Google Nest Audio: Slimmest smart speaker with superior music

New Delhi: Smart home speakers are finding their place in Indian homes, albeit slowly, and as we all spend a lot of time exploring things to do at home, these devices come handy to talk to when interactions with humans tend to get a little monotonous.

Google has now brought Nest Audio to India which is 75 per cent louder and has 50 per cent stronger bass than the original Google Home.

The audio smart speaker is available at a discounted price of Rs 6,999 for a limited period, which has an actual price of Rs 7,999, in two colours: Chalk and Charcoal.

Let us see where ‘Nest Audio’ stands amid Amazon Echo with Alexa and Apple HomePod, along with Xiaomi’s Mi Smart Speaker which is the best budget Google Assistant device in the market.

The form factor of Google Nest Audio is sleek when compared to its rivals.

Typically, a bigger speaker equals bigger sound, but Nest Audio has a really slim profile — so it fits anywhere in the home.

In order to maximise audio output, it has custom-designed quality drivers housed in an enclosure that helps it squeeze out every bit of sound possible.

With a 19mm tweeter for consistent high frequency coverage and clear vocals and a 75mm mid-woofer that really brings the bass, this smart speaker is actually a music lover’s dream.

Further on design, Nest Audio has soft, rounded edges that blend in with home’s decor, and its minimal footprint doesn’t take up too much space on the shelf or computer table.

Nest Audio is covered in the same sustainable fabric that was first introduced with Nest Mini last year, and the enclosure (the fabric, housing, foot, and a few smaller parts) is made from 70 per cent recycled plastic.

Nest Audio’s sound is full, clear and natural.

According to Google it completed more than 500 hours of tuning to ensure balanced lows, mids and highs so nothing is lacking or overbearing.

The bass was significant and the vocals had depth across genres — be it UK Punjabi classic beats on a Saturday evening, morning ragas on a Sunday morning or teens dancing on ‘Dynamite’ by BTS.

The custom-designed tweeter allows each musical detail to come through and ensures audio without distortion.

The quiet parts are delicate and subtle and the loud ones are more dramatic and powerful.

The ‘Ambient IQ’ feature lets Nest Audio also adjust the volume of Assistant, news, podcasts and audiobooks based on the background noise in your home so you can hear the weather forecast over a noisy mixer in the kitchen.

It obviously comes with support for Google Assistant which learns most common music commands and responds two times faster than the original Google Home.

The smart speaker supports room-filling sounds and two Nest Audios can be paired for stereo sounds.

If you have a Google Home, you can easily make Nest Audio the centre of the whole home sound system.

Google Nest Audio comes with touch controls for playing or pausing music, adjusting volume, and more.

The speaker is powered by a quad-core A53 processor clocked at 1.8GHz. It supports dual-band Wi-Fi and its power rating is 30W.

Conclusion: Google Nest Audio is slim, looks awesome and offers superior sound quality over Google Home and some of the existing smart home speakers. The homegrown Google Assistant is smarter and sharper too.

It is a must upgrade over Google Home and if you are new to smart speakers, Google Nest Audio will elevate your music-listening experience to a brand new level.