The new Internet-connected Nest Audio speaker, unveiled Monday, is Google’s latest attempt to catch up with the category leader, Amazon’s Echo. But this time, Google is trying a new tactic: It is focusing on better sound quality rather than the new artificial intelligence features that have previously been its main attraction for devices.
The decision to focus on audio quality underscores that while people can use smart speakers to quickly ask questions and retrieve recipes, they primarily use them to play music.
But the basic premise hasn’t changed: people can use their voices to adjust speaker volume, play their favorite songs, or check the weather.
The size and appearance of the latest speaker, Google’s first home device, the Nest, is a big difference from previous models. Rather than looking like a plastic canister, the Nest Audio speaker is sleeker, similar to a felt-wrapped 7-inch pickup. The weight gain is due in part to big changes in speaker technology, Google Nest product manager Chris Chan explained.
The Nest Audio now contains a 75-millimeter woofer and a 19-millimeter tweeter that are used to produce deeper bass and treble, respectively.
Using Nest Audio, I found that the funky bass lines of the Bee Gees’ “Night Fever” were heard clearly, without sounding muffled. The enhanced bass also helped Rihanna’s “Work” bass stand out from the song’s synths and samples.
But overall, he said Google user tests showed that people place their smart speakers against the wall rather than in the center of a room, so designing speakers that distribute sound in 360 degrees is not very important.
Google didn’t announce any major changes to the Google Assistant, its speech recognition technology, except to automatically speak louder when you’re in a noisy room. The new speaker has the same machine learning chip as the $ 50 Nest Mini speaker, but not for the larger Google-brand speaker, which debuted in 2017. That computer chip helps the Google Assistant do more. Quick. , such as playing a certain song when prompted.
Using the Google Assistant depends on how concerned you are about data privacy. For example, I usually go into my Google account settings to prevent Google from recording my search and browser activity or the location of all Google services. However, doing so limits what the Google Assistant can do, so it can’t retrieve certain Wikipedia answers to my questions or play songs from my Spotify account when I ask.
For example, suppose you ask the Google Assistant ‘Who is LeBron James? “If I turn off tracking for my web and app activities, the Google Assistant tells me,” To get help with that, you need to go to Google Home and turn on web and app activity. “
I had to manually change the privacy settings of my Google account to allow the company to track my web and application activities for all Google Services in order to gain access to all the functions of the Google Assistant.
That’s to be expected considering my stereo has two speakers and a powerful amplifier, and they’re more expensive than Nest Audio, which costs $ 100.
The sound it produces is more defined and strong, considering its size, almost the same as my toaster.
