Best Buy has
2-Pack Nest Audio Smart Speaker w/ Google Assistant (Charcoal or Chalk) for
$99.99.
Shipping is free.
Thanks to Community Members
sunshinelizard &
MinhTrinh for finding this deal.
Available:Best Buy also has
Buy 1 Google Nest Audio Speaker, Get 1 Free (Mixed Colors) for
$99.99.
Shipping is free.
Features:- Stream your favorites from your favorites: use your voice to stream music, podcasts and audiobooks from Spotify, YouTube Music and more
- Huge help around the house: you can say things like, "Hey Google, set a timer for five minutes," and get help even faster
- Control your smart devices with your voice: turn on the lights, turn up the heat and more; Nest Audio works with thousands of compatible smart devices from brands you love
- Easily create a home audio system: Nest Audio works with your other Nest speakers and displays, and Chromecast-enabled devices, so you can listen to music throughout your home
- Environmentally sound: Nest Audio is designed for sustainability, the enclosure is made from 70% recycled plastic
Top Comments
88 Comments
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It is well known at this point that pretty much any major developer of virtual assistants have massively scaled back their staff and development efforts in this venture. Virtual assistants are modern marvels and most people don't even come close to utilizing these services to their full potential but the amount of money being poured into these services continued to build without enough return on investment. Amazon managed to, impressively, expand their hardware offerings built around Alexa but even they had to scale back a lot of their ventures because they could never fully realize their original plans to further monetize Alexa the way they intended.
While I haven't had as big of issues as others claim they have had, I have still experienced pretty large hiccups in my user experience with Google Assistant over the years. For instance, a couple of years ago, all of my linked devices from certain manufacturers simply disappeared from my account. I tried everything I could think of to find them again but eventually just had to disconnect and then reconnect those brand accounts in the Google Home app. This broke my smart capabilities for nearly every smart bulb and power outlet I had in the house. To this day, I haven't had the time and energy to dedicate to resetting all of those devices again. I'm sure that I've got smart bulbs and outlets that I've simply forgotten about at this point and will continue to find them over the next couple of years.
On top of that, Google Cast seems to have gotten worse as well. My house went all in on Google Cast years ago. Media was controlled almost entirely by phones, tablets, or our voices. And for a while we loved it.
But in the past few years, controlling Google Cast has become more and more problematic. Commands often take several seconds to process. And if a phone goes to sleep for a minute or two, it can have issues reconnecting to a Casting session it created.
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Note: looks like I'm only getting this for the white speakers. The black ones are checking out okay.
It is well known at this point that pretty much any major developer of virtual assistants have massively scaled back their staff and development efforts in this venture. Virtual assistants are modern marvels and most people don't even come close to utilizing these services to their full potential but the amount of money being poured into these services continued to build without enough return on investment. Amazon managed to, impressively, expand their hardware offerings built around Alexa but even they had to scale back a lot of their ventures because they could never fully realize their original plans to further monetize Alexa the way they intended.
While I haven't had as big of issues as others claim they have had, I have still experienced pretty large hiccups in my user experience with Google Assistant over the years. For instance, a couple of years ago, all of my linked devices from certain manufacturers simply disappeared from my account. I tried everything I could think of to find them again but eventually just had to disconnect and then reconnect those brand accounts in the Google Home app. This broke my smart capabilities for nearly every smart bulb and power outlet I had in the house. To this day, I haven't had the time and energy to dedicate to resetting all of those devices again. I'm sure that I've got smart bulbs and outlets that I've simply forgotten about at this point and will continue to find them over the next couple of years.
The problem, however, is that most consumers have an inability to separate the hardware from the software, so they end up conflating the two and throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
It's easier to mince the two when you have an Android phone, because Google Assistant is preinstalled. This benefits the user in their Google Home ecosystem by having voice training already completed.
If you're an iPhone user, the likelihood of there being a "PEBKAC" type of error is simply higher in that A) Google software isn't preinstalled and B) iPhone users typically just expect things to work out of the box.
Of course, there's also just lazy users who don't go digging through menus or even attempt suggestions to resolve their own issues. Unfortunately, this group seems to be highly represented of the ones that have issues.
However, you're right that even in a perfect environment, the third party developers of cloud based smart home devices can simply stop hosting support for their hardware and make it obsolete. It's important to remember, though, that this isn't unique to any one smart home ecosystem or the fault of the ecosystem itself.
To Google's credit, all of their smart devices (including first gen Minis) now support Matter, which is what people should be aiming for when they choose devices. Matter is an offline protocol that allows devices to be homogeneous in the way they communicate and doesn't require a hub, so there's virtually no way for functionality to be lost. Moreover, since communication is local, controlling devices is as instant as if they were wired together.
For devices that don't support Matter, Home Assistant or Hubitat can fill in the gaps by also eliminating the cloud. Some of those devices you lost cloud support on might even be able to be converted to local devices.
Ultimately, there's two camps when it comes to smart home ecosystems and, just as it was 30 years ago when RF and X10 were the most prominent, people who put the effort in are benefitting the most.
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They did get put through the ringer for two years on what ended up being a frivolous lawsuit.
And with how many issues Sonos has had more recently, it's not like they even had anything to show for it.