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Google Launches First Smart Speaker in Six Years with Gemini AI Built In at $99.99

· by Pondero Newsdesk

The short version

Google announced the new Google Home Speaker on June 18, 2026, at $99.99. Shipping June 25, it replaces Google Assistant with Gemini for Home and is the company's first audio device since the Nest Audio in 2020.

Google Launches First Smart Speaker in Six Years with Gemini AI Built In at $99.99

Six years after its last dedicated audio device, Google is back in the smart speaker market. The company announced the new Google Home Speaker on June 18, 2026, priced at $99.99 and set to hit shelves June 25. Out is Google Assistant. In its place: Gemini for Home, a conversational AI built on Google's current frontier model.

What happened

Pre-orders opened the same day as the announcement, per Google's official blog. The Nest Audio, released in October 2020, was Google's last audio product. Rather than updating the old platform, Google built this speaker around Gemini from the start.

What that means in practice: the assistant handles multi-part commands in a single exchange. Per Google's blog post, a request like "Dim the kitchen lights, play some relaxing music and set a timer for 20 minutes" executes all three tasks at once. The system carries conversational context across a session (Google calls it a "short-term memory"), so follow-up questions do not require restating earlier context. A Continued Conversation mode keeps the microphone open briefly after each response, eliminating the need to repeat the wake phrase. Google noted that Continued Conversation now works in all supported languages for the first time.

On hardware, the speaker is wrapped in a 3D-knit textile and arrives in four colors: Hazel, Porcelain, and two US-exclusive options, Jade and Berry. A light ring at the base signals whether the device is listening, processing, or responding. Owners who want to cut the microphone off entirely can flip a physical toggle switch.

Premium capabilities sit behind the Google Home Premium subscription. Gemini Live opens free-flowing, open-ended chats with the assistant. Camera History Search lets users ask about footage from paired Nest cameras by voice. Home Briefs produces a voice summary of what happened around the house during an absence. Google's blog post does not list the Google Home Premium price.

Why it matters

Dropping Google Assistant entirely is a deliberate move. Google has been sunsetting Assistant as the default on new hardware while consolidating AI products under Gemini. This speaker is the first consumer audio device to ship with Gemini as the only option, not a secondary layer behind Assistant.

Amazon has updated its Echo lineup with Nova-generation Alexa, and Apple's HomePod keeps gaining capabilities through Siri updates tied to iOS releases. All three ecosystems now emphasize conversational AI as the defining feature, making this a moment when users will start comparing assistants head-to-head in a way that was harder when each ran on different underlying technology.

For smart home users, the practical stake is whether Gemini for Home performs on open-ended requests as well as Google's controlled demos suggest. Per Google's announcement, the assistant can reason across multiple steps, such as identifying when a specific sports team plays next, locating that game, and returning a weather forecast for game time. That kind of chained inference is easy to demo and harder to consistently reproduce in real-world use.

What to watch next

Units land in stores June 25. Early reviews will test whether Gemini for Home holds up on complex, multi-step requests outside Google's prepared examples. A separate question for reviewers will be how much the base $99.99 experience delivers before Google Home Premium becomes necessary. The Gemini Live and camera search features behind the paywall represent a meaningful portion of what Google highlighted in the announcement.

Sources