Google’s new Nest smart speaker is all cloth - Ars Technica

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• The new Google Nest smart speaker. This is an official photo from Google.

  Google

• Since there are speakers to the left and right here, this suggests the speakers support stereo mode.

  Google

• Japan MIC's pictures. These were so ugly Google released its own official image.

  MIC

• The bottom rubber foot and DC jack.

  MIC

• The mute swtich.

  MIC

• Part of the internals. A Marvell 88W8987 chip, which is just for 802.11ac Wi-Fi.

  MIC

• Power bricks.

  MIC

Say hello to Google's next smart speaker, which is expected to be a replacement for the original Google Home. Earlier this week, the speaker leaked via testing at Japan's FCC equivalent (which has the way-cooler name of "Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications" or "MIC"), and because MIC took some pretty unflattering pictures, Google decided to set the record straight and send an official press shot and a video to various press outlets.

9to5Google previously mentioned the existence of this device in June. The report said the speaker was codenamed "Prince" and would be a replacement for the original Google Home. According to the report, the speaker had a "high excursion speaker with 2-inch driver" which would supposedly be a sound upgrade over the current Google Home.

The new speaker has an all-cloth design, with four lights on the front, which matches the Nest Mini/Google Home Mini and the Google Home Max. The old Google Home is the one outlier in Google's lineup, with a hard plastic top and 12 lights. There's not much to the design other than the cloth exterior. On the back, you'll find a DC barrel connector for power, a "G" logo, and a mute switch.

What’s it called?

We don't actually know the name of this thing, but it will start with "Google Nest," a smart home brand Google is in the middle of transitioning to. These smart speakers used to be called "Google Home," and currently in the Google Store you'll find two products with the old branding: the original "Google Home" speaker and the "Google Home Max." For the new Nest stuff, you have the "Nest Mini" (an upgrade to the Google Home Mini), the Nest Hub (formerly the Google Home Hub smart display), and the Nest Hub Max (a bigger Home Hub). Will this new gizmo be called something like the "Nest Home"? The "Nest Speaker"? Nothing really matches with the smaller "Nest Mini" speaker, which sounds like a tiny thermostat.

Google doesn't have an event planned for when this might launch, but we are starting to see a pile of products out there that could create a hardware event. There's the Pixel 4a, which is still missing-in-action after failing to meet its presumed Google I/O launch window in May. We're also only about three months away from when Google typically launches a new flagship smartphone, which this year would be the Pixel 5. There's the "Sabrina" Android TV dongle, which sounds like the merger of Android TV and Chromecast, and there's this speaker.

Update: These speakers support stereo pairing, which I originally wrote was exclusive to the bigger Google Home Max. That was the case originally, but the smaller Google Home and Google Home Mini had the feature patched in a few months ago.

Listing image by Google

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Google’s new Nest smart speaker is all cloth - Ars Technica
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