Well, it took a little longer than we anticipated a few weeks back, but we can now finally declare the Google Home sequel rumor games officially open. Curiously enough, we still don’t know much about this “standard” smart speaker the tech world has essentially been waiting for since 2017.
Of course, smart speakers are not smartphones, so it wasn’t that big of a deal that Google left the 2016-released device unupgraded the next year… or even the year after that. But enough is enough, and while the Google Home was certainly a worthy rival for Amazon’s trend-setting Echo back at launch, the undisputed market leader has reached its third generation already.
Clearly, Big G needs to bring some serious audio improvements to the table and perhaps a facelift as well to keep up with the surprisingly powerful, relatively compact, and decidedly elegant 2019 Echo. Although 9To5Google’s “sources familiar with the matter” can confirm such a product is indeed in the works, there are almost no details to share on either feature upgrades or possible design revisions.
All we know is the second-gen Google Home will “look unassuming and familiar” while sounding better than its forerunner (well, duh). Naturally, we don’t expect this thing to match the audio capabilities of the high-end Google Home Max, but unfortunately, current speculation calls for a higher price point than that of the original Google Home.
Available back in the day for $129, the search giant’s direct rival to Amazon’s $100 Echo received many discounts over its lifetime, including a permanent one to $99 and a recent clearance cut to 30 bucks. By the way, in case you’re wondering, that dirt-cheap ship appears to have sailed, and the OG smart speaker is probably gone for good.
Purportedly codenamed Prince, the second-gen Google Home is unlikely to be called the Google Home 2, although it remains unclear how the Nest brand will be incorporated. Our money is on a Nest Home moniker, but if you consider the Nest Mini and Nest Hub names, a simple Nest label would make more sense. Maybe a Nest (2nd gen) to correspond to the somewhat confusing Nest Mini (2nd gen) name of the Google Home Mini sequel.
Meanwhile, your guess is as good as ours in terms of a release schedule, as Google is unlikely to unveil the smart speaker alone but no one knows when the Pixel 4a handset is supposed to see daylight anymore.
Source: Phonearena
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