Google Home Speaker proves smarter, but sounds worse

Google Home – After a week testing Google’s new $99 Home Speaker against Apple’s HomePod Mini, one thing became clear: the Google assistant is dramatically better for real smart-home tasks—but the HomePod Mini still wins on sound quality.

He didn’t expect much from a nearly six-year-old speaker.

The HomePod Mini has sat in living rooms for years. and Google’s new $99 Home Speaker lands at the exact same price. So for a week. the two orb-shaped devices shared the same space—streaming music. answering questions. and trying to run the smart home. By the end, the verdict felt almost unfair: the Google Home Speaker was smarter, and the HomePod Mini sounded better.

That split—intelligence versus audio—doesn’t just change which one you buy. It changes what you’re buying it for.

Google’s Home Speaker is smaller than you might think, but it leans hard into being a “smart” speaker rather than a purely musical one. It’s about half the size of the older Nest Audio concept, uses a single driver, and is positioned as an alternative to the HomePod Mini—not a Nest Audio successor.

On paper, the Home Speaker uses a 58mm full-range driver with omnidirectional sound. Apple doesn’t advertise the HomePod Mini’s driver size, but it’s said to be about 50mm. In practice, the Home Speaker looked slightly bigger on the shelf. Both are tiny enough to sit on a desk, table, or shelf.

Both also push 360-degree sound, which means you don’t have to stress about placement.

But the moment volume started climbing, placement stopped being the story.

When the test was switched to music—using Apple Music streamed through both speakers—the Home Speaker made its first strong impression fast. The Google device filled a mid-sized living room even at 10% or 20% volume. Turn it up toward three-quarters or max, and it permeated a one-bedroom apartment.

The HomePod Mini took a different route. It didn’t fill the same way at lower levels. The listening sweet spot, in this setup, came at around 50% or 75% volume. Even then, it didn’t feel as powerful across the room.

The practical consequence is expensive to ignore. If you want the HomePod Mini to fill a space. you generally need a stereo pair. and that doubles the cost. By contrast. two Home Speakers can be used as a stereo pair as well. and the reviewer suggests that spending $200 on a pair of Google speakers could deliver louder. fuller sound than a HomePod Mini stereo pair can manage.

Then comes the twist.

For all the Home Speaker’s “room-filling” strength. the HomePod Mini’s sound signature held up better—especially in the parts of music most people actually notice. The reviewer didn’t find either speaker capable of “incredible low-end. ” but the Home Speaker’s kick drum came out muddy. At higher volumes, the Home Speaker’s sound also got tinier and the distortion became uncomfortable beyond 80%.

The HomePod Mini separated itself where it mattered: vocals, snare drums, and cymbals sounded crisper and more defined through its middle and high areas of the soundstage. On this device, the details stayed intact.

So the choice narrows to what you value more: the ability to fill a room with volume, or a sound profile that stays sharp as the music gets interesting.

The smart part is where the Home Speaker surprised—and then kept going.

Google’s Home Speaker is Google’s first smart home speaker built for Gemini. Apple’s HomePod Mini uses the Siri system that debuted about half a decade ago. The difference isn’t subtle. Apple hasn’t confirmed whether HomePod speakers will ever get upgraded to the new Siri AI.

Both speakers lean heavily on cloud processing, but the hardware gap also shows up in the reviewer’s tests. The HomePod Mini uses Apple’s S5 chip found in the Apple Watch Series 5. which the reviewer notes isn’t getting Siri AI. The Home Speaker has a quad-core A55 2.0GHz processor and a neural processing unit (NPU). which the reviewer says likely helps for on-device processing.

When the two were tested side-by-side with identical requests, the Home Speaker responded better more often than not.

There were moments when both devices landed on similar answers for basic questions. such as how grass-fed beef differs from grain-fed beef. But the HomePod Mini frequently defaulted to web results that required checking on the iPhone. The reviewer asked both speakers to explain the difference between a tornado watch and a tornado warning—and found that the HomePod Mini couldn’t do it. while the Home Speaker recited a clear. concise explanation.

Speed mattered, too. The Home Speaker took a few seconds to reply through the speaker or to control the home. The reviewer says the lag never felt “untenable,” and timed an example: “Set the air conditioning to 75 degrees.” The air conditioning kicked on within 10 seconds.

In smart-home control, the Home Speaker’s advantages turned practical fast. With Google Nest cameras in the home, the reviewer could ask exactly when a package was delivered, and the Home Speaker returned the delivery time and the company that dropped it off.

The task management tests were a sharper contrast. The reviewer asked both speakers to create a new to-do list and add multiple tasks in a single command. The Home Speaker handled it; the HomePod Mini said it couldn’t. Later. the reviewer’s partner tried to use the Home Speaker to add another task but used a different wording—calling it a “checklist” instead of a “to-do list.” That attempt failed.

In other words: the Home Speaker was consistently better, but it still wasn’t magically immune to phrasing.

It also depended on which ecosystem the speaker belonged to.

For the same testing tools, the Home Speaker was paired with a Nest Cam Indoor, while the HomePod Mini was paired with a HomeKit Secure Video camera. When the HomePod Mini didn’t answer questions about camera history, the reviewer ties the failure directly to Siri’s limitations compared with Gemini.

Audio playback showed the same pattern. The reviewer’s A/V receiver supports both Google Cast and AirPlay 2, but only the Home Speaker streamed music through the sound system upon request.

That’s the final dividing line the week uncovered.

If the goal is smart home control—and you’re willing to buy into an ecosystem—the Google Home Speaker is presented as the better purchase. If you care more about being a speaker first, and you’re less focused on the intelligent assistant features, the HomePod Mini is positioned as the better fit.

The result doesn’t feel like a tech headline so much as a personal reminder. In the living room, “smarter” and “better sounding” don’t automatically come in the same package—and these two speakers prove it.

Google Home Speaker HomePod Mini Gemini Siri smart home smart speakers audio testing Nest Cam Indoor HomeKit Secure Video Apple Music Google Cast AirPlay 2