speaker to play songs, albums and playlists with your voice, or cast music from your phone to the speaker (provided your app supports it). The Google Home app lets you set up speaker groups or move whatever is playing to different rooms without any hassle.
The obvious drawback of the Google Home speaker versus something from Sonos is that it's not nearly as loud or clear. That's just a simple matter of physics: the Google Home speaker uses a single 58mm "full-range" driver, while the Era 100 has two tweeters and a midrange woofer. More components in a larger enclosure is generally always going to mean better sound. But, for a $99 speaker, Google Home sounds good enough for casual music-listening. And if you need more volume in a single room, you can make a stereo pair from two speakers. That stereo pair will show up in the Google Home app just like any other speaker, so you can use one alongside single speakers around the house.
Amazon
Google's main pitch for the Home speaker is a way to get Gemini off your phone and into your house, serving as a voice-enabled assistant like the Google Assistant before it. Smart home controls are a big part of the equation — especially since Google now sells a few different subscriptions that add features like sound detection or the ability to voice-search your video history. Fortunately, if your main concern is multi-room music, no subscription is needed beyond one to your music service of choice. Google Home works with all the expected players like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music and a few others.
Unsurprisingly, everything you want to do with the Google Home speaker is set up in the recently-redesigned Google Home app. That's how you'll get the speaker online the first time and pick your preferred music services. You'll obviously need a Google account to use this device, which isn't a deal-breaker for most people — but if you're intent on de-Googling your life, this isn't the speaker for you.
Once it's set up, you can use Gemini to ask the speaker to play songs, albums and playlists with your voice, or cast music from your phone to the speaker (provided your app supports it). The Google Home app lets you set up speaker groups or move whatever is playing to different rooms without any hassle.
The obvious drawback of the Google Home speaker versus something from Sonos is that it's not nearly as loud or clear. That's just a simple matter of physics: the Google Home speaker uses a single 58mm "full-range" driver, while the Era 100 has two tweeters and a midrange woofer. More components in a larger enclosure is generally always going to mean better sound. But, for a $99 speaker, Google Home sounds good enough for casual music-listening. And if you need more volume in a single room, you can make a stereo pair from two speakers. That stereo pair will show up in the Google Home app just like any other speaker, so you can use one alongside single speakers around the house.
Amazon