{"id":744901,"date":"2026-06-18T12:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T12:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/744901\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T12:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T12:06:10","slug":"the-gemini-powered-google-home-speaker-is-finally-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/744901\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gemini-Powered Google Home Speaker Is Finally Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last time Google released a smart speaker<\/a>, the world was in the throes of a pandemic<\/a>. Yes, it\u2019s been six years since the company trotted out a dedicated speaker.<\/p>\n

However, this newest Google Home Speaker brings a big change with it: the device has been redesigned to showcase the new Gemini assistant<\/a> instead of the Google Assistant<\/a> that powered all previous speakers and smart displays.<\/p>\n

Google announced the speaker last fall<\/a> alongside new Nest smart home cameras and video doorbells, promising a spring 2026 launch. We\u2019re well into summer now, but it\u2019s finally go time.<\/p>\n

The company today announced that preorders for the Google Home Speaker start 17 June<\/a>, with official sales kicking off 25 June<\/a>. It costs $100 and comes in Berry, Jade, Hazel and Porcelain, though the first two colours are exclusive to the US.<\/p>\n

The experience of using it should feel familiar if you\u2019ve owned other smart speakers. You wake Gemini through the \u201cHey, Google<\/a>\u201d hot word and ask it questions. But Gemini is leaps and bounds better than the old Google Assistant at understanding natural conversation, so your queries do not need to be as rigid, and you won\u2019t need to ask things in multiple ways to get what you want. Even if you make an error in your original ask, you can stop and rephrase your question midway through \u2013 just like you would if you were talking to a human \u2013 and Gemini will understand your intent.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

The Berry colour of the Google Home Speaker makes me want to slice it and eat it.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Google<\/p>\n

You can string multiple commands in one sentence, and Gemini should be able to take care of them. You can be hyper-specific \u2013 turn off all the lights except my bedside lamp \u2013 and it\u2019ll parse it through. You can ask follow-up conversations without having to bring up the original context all over again; like with the Google Assistant speakers, the microphone stays on for a brief window after Gemini answers a question so that you can ask a follow-up without having to say the wake phrase again. This feature, called Continued Conversation, had been available only in English on the Assistant-powered speakers, but the feature has expanded to all supported languages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last time Google released a smart speaker, the world was in the throes of a pandemic. Yes,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,252338,61],"class_list":["post-744901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-gadgets-wearable-tech","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}