There’s no denying that the Nest Audio fills a sweet-spot in Google’s smart speaker range. Long-anticipated replacement to the original Google Home, the new
There’s no denying that the Nest Audio fills a sweet-spot in Google’s smart speaker range. Long-anticipated replacement to the original Google Home, the new speaker delivers markedly better sound quality than the Nest Mini, but a much more affordable price point – not to mention smaller footprint – than the Google Home Max. No product lives in isolation, though, and the most common question I’ve been getting is “what about Sonos?” Once upon a time, Sonos was absolutely the premium option in any multi-room home audio argument. More recent years, however, have seen the cost of entry brought down considerably, particularly when the partnership with IKEA brought Symfonisk to market. Sonos has a smart speaker with Google Assistant support, the Sonos One. It’s $199, compared to the $99.99 of the Nest Audio, but has – among other things – the advantage of being switchable between the Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. The IKEA Symfonisk bookshelf speaker, meanwhile, is $99, making it the cheapest of the three, but since it uses Sonos’ platform it’ll integrate just like any speaker from the company, and can be controlled using the Sonos app. Having had all three side-by-side, though, it’s become clear that this is a decision based on more than just price. There’s no one, perfect speaker here. Instead, you have a decision to make. The reason Nest Audio sounds so much better than the old Google Home is down to drivers: namely, two of them in the new speaker, versus just one in the old. Google Home had to rely on a single driver for the full frequency range, and passive radiators to try to boost the low end.
