Tabletop smart speakers aren’t typically known for their audio quality, but the engineers at Nest knocked it out of the park when they designed the Nest Audio, the successor to the Nest Home.
During Black Friday, you can pick up a single Google Nest Audio for just $49.99 at Best Buy, a $50 savings. Buy a pair at the Google Store (just set the quantity to “2”) for a total of $89, or $110.98 off.
The Nest Audio packs Google Assistant, of course, but what impressed us during our review was this speaker’s audio performance. This smart speaker features a 75mm paper-cone mid-woofer and a 19mm textile-dome tweeter, with a Class D amplifier driving each individually.
A wave guide encircling the tweeter helps to spread high frequencies evenly around the room, and there’s an onboard DAC that can handle audio with up to 24-bit resolution at sampling rates up to 48kHz. Google says the Nest Audio is about 75 percent louder than the Google Home speaker it replaced and that it delivers 50 percent deeper bass response.
If you have multiple Google smart speakers or smart displays in your home, you can ask Google Assistant to transfer music from one room to the next, and if you have two Nest Audio speakers, you can set them up a stereo pair.
Author: Michael Brown, Executive Editor
Michael is TechHive's lead editor, with 30+ years of experience covering the tech industry, focusing on the smart home, home audio, and home theater. He built his own smart home in 2007 and used it as a real-world test lab for product reviews. Following a relocation to the Pacific Northwest, he is now converting his new home, an 1890 Victorian bungalow, into a modern smart home.