Hey Google, is this speaker worth $100?

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I’ve dabbled in various smart speakers (and a smart plug or two), but the Google Home Speaker—six years in the making, now with Gemini—is the first one I felt I could actually have a conversation with.

How we tested it: I essentially gave it tasks that I would give to an assistant. I asked it to plan a weekend of free things to do in New York, build itineraries for my upcoming trips, find recipes using the ingredients I had in my fridge, and asked how to hard-boil eggs (an embarrassing number of times).

The Good: My conversation with Gemini flowed naturally, and I could go back and forth with it without having to say “Hey Google” at every turn. The sound quality is great for the price tag ($99.99)—and the Gemini upgrade means you can just describe a vibe for your music and it plays it for you.

One of the upsides of it using Gemini is that it already knows quite a bit about you through your linked Google account (though this might draw criticism from the privacy-conscious). It did a surprisingly good job at one of the harder tasks I gave it: Build an itinerary for a week in San Francisco, routing it around the meetings already in my calendar.

The Complicated: The itineraries were routed through Google’s Keep app, which was a slight annoyance for me as an iPhone Notes app user.

The Bad: It’s not doing much that my phone isn’t already doing through a chatbot—the speaker’s edge is that my hands are free. It would clearly be of more use in a smart home, but that’s more upfront cost. Plus, my friends with Google-connected homes told me their smart home commands—like turning off the lights—seemed to get slower after the switch to Gemini (I tried it; the delay is real).

Verdict: Signal ✅ (if you think aloud regularly, want a hands-free assistant, and are looking for a cheap speaker) —LC