The best Google Home speakers blend excellent sound with Google-based smarts to help you make your home cleverer. You could use them to control your smart lights, change the temperature in your house — if Google Assistant can connect to it, your Google Home speaker can control it.
There are some great Google Home speaker options out there, most of them made by Google itself. The Google Nest Audio is our favorite Google Home speaker, providing plenty of smarts and pumping out great sound quality. On a budget? Grab the Google Nest Mini. It still sounds great and is very good at recognizing your voice in a noisy room.
What about Sonos?
Unfortunately, most of Sonos' most recently released smart speakers, like the Era line and the Arc Ultra soundbar, don't feature Google voice assistant support. Older models do, but they're no longer available to buy. We've removed the old models from our list, and if the existing Sonos line ever gets support, they're going straight on. If you're looking for a Google speaker right now, though, don't buy an Era speaker or the Arc Ultra.
Quick List
The Google Nest audio combines some excellent audio with extra specs to make a great smart speaker option for Google Assistant users. It looks sleek as well, and its range of pastel colors lets it blend in with loads of room decor.
The Google Nest Mini is, as you might imagine, very small. But its bursting at its tiny seems with solid sound quality and smart features, and connects effortlessly with the rest of your Google Nest smart home.
If you want a screen attached to your smart speaker, then the Google Nest Hub Max is a great option. It's got good sound quality, and a big bright screen so that you can see details about your day, or your smart home.
The best Google Home speakers you can buy today
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Best overall
Google Nest Audio ($99, Amazon) is $30 less than the original Google Home, yet an improvement over its predecessor in every way. It sports a clean-looking, cloth-covered exterior, so the Nest Audio can be disguised as home decor unlike the tear drop-shaped Google Home. You'll also get louder sound and stronger bass from the Nest Audio. In our testing, this towering smart speaker packed a punch.
Not only that, it's a better smart home device, too. Thanks to on-device processing, Google Assistant gives speedy responses, which comes in handy when searching for music or getting a morning rundown while you're rushing out to work.
Read our full Google Nest Audio review.
Best on a budget
The Google Nest Mini is one of the best Google Home speakers you can get, even though it costs less than $50. Without raising the price or altering the homey, fabric-swathed appearance of the original Google Home Mini, Google made massive interior upgrades that make the Nest Mini miles better than its predecessor. An extra microphone, twice as strong bass and in-house learning chip give it unbeatable value.
Invisible touch controls on the top of the Mini lets you change volume, while a physical switch can be used to deactivate its microphone for those times you don't want Google listening in. Plus, the hook on the back lets you hang it on the wall if you need to save some counter space. The Nest Mini also comes in a variety of colors: a modern-looking light-grey, Chalk, Charcoal gray, Coral orange and Sky blue.
Read our full Google Nest Mini review.
Best smart display
Why settle for an average Google Home speaker when you can get one with a gorgeous touchscreen, too? The Google Nest Hub Max is a great smart speaker — it has two 18-millimeter, 10-Watt tweeters and one 75-millimeter, 30-Watt woofer, which pump out crisp audio — but the star of the show is its massive 10-inch display. Whether you use touch controls or go hands-free with voice commands, you can stream videos, follow up step-by-step recipes, control your smart home devices, and even glimpse how long your commute will be.
You can use the Nest Hub Max’s camera to make video calls (sadly, via Google Duo only). Its clever motion-tracking feature that will keep you in the center of the frame as you move about a room. The Nest Hub Max is a game-changer when you're in the kitchen prepping food, and can't stay still in front of the display. We also appreciate the camera privacy switch, and imagine others will, too.
Read our full Google Nest Hub Max review.
Best value
The $99 Google Nest Hub (2nd Gen) is a speaker for music, screen for your Google Assistant needs and a communication center. And it tracks your sleep, too. When positioned on your nightstand, the upgraded Google Nest Hub uses the Soli radar sensing chip to see how well (or not) you're sleeping at night. It's a little creepy, but the contactless tracking abilities will let you forget it's there.
Soli's superpowers also enable air gestures, letting you pause and play YouTube videos or snooze an alarm. These gestures don't work all the time, but are useful when they do. As for sound, Google did boost the bass by 50% this time around, which is an improvement over the total absence of bass in the first-generation model.
Read our full Google Nest Hub (2nd Gen) review.
Best alarm clock
The Lenovo Smart Clock is our favorite Google Assistant-powered alarm clock and one of the best Google Home speakers you can buy. With an adorable, four-inch display, it's the perfect smart home device to keep on your bedside table. You can choose from a number of different clock faces in various colors and styles, depending on your room’s aesthetic. The grey fabric casing provides a neutral and modern look, too.
At night, the Lenovo Smart Clock’s display dims and plays relaxing ambient noises, if you wish. There's even decent audio — certainly better than you might expect from an alarm clock. Its bassline is even strong enough to shake your mattress, which could come in handy if you have a hard time getting out of your bed in the morning.
Read our full Lenovo Smart Clock review.
Best spatial audio
The Bose Portable Home Speaker is one of the best Google Home speakers for audiophiles who want to bring their smart assistant everywhere. It pairs Google Assistant with Bose-caliber sound. While we favor the Sonos Move, Bose’s audio profile provides fuller listening with its 360-degree grille setup.
It also has a sexy fabric-swathed handle and lightweight design that makes it easier to schlep around your house than the towering Move. Both the matte black and white-silver finishes lend the pail-shaped Bose Portable Home Speaker a modern look, while its long battery life lets you carry it around with you all day long.
Read our full Bose Portable Home Speaker review.
Best soundbar
As one of the best soundbars available with support for Google Assistant, the second-gen Sonos Beam brings a new CPU, tweaked profiles, more audio formats, and HDMI eArc support into the mix. The drivers have been re-tuned, resulting in a crisper central channel that emphasizes vocal clarity and dialog.
Dolby Atmos and other home-theater sound formats grant you numerous ways to experience wide 3D sound in your living room. Other unique features like NFC for seamless setup, as well as TruePlay to curate sound to your space and optimal couch position, bring more value to this small speaker system. It also pairs perfectly with 55-inch (or smaller) HDTVs.
Read our full Sonos Beam (Gen 2) review.
How to choose the best Google Home speaker for you
The key decision you’ll have to make while shopping for one of the best Google Home speakers is whether you’re looking for a standard, wired speaker, a portable speaker or a speaker with a display. If this is your first smart home purchase, you’ll want to opt for the Nest Mini, Google Nest Audio or Sonos One. Ranging from $50-$200, all are simple to set up and lay a foundation for getting your other gadgets connected.
If you have a large family or spend a lot of time in the kitchen or other shared space, a smart speaker with a display is a better choice. You can check in on your security cameras and video doorbells, get recipe advice and make calls. Video calls can only be made with the Nest Hub Max or Lenovo Smart Display, though.
How we test the best Google Home speakers
When testing any of the best Google Home speakers, the first thing we look at is audio quality. After all, if a speaker doesn't sound good, then what use is it? We consider the price and purpose of the smart speaker here, too. If it's a small, budget device, we wouldn't expect it to sound as good as something that costs five times as much. That said, if a speaker costs a couple hundred dollars, it better sound awesome.
Because it's a smart speaker, we also take into account what you can do with the voice assistant embedded inside. While smart speakers made by Google have all of the abilities of Google Assistant, some third-party manufacturers exclude certain features, such as the ability to make voice calls. So, if a speaker made by Google sounds the same as one made by another company, but that latter speaker doesn't have all of Google Assistant, then Google's device will get a higher rating
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