The Best Google Assistant Speakers for Your Home
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There are several voice assistants locked in a tug-of-war over who controls the smart speakers in your home: Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant, and Apple’s Siri. We prefer Google. Its Assistant answers questions more accurately, has a simpler setup process, and connects to a growing number of smart home devices. All the devices below have built-in Google Assistant, so you can ask it anything you’d search for on Google, or ask it to control smart home products like robot vacuums, smart plugs, lights, and TVs. Google doesn’t update its line of products often, but even with the same lineup for years, here at WIRED we find ourselves coming back to it again and again over the competition.
If you're looking to add Google to your home, the best overall speaker is Google’s Nest Audio ($75). But the handiest devices are the smart displays, since they give you more capabilities to control your smart home, watch videos, display your photos, and much more. The Google Nest Hub Max ($230) is the best of the two hubs since it has a large enough screen to enjoy photos and easily, or you can splurge on the Pixel Tablet ($499), which is a tablet and smart display in one, thanks to the speaker charging dock.
Be sure to check out our guide on how to maintain your privacy as much as possible while still enjoying the luxuries of smart assistants. We also have many other buying guides, including the Best Smart Displays, Best Smart Speakers, and Best Alexa Speakers.
Updated June 2025: We've reorganized the picks in this guide and added an FAQ section.
Best Google Assistant Speaker
The Nest Audio is impressive for its price (8/10, WIRED Recommends). This midsize speaker was released in 2020 and replaced the Google Home from 2016 (if you remember the air freshener-looking smart speaker, that's the one) and it improves on it with louder sound and deeper bass. It still won't take up too much room, since it has a nice slim footprint but is still large enough to pack impressive sound. The discreet design allows it to blend into your home, and the long power cable makes it easy to place it anywhere in your home. There's a physical switch to turn off the mic, which is a nice security feature.
If you've got the budget, splurge on two of these. WIRED reviewer Parker Hall, who specializes in audio gear, says pairing the two of these speakers together gives you some of the best stereo sound for the money. These speakers come in a set if you know you want two.
Best Google Assistant Smart Display
Assistant-powered speakers are limited to sound, which is why smart displays have an advantage. You get similar audio quality plus a screen to see things like the weather forecast, rather than just hear it. Google's 10-inch Nest Hub Max (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is big enough to use as a screen to watch shows or YouTube videos while washing the dishes (though Amazon Prime Video isn't available). When not in use, the screen doubles as a digital photo frame, cycling images from Google Photos.
The Nest Hub Max doesn't look too techie, has good audio quality, and comes with a camera, so you can make group video calls with Google's video-chatting service, Meet. The camera can identify people in the household, so when you step in front of it, you'll see a personalized calendar. It can also recognize your palm, so just raise it to pause music or videos without having to say anything. Best of all, there's a physical switch on the back that turns off the mic and camera. If the 10-inch size is too big, the 7-inch Nest Hub (2nd Gen) (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is a nice option. It's a little too small for our tastes, but the lack of a camera means it's a more privacy-friendly machine for the more private areas of your home. It also has sleep-tracking functions if you use it on a bedside table.
A Smart Display and Tablet Combo
The Google Pixel Tablet (7/10, WIRED Recommends) can turn into a smart display when it's placed on the included speaker dock. In this hub mode, you can access all your smart home controls right from the lock screen—even view security camera feeds—and the microphones do a great job of picking up “Hey Google” commands from across the room. The speaker dock sounds surprisingly decent for its small size.
As a tablet, the 11-inch LCD screen is great for watching movies and shows, plus you can even cast content from your phone or laptop to it. Pair it with a Bluetooth keyboard and you can do some light work too. There have been a lot of great improvements in Android that make multitasking so much easier on larger screens, with more tablet-optimized apps as well. Best of all, the Pixel Tablet supports up to eight users, and each person in the household can set up the slate the way they want. Just choose your profile, which is protected by the fingerprint sensor.
A Great Budget Option
The second-gen Nest Mini (7/10, WIRED Review) is the successor to the original Google Home Mini, though you'll be hard-pressed to find any visual changes. You do get improved audio quality, specifically stronger bass, and better voice recognition, plus the device is wall-mountable so you can save some space on the credenza. The volume controls light up as you approach the Mini and, perhaps best of all, the speaker is made with sustainable materials: The fabric around the top is 100 percent recycled plastic bottles, and the external enclosure is made with around 35 percent post-consumer recycled plastic.
If you're looking for the most affordable way to smarten up your home, the Nest Mini is where you should start. But if you're planning to stream music a lot, this isn't the option we recommend, because the Nest Mini doesn't get too loud. It's a little bigger than a hockey puck.
★Low stock: Stock for the Nest Mini is low across more retailers; even Google's own store has only one color in stock right now. We're keeping an eye out to see if this means it's getting discontinued (or perhaps finally a new generation? This model has been around since March 2021, after all).
If You Want a Soundbar
If it's in your budget, spring for the company's Arc Soundbar (9/10, WIRED Recommends) and you'll really step up your sound quality a notch. It has built-in voice support for Google Assistant, unlike the Sonos Era 100 (plus Alexa and Siri). The four far-field microphones can pick up a voice over the TV, so you can tell it to pause or lower the volume. It's not the only soundbar with voice-assistant capabilities, but the Arc sounds downright excellent with Dolby Atmos support, and it will receive updates for probably the next decade. The only downside is the price.
The Sonos Beam ($499) (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is a smaller option with great sound for half the price. Read our Best Soundbars guide for more recommendations.
Honorable Mentions
Google Nest Hub for $100: This is the smaller version of the Nest Hub Max, and while the 7-inch screen isn't too small compared to something like the five-inch Echo Show 5, it's still too small to really enjoy the screen. It does have sleep tracking software built in and no camera, so it's a good choice for a bedside table.
Google Nest Max for $119 (Used): This discontinued speaker was a larger version of the Nest Audio. It was a good speaker, albeit large and unwieldy to place in your home.
Sonos One for $179 (Refurbished): This was our favorite option for sound while it was available. It's just about entirely replaced by the Sonos Era 100 now, which isn't Google Assistant compatible. If you spot the One though and want the best Sonos speaker for Google Assistant, snag it.
FAQs
What About Other Sonos Speakers?
We used to recommend the Sonos One in this guide, but it's been just about fully replaced by the Sonos Era 100 ($199). Sadly, the Era 100 and the larger Era 300 ($449) don't have Google Assistant support, unlike the One or other older Sonos speakers. Older versions of the Sonos Roam ($130, used) and Move ($409, used) have Google compatibility, for example, but the newest versions (Roam 2 and Move 2) don't. The soundbars Arc and Beam still have Google Assistant support if you're in the market for a Google-powered soundbar. If you're curious for more details about Sonos, check out our guide to the Best Sonos Speakers.
What About Third-Party Devices?
Google is no longer updating software for one of the third-party displays we previously recommended in this guide, the Lenovo Smart Display. If you have one, it will still work, but some features will likely suffer or disappear entirely as time goes on. Meanwhile, the Lenovo Smart Clock and Smart Clock Essential we used to recommend have both been discontinued, so we've removed them from this guide.
However, Google is planning to expand its smart home hubs into TV devices, which will include some third-party TVs. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Google’s voice assistant will be built in; they'll be designed to run smart home commands from compatible apps and use Matter to communicate. That was slated for late 2024, but we're waiting to see more on this front.
What’s Next for Google?
Google has some major AI plans for its products. While most of Google's plans focus on areas outside of the smart home, there's some AI assistance you can get with its smart home products: the script editor, which uses AI to help you create custom smart home routines.
The script editor's AI area, called “Help me script,” which you can find at Google Home for web, lets you to describe the automation you want—likely something a little complicated or combination effects, like seeing someone on your porch and turning on two actions at once—and then the generative AI will create a code for you. The Help Me script where you can write in what automations you want is on the right side of the screen, letting you type in and see results freely, but you'll need to copy and paste that code over to the left side to validate and activate the code as an automation. It's easy to play around with the script and get immediate AI-generated code to create your routines. It's a good tool to try if you're a power user or have a complicated smart home setup, but it's still in preview, so you might not see perfect results.
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