Google on Thursday unveiled its new smart speaker, the Nest Audio.
The tech giant’s latest smart speaker is made for “music lovers.”
It comes with a slimmer design and better acoustic than its predecessor. Nest Audio is 75 per cent louder and has a 50 per cent stronger bass than the original Google Home, Google said.
The speaker comes with a 19mm tweeter and a 75mm mid-woofer for stronger bass. Google has also minimized the use of compressors to preserve dynamic range, it said.
Features
The speaker is equipped with the Media EQ feature which enables it to automatically tune itself based on the content that the user is listening to, be it music, podcasts, audiobooks or a response from Google Assistant.
The smart speaker’s Ambient IQ feature adjusts the volume of Assistant, news, podcasts and audiobooks based on the background noise.
Users can also connect the speaker with other devices if they have a Google Home, Nest Mini or a Nest Hub and make Nest Audio the centre of their home sound system.
The speaker also comes with Google’s stream transfer feature and multi-room control. The stream transfer feature lets users transfer the streaming from one device to the other using voice controls. This is available only in English. With multi-room control, users can group multiple cast-enabled Nest devices in real-time.
YouTube Music or Spotify Premium subscribers can also get music recommendations and play them on the device with the voice command, “Ok Google, recommend some music.”
Google’s Nest Audio is covered by sustainable fabric introduced with Nest Mini last year. The enclosure of the speaker including the fabric, housing, foot, and a few smaller parts is made from 70 per cent recycled plastic, Google said.
In India, the speaker will come in Chalk and Charcoal colours.
Nest Audio will be available in India on Flipkart and at other retail outlets later this month. The device is priced at $99.99. Google is yet to provide India-specific pricing for the smart speaker.