Product Library / Hubs & Controllers

Research profile · last verified 2026-09-13

Google Home Speaker (2026)

Compiled by SmartHomeWorkflow Research · Google · Hubs & Controllers · ~$99.99 (at time of research — never treated as a live price)

Compatibility at a glance

Does it work with your platform?

Choose your platform to see its setup and functions. Your choice carries across product pages.

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A connection can work while individual controls or automations remain unconfirmed. Read the connection details ↓

Protocols: WIFI · BLUETOOTH · THREAD · MATTER[1][3][5][16][24]

Before you buy

What do you need to make it work?

No hub for the device alone

Choose a platform above for its connection. A hub can be optional for the device itself and required for a platform or automation.

No — Google lists this model as a Wi-Fi and Thread hub, and this record's provider block records it as a Matter controller with a Thread 1.3 border router built in.[14]

One device can provide more than one role. These are setup requirements, not a shopping list of separate purchases.

What could you do with this?

Put its functions to use.

Research, not hands-on testing

Start with a documented control or event. The selected connection shows what is confirmed for that platform.

We have not established a control or event to illustrate for this product. Check the connection and equipment information above.

A documented control or event is one part of a setup. It does not by itself establish a complete automation.

The functions, side by side

What can you use, and where?[15][17]

A platform connection does not confirm every function. Controls and reported events are shown separately from what an automation can use.

Controls
Not established from vendor documentation
Reported events
Not established from vendor documentation

Individual function comparisons are not available. The control and event summaries above distinguish an unanswered question from a documented absence.

Some functions may need a paid plan. Plan requirements are shown below.

Listed device functions are established from vendor documentation. An ability missing here is unestablished, not necessarily absent.

Connection details and setup sources
EcosystemSupportThe catch
Amazon AlexaDoesn't workVerified: does not work with this ecosystem[7]Google ecosystem device — Google's spec sheet lists 'Works with Google Home' and a Matter-hub role only, and as a Matter controller (not an accessory) there is nothing for Alexa to pair with.
Google HomeWorksWorks with this ecosystem[5]This IS the Google Home hub — Thread border router + Matter controller
Apple HomeDoesn't workVerified: does not work with this ecosystem[2][6]Google's spec page lists 'Works with Google Home' and a Matter-hub role for Google Home only — no AirPlay and no Apple Home support are documented; Google documents no Bluetooth audio path either: the specification page lists 'Bluetooth® 5.4' as a radio and never says what it carries, so we do not tell Apple households to fall back on it.
SmartThingsDoesn't workVerified: does not work with this ecosystem[6]This is a hub for Google Home, not a device other systems add, so SmartThings has no way to control it. Setup runs through the Google Home app, and Samsung's own Nest integration covers Nest thermostats, cameras and doorbells rather than Google speakers.
Home AssistantPartialPartial support — see the catch[8]Media and broadcast control from HA via the official core Google Cast and Google Assistant SDK integrations. Its Thread border-router role exposes nothing to HA — Thread devices reach HA only by joining HA's Matter integration directly via multi-admin.

Plans and ongoing costs[9][11][29]

◐ Works without a subscription: Yes. The maker also sells an optional paid plan.

Vendor account required: Not established — we have not sourced this yet.

Base features are free; the advanced Gemini features are tied to Google Home Premium. Both plans and their prices are now carried in this page's own pricing table and shown as a five-year range — until 13 August 2026 this page named the plans without ever saying what either one costs. Which Gemini features sit in which plan is not recorded: Google's own material puts some abilities in the higher plan and some in both, and that mapping is not published in a form we can carry, so this page says what each plan costs and stops there.

Maintenance and offline use

The catch

Brand-new platform pillar — Gemini's smart-home chops are still maturing, and the deepest features are creeping toward Home Premium subscriptions.

Who it's for

The default entry point into a 2026 Google home: speaker, Thread border router, and Matter controller for about $100.

Sources & method

Numbered sources below back the facts marked with the matching number above. This is a research profile: compiled from manufacturer documentation, certification registries, and published testing — we state facts, not verdicts, and we have not physically tested this unit. How we work →

31 numbered sources· read them in the source's own words
  1. [1] support.google.com/googlehome/answer/7072284 'Google Nest and Home device specifications' (read 2026-08-09), Google Home Speaker block: 'Smart home connectivity — Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax (2.4 GHz/5 GHz) · Bluetooth® 5.4 · Thread 1.3 border router (2.4 GHz)'; no 'Supported Bluetooth profiles' row for this model. Compared in the same read against the Nest Hub (2nd gen) block ('Wireless network — ... Bluetooth® 5.0 · Google Cast · 802.15.4') and against the older blocks for Google Home, Home Mini, Home Max and Nest Hub (1st gen), each of which lists 'Supported Bluetooth profiles ... A2DP sink, A2DP source'. Class-level capability statement: support.google.com/googlehome/answer/7381505. — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-08-09
    Backs: Protocols
  2. [2] store.google.com/us/product/google_home_speaker_specs (read 2026-08-09, browser-rendered): the page's only Bluetooth text is 'Bluetooth® 5.4', listed under 'Smart home connectivity' beside Wi-Fi 6 and Thread 1.3. It documents no AirPlay, no Apple Home support, and no Bluetooth audio capability. — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-08-09
    Backs: Apple Home compatibility
  3. [3] Google Home Speaker (2026) manufacturer specification (read 2026-08-09): 'Smart home connectivity: Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax (2.4 GHz/5 GHz) · Bluetooth® 5.4 · Thread 1.3 border router (2.4 GHz)'. No statement anywhere on the page describes what the Bluetooth radio is used for — not audio streaming, not setup, not control. — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-08-09
    Backs: Protocols
  4. [4] 2026-07 web research sweep (docs/02 catalog; primary sources cited there) — Checked a certification register, verified 2026-07-12
  5. [5] support.google.com/googlehome/answer/12391458 (lists 'Google Home Speaker (2026)' as a WiFi+Thread hub) + store.google.com — Thread 1.3 border router + Matter hub, WiFi/BT5.4, $99, launched Jun 25 2026 — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-07-15
    Backs: Product identity, Google Home compatibility, Research status, Protocols, Works without the internet
  6. [6] Google's own Google Home Speaker specification page, store.google.com/us/product/google_home_speaker_specs, read 2026-09-19 (the page opened and served 10,919 characters of text, with the $99.99 price, the colours and the dimensions block present, which is the control that it rendered rather than returning a shell). Quoted as published: 'Smart home connectivity — Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax (2.4 GHz/5 GHz), Bluetooth® 5.4, Thread 1.3 border router (2.4 GHz)' · 'Smart home compatibility — Works with Google Home' · 'Matter — Works as a hub for Matter with Google Home' · 'Supported operating systems for Google home app — iOS, Android'. A case-insensitive scan of the whole served page returned zero occurrences of SmartThings and zero of Samsung. — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-09-19
    Backs: Apple Home compatibility, SmartThings compatibility
  7. [7] Google Store spec sheet (store.google.com/us/product/google_home_speaker_specs: 'Works with Google Home' — Alexa appears nowhere in the compatibility list; negative evidence from the exhaustive works-with list, corroborated against this record's 2026-07-17 capture of the same page) + Google Matter help (support.google.com/googlehome/answer/12391458: the speaker's role is hub/controller) — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-07-21
    Backs: Amazon Alexa compatibility
  8. [8] Home Assistant official docs: Google Cast core integration (home-assistant.io/integrations/cast) + Google Assistant SDK (home-assistant.io/integrations/google_assistant_sdk: 'Broadcast messages to Google Assistant speakers and displays') + Thread docs (home-assistant.io/integrations/thread: 'Thread by itself does not allow controlling devices… a higher-level protocol is required: Matter or Apple HomeKit') — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-07-21
    Backs: Home Assistant compatibility
  9. [9] blog.google/products-and-platforms/devices/google-nest/google-home-speaker-gemini-features/, read 2026-08-09: the speaker was 'available for pre-order' at '$99.99, with units hitting shelves on June 25'. The same announcement describes Google Home Premium as the optional paid tier carrying Gemini Live, Camera History Search and Home Briefs, with the on-device Gemini for Home assistant included with the speaker. store.google.com product and specs pages were both attempted and each exceeded the read's length limit before any price or specification row — an incomplete read on our side, not a host refusal. — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-08-09
    Backs: Price, Market availability, Service status, Subscription
  10. [10] https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/devices/google-nest/google-home-speaker-gemini-features/, verified 2026-08-09
    Backs: Research status
  11. [11] store.google.com/us/product/google_home_premium (read 2026-08-13; .../product/nest_aware redirects here): 'Standard $10/month or $100/year — Save $20 with an annual subscription' · 'Advanced $20/month or $200/year — Save $40 with an annual subscription'. Corroborated by the trial footnote: 'auto-renews ... at $10/month or $100/year for Standard plan or $20/month or $200/year for Advanced plan.' Tier scoping from support.google.com/googlehome/answer/16618650: 'This feature requires the Advanced plan of Google Home Premium' for camera livestream/video-history search and for Home Brief. — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-08-13
    Backs: Subscription
  12. [12] store.google.com, Google Home Speaker specifications — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-08-17
    Backs: Wi-Fi bands it can use, Power source, Role in a Thread network
  13. [13] Google, “Security updates & security validation results for Google's connected home devices” (support.google.com product-documentation answer 10231940), read 2026-08-19. Table row, verbatim across its four columns (Device | Release date | Release date + 5 year minimum | Currently receiving critical security updates): “Google Home Speaker (2026) | 06/25/2026 | 06/25/2031 | Yes”. Page-level commitment: “Google Nest connected home devices will receive automatic security updates for at least 5 years from the date we start selling them on the US Google Store.” Cross-read against Google's UK PSTI Statement of Compliance at https://support.google.com/product-documentation/answer/14869041 (signed Louise Bohmann, April 8, 2024), whose Group 2 UK Defined Support Period is “At least five years from when the device first became available on the Google Store in the US” — the same rule the table applies. — Read the original source directly, verified 2026-08-19
    Backs: Security-update support period
  14. [14] This record's own sourced list of what the speaker provides to other devices: Matter controller and Thread border router ("Thread 1.3"), established 2026-07-15 from support.google.com/googlehome/answer/12391458, which lists "Google Home Speaker (2026)" among Wi-Fi + Thread hubs, and from store.google.com., verified 2026-08-19
    Backs: Required hub or bridge
  15. [15] No specification page for this model could be read in full on 2026-08-20: Google's store product and specification pages cut off however we read them, and the cited support article covers setup rather than hardware. — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-08-20
    Backs: Capabilities
  16. [16] This record's own sourced list of what the speaker provides to other devices, establishing it as a Matter controller. Re-read 2026-08-20 against our settled definition of which radios a product lists; no new outside source was read., verified 2026-08-20
    Backs: Protocols
  17. [17] home-assistant.io/integrations/cast, read 2026-08-20. It documents casting media, dashboards and various apps to "Cast devices" and "Chromecasts" generically, and names no Google device models at all — no Nest Hub, no Google speaker, no per-model support list. — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-08-20
    Backs: Capabilities
  18. [18] This record's own platform catches and the source entries behind them, re-read 2026-08-22. No vendor page was read — deliberately, so no date on this record implies a look nobody took., verified 2026-08-22
  19. [19] SmartHomeWorkflow record maintenance: a pass that filled in which region the security-support statement covers, verified 2026-08-27
  20. [20] Google, "Devices that work as a hub for Google Home" — verbatim: "you need a hub device that also works as a Thread border router" … "Many of the hubs for Google Home have a Thread border router built-in" … "The following hubs support Matter over both Wi-Fi and Thread: Speakers: Google Home Speaker (2026); Displays: Nest Hub (2nd gen), Nest Hub Max; Wi-Fi routers: Nest Wifi Pro (Wi-Fi 6E); Streamers: Google TV Streamer (4K)." The same page opens: "Before you can add Matter-enabled devices to Google Home, you need a Matter-enabled hub device set up on your home wireless network." — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-09-02
    Backs: What it provides to your home
  21. [21] The who-it's-for sentence asserted a flat $100 against a recorded $99.99. Qualified to "about $100". NOTHING WAS RE-READ: the recorded price was already right and only the customer-facing sentence lagged behind it, so no axis stamp advances here — a freshness date asserts a look, and no look was taken (P-10). Found by replaying our check for corrected facts still standing in live prose, across 393 commits of history., verified 2026-09-08
  22. [22] the record's own customer-facing prose fields as they stood before 2026-09-10 (no new external read), verified 2026-09-10
  23. [23] support.google.com/googlehome/answer/12391458, read 2026-09-13: lists "Google Home Speaker (2026)" among the hubs supporting Wi-Fi and Thread, and states "Matter-enabled devices work locally over your existing home wireless network without the need to connect to the cloud over the internet." Also read the same day for the other half of the old note: support.google.com/googlehome/answer/16618650 ("Learn about Gemini for Home voice assistant") and answer/16613534 ("Get started with Gemini for Home features"). Neither states whether the assistant works without an internet connection. — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-09-13
  24. [24] store.google.com, "Google Home Speaker Specs & Compatibility", read 2026-09-13: "$99.99 or make 4 payments of $25.00 Buy" · "Colors Berry Porcelain Hazel Jade" · "Smart home connectivity Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax (2.4 GHz/5 GHz) Bluetooth® 5.4 Thread 1.3 border router (2.4 GHz)" · "Smart home compatibility Works with Google Home Matter Works as a hub for Matter with Google Home" · "Power adapter: 30W Type-C USB-PD" · "Supported operating systems for Google home app iOS, Android" · "Technology Gemini for Home". — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-09-13
    Backs: Price, Protocols, Wi-Fi bands it can use, Power source, App platforms, Market availability, Research status
  25. [25] support.google.com/googlehome/answer/16618650, "Learn about Gemini for Home voice assistant", read 2026-09-13: "Access to basic features of the Gemini for Home voice assistant is available at no cost. These include smart home controls, media search and playback, alarms and timers, calendars, notes, lists, and reminders." · "Some features like Gemini Live are available on compatible devices with a Google Home Premium subscription". The page lists "Google Home Speaker (2026)" as a compatible device, and answer/16613534 reads "When you add a Google Home Speaker (2026) to your home, you'll be eligible to opt in to Gemini for Home." — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-09-13
    Backs: Service status
  26. [26] this record's own lifecycle note as it stood before 2026-09-17 (no new external read): its wording was rewritten so it reads in plain language. No fact, date, source or value changed, and the earlier wording is kept on this record., verified 2026-09-17
  27. [27] the page this record already cites for that answer, re-read 2026-09-19 with no new claim made — Recorded from our own earlier read, verified 2026-09-19
  28. [28] The Google Home Speaker (2026) is the thing that runs a Matter home rather than a device that joins one — this record's own sourced capability block establishes it as a Matter controller and a Thread border router — and the certification list the Connectivity Standards Alliance publishes is a list of devices that join. Read on 2026-09-20, Google's maker number 0x6006 carries two registered models and neither of them is this speaker. That is not a gap in this record and it is not a failing grade for the product: a controller has no product certificate to hold, so no certificate numbers are attached here and no missing-certificate finding is recorded against it., verified 2026-09-20
  29. [29] Google's launch post 'Meet the new Google Home Speaker, built for Gemini' (Jun 17, 2026), read in full 2026-09-23. Verbatim, from the article body: 'Unlock more AI capabilities with Google Home Premium', followed by Gemini Live and Camera History Search as the features it lists there. The post names no price for the plan. — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-09-23
    Backs: Subscription
  30. [30] Google's connected-home security-updates page, read in full on 2026-10-12. The commitment: "Google Nest connected home devices will receive automatic security updates for at least 5 years from the date we start selling them on the US Google Store ." The table's columns: "Device Release date Release date + 5 year minimum Currently receiving critical security updates". This record's row, verbatim: "Google Home Speaker (2026) 06/25/2026 06/25/2031 Yes". — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-10-12
  31. [31] Google's help article 'Learn about Gemini for Home voice assistant', read in full on 2026-10-15. Verbatim: "Access to basic features of the Gemini for Home voice assistant is available at no cost. These include smart home controls, media search and playback, alarms and timers, calendars, notes, lists, and reminders." · "Some features like Gemini Live are available on compatible devices with a Google Home Premium subscription ." · "The complete Gemini for Home voice assistant is available on these speakers and displays: Google Home Speaker (2026) Google Nest Hub (2nd gen) Google Nest Audio Google Nest Mini (2nd gen) Google Nest Hub Max Google Nest Hub (1st gen) Google Home Mini (1st gen)" — Read on the maker's own site, verified 2026-10-15
    Backs: Service status

Compatibility and lifecycle information reflects the last-verified date above and can change without notice (firmware updates, cloud-service changes, discontinuations). It is provided as-is, for information — verify with the manufacturer before purchasing. Spot an error? Tell us and we'll fix it. Full terms: Terms of Service.

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