Welcome Home, Gemini

Welcome to Pixelated Episode 72. I'm your host, Will Saddleberg. This week, Abner, Damien, and I sit down to talk all about Google's new smart home announcements. From a redesigned Google Home app and an AI-focused subscription package to Gemini's arrival on legacy hardware and... Of course, that brand new smart speaker coming in 2026, it was a surprisingly busy week for Google. So let's not waste any more time and get right to it.

so i guess like clockwork when we were talking about it last week we now have a new home speaker some huge home updates i'm enamored by the new logo i think the new logo is fantastic it fits in with the rest of the ecosystem that

Google's trying to build with their applications. I think that's great. So yeah, that logo actually, we can spend a bit about the logo because the Monday before Google made this small announcement that... the gradient logo uh it started with the g in terms of that uh for google search the g icon got this gradient redesign and then it came to Gemini and then it came to home but basically Google was bringing this gradient design that reflects the new

ai present ai future to everything so we're only going to see more of this design less of the sharp lines of the partitioned app icons and presumably more of this merged gradient effect do you think it's um the gradient effect is i mean i visually i love it Do you think there's enough of a variation between each icon? Because I know over the last few years we've had a lot of problems with people complaining. No, it's only going to get worse.

oh my god i just realized that the google tv logo is not that different from the home it's it's a multi-colored shape and the second the google tv logo gets a blended color it's just going to be oh does this yes does this have four sides or five that's the only difference yeah basically that's and i don't think the cars are going to help i think the partitions was something that like you could draw the distinction between the color sections but now it's just a merger so that's going to be fun

I mean, I now feel really bad. You guys have put me in my place for liking the icon. I thought I liked it too until I remembered it was going to come to all of them. I mean, I have Gmail and I have the home icon on my home screen and they do.

look very different now because of the separation of colors and stuff like that so i kind of want it to be yeah for now for now yeah um let's get into why this is a big deal though because obviously home application itself had a huge update It's probably going to get a lot of features in the next couple of months that I think we were kind of talking a little bit last week, Will, about this, that the home application almost has held back a lot of...

the cool things that the Google Home system can do. Then we have the speaker. We'll get into that in a little bit later because that's coming later down the line. Just give me an overview, Abner, because I know you're deep in on this, what this new application is going to do for us in terms of usability.

accessibility and even like launch speed i've noticed that's a huge upgrade straight away so zooming out this new system i would call it gemini for it's called gemini for home uh this is the new smart home effort for the foreseeable future um so basically gemini for home adds gemini to go home and as part of that they rebuilt this system to be the underlying architecture to be more stable to be faster etc etc but

i think the real thing that they want to do is to have actual intelligence versus this structured thing so i guess we can look at it two ways uh your choice do you understand the voice assistant or do you understand the camera stuff Let's get on to the voice system because to me, this is the huge thing. This is the one where I'm really excited. I'm genuinely excited for this because I'm the kind of idiot who talks himself out loud and I love speaking to Gemini like a psychopath.

So yeah, LLMs, large language models, Gemini models are now powering this full Google Assistant replacement. There's no such thing called Google Assistant anymore. Now it's a trend line.

At a point, it does seem that Google wanted to keep the Google Assistant brand around. But I think fortunately, that's no longer the case. They're all in on Gemini. And yeah, you can... like you have been doing on your phones for the past year or so you can ask prompts you can ask questions commands in any conversational manner you want

there's no this command structure this structured way you remembering devices you remembering the name of devices the rooms they're in that's no longer needed you can just The end goal is really just speaking how you would to a person. And I think that's a huge thing. I don't know if you suffer from this, Will, because I think I talked about it last week, is that if you don't rename things in your home sensibly...

you can just get caught in this kind of Google Assistant limbo where you're asking, oh, turn on the living room light or turn on the lamp in the corner office. And it doesn't want to play ball. Like I have... and an enormous amount of devices in my house, and the amount of times where I have to rename them because I call it the wrong thing, or I've closely renamed something, like the names are too similar. Like, I don't know, Office Light and Office Lamp. And the assistant's like, I don't know.

You want the kitchen light on? I don't care. We're going to throw something on. I've fallen into even worse traps where we've lived in this house for like, God, three and a half, almost three and a half years now. And yet, I believe... that, you know, there's like...

like TVs because TVs have shuffled as we moved places. There's like, I think my living room TV is still called like bedroom TV and things like that where it's like, oh, that's not like I never just went and renamed those things. So it. Genuinely, anytime I like cast something to a television, I have to stare at the menu of screens and be like, OK, this is I know this says bedroom TV, but it's in the living room or vice versa. And it's terrible.

i feel yeah i definitely feel that because i have a lot of i move my nest hubs around i don't know why i think it's kind of like exactly i get an ultimatum and it's like you have to move this out of this room for my partner and she's like get it out of my sight i don't want to see this so i have a lot of like nest devices where i have one in the kitchen which is still named office nest mini and i have and i have like bedroom nest hub which is in my living room so like

Once I get to grips with that, that's great. But I feel like, like you said, like you alluded to Abner with Gemini. the way that you can have that natural conversation just to me is going to make my life so much easier yeah you'll absolutely benefit from how this gemini which google did optimize from the phone version is meant to be spatially aware right it's meant to work in instead of a personal thing on phone so it's a one-to-one it's meant to be communal you're supposed to be able to

Anybody in your household is able to interact with it. So those are the two things that Google did to optimize this Gemini for home. So it's... It'll be just Gemini, though the hot word is still, hey, Google. Do you think they'll ever change that? We kind of have rallied about it here, is that we would love to see the hot word changed.

I wonder if there's somewhat sort of like legal ramifications there, you know, changing it to say, I don't know. I'm not even going to say it out loud. I've been saying, hey, speaker. And that doesn't activate speakers. Hopefully anyone out there listening, if it did, I'm sorry. If I wanted the Cotwood to not be Hey Speaker, could it be, I don't know, anything else, like within reason? Yeah, I think for my Cotwood.

I guess this is a more cynical answer from a Valing's perspective it would always be hey Google or hey Gemini but it does work at a certain point there are some It did look like Hey, Gemini was in active consideration. And I don't know, maybe they'll still do it, but...

The fact that they haven't yet, I feel like they're sticking with Hey Google at this point. I thought this, if they were going to do it, this would be the time and they didn't do it. And so I have given up hope as much as I hate the current wake phrase. It just, it feels like it's caught in my throat.

Every single time I say it, like I'm coughing it up. And, you know, Gemini is a syllable longer, but it sure rolls off my tongue better. So I really wish I don't need custom wake words necessarily. I just wish I could maybe. toggle between the two the way that Amazon allows you to toggle between, I think, three presets on Echo devices with Alexa. I would love to see.

you know, at the very least just flipping between these two. But yeah, I mean, they clearly see it as a, as a good branding exercise and it's hard to argue with that, I suppose. Yeah. So in terms of, in terms of the functionality then.

So this is going to work just like from what I can see externally and I've not delved too deeply into it. I've kind of had a surface level look at it and have a little bit of knowledge. But for me, this seems very, very similar to how Gemini is going to get rolled out in. in Android Auto, which technically is overdue, right? Are we still technically in summer? I'm not sure. In the UK, we're definitely not. No, summer's over for us here too. They hit the Gemini for TV a week or two back.

the past remaining one is Android Auto. Yeah, because this, obviously, if anyone out there has seen so go check out there's a video on on the channel that we did a deep dive we managed to see that io um the interface and the experience seems very similar from what i can tell to how it's going to work with with your smart home speakers um and obviously the closest approximate

we have currently is the pixel tablet and at least from the pixel tablet experience i've been having with gemini absolutely fantastic it is technically a different device with more capable hardware I know Google is, and they deserve a lot of credit for this. They're going to roll specific aspects of Gemini back to the original Google Home, I believe. Is it the original Google Home?

It was the original Google Home in 2016. I'd go further in saying that for the most part. So what you're referring to is Gemini Live is only available for newer hardware. And they insinuated to us that Gemini Live is more complex.

hardware requirements which i guess i can see that but the base google sit next experience you're familiar with will be infused with gemini will be infused with lms those command sets that's coming to every single device from 2016 onward from the original Google everything that Google has made in the past almost decade will be getting that experience and that is a significant upgrade it is a I don't think that

that Alexa has been able to match either during their transition. But yeah, it's good for customers. It's absolutely good for customers. i do definitely want to see what the original experience on the original google home looks like in terms of those hardwares are all not from whether they're capable but more so from how they've degraded in the past 10 years the way that all hardware will degrade in that time

So that should be a very interesting test. Even my Nest Hub Max, my eyebrow is raised a little bit because navigating through the UI alone is laggy and feels really sluggish. Which is not changing today. I hope so. You know, like I'm waiting to see how that comes through. Yeah, the core Nest smart display UI, we're told it's not going to change. We'll see.

There was a redesign that they completely finished and never rolled out, the smart displays. Yeah. So that's somewhere. I do feel like this, I mean, as I say, I do think it's a big move for Google to have the... I guess in a lot of ways it's audacity, right? They have the audacity to say, we are going to support our 2016 devices and everything beyond that with the base level of Gemini. And I do think that is...

It's audacious. It's confidence in your product. It's confidence in Gemini. I think the confidence in Gemini there is so such that they can do this. And I think whether or not it works as we hope it does.

Hand on heart, I don't think it will work as well on some of these older devices, but I'll be a believer when I see it. I think if you can get a Nest Mini, for instance, or a Home Mini that is working with Gemini in any... way shape or form it's going to surpass the current experience you have with google assistant right so i can only i can only see it as a good thing um like i say just fingers crossed it doesn't

doesn't reach a point where people are complaining that their devices are kind of unresponsive. And I don't doubt that they've tested this thoroughly because there are so, what, did they sell 50 million versions of the Nest Mini and Home Mini in its lifespan? Tens of millions. Yeah, so there is a lot of devices potentially out there that are going to take advantage of this. And if Gemini, if it means Gemini supersedes some of the other home assistants, then...

That is one hell of a gain in just one instance. I'm excited to see just how people react to it. I'm excited because I've been using it on my Pixel tablet and it is fantastic at that natural language processing, but I want to see how... it integrates directly into a home that's already got like because i i'm on the low end i know ben

as part of the team he has hundreds potentially of of smart home devices so i want to see his uh we'll have to bring him on the podcast and talk about it because i imagine his integration experience is going to be very different from mine with 60 or 70 devices yeah yeah so So the voice assistant stuff, it is entering public preview, which it seems like they're renaming to early access.

at towards the end of this month um that's it's not here yet but what we do have right now is this other part of gemini uh for home which is basically what google wants to go from smart cameras to ai cameras so in short every video if you're if you have a lot of smart cams every

video recorded will be accompanied with this AI description, this rich description describing what's going on in the scene, ravaging Google's understanding, Gemini's multimodality. And from there, it's meant to power the ability to search to find out what's been happening in your home to recap etc etc um are you big camera people here i am yeah i have four i have four in my home so i am but only only when traveling like when we're not here that's when the cameras get set up when when we're here

Uh, cause both, well, well, I obviously work from home and then my fiance works from home four days a week. So we are just always here. Um, and, and so it's less, it's less necessary, but, but even then we have a doorbell cam and stuff like that. And I, um,

I really like this idea. I feel like that's a really good use of... of of descriptions of ai generated descriptions because and damien i think i told you this story i don't think it was on microphone uh i don't think we were recording uh the about when i was in barcelona for mobile world congress and i got like a doorbell you did alert yeah yeah yeah and it was it was a bunch of deer right and it was just a bunch of deer wait at my front door and like you know

the the the why somebody at my door at 2 30 in the morning feeling went away when i opened the app but it would have been even better if the notification had come in and said hey there's a bunch of 500 exactly i would love that because then there's no heart

attack feeling you you you have that sensation immediately you don't even have to open the video what if it what if it incorrectly identified it as reindeer and they said santa's at the door like that would be even funnier right like that's like a holiday that's just a perfect holiday ad there we go 100% would I mean do we think like this is just thinking out loud here

Do we think this is the first phase in Google potentially testing out AI summaries for notifications? I mean, obviously it's slightly different. I hope not. It's slightly down the pipeline and there is hardware relying on it. I just kind of feel like this could be a first glimpse of that. tackling something much harder in terms of like you're taking this video, this complex video, a lot of it high res has to be processed and all that. So they're definitely starting at the highest possible.

difficulty but but but the most utility too i think because you know having used um having used notification summaries on ios um

in the past. They're terrible. And honestly, I really think that notification summaries are... are one of those and i'm open for you guys to disagree with me but one of those ideas that sounds good at first thought and then you think about it and you're like well i don't really actually struggle to read my notifications that often especially on android um i i really don't i i don't find the

You're already shortening something that is relatively short on my display. It's kind of like you're not saving me any time. If anything, you're just misconstruing things enough that I have to open the app. Again, this is all based on how Apple does it. No, I absolutely... I do wonder if we're more power user in that regard. We might be. We're capable of processing.

we process all of information on a daily basis. So I wonder... Abner, that sounds like you're calling people stupid, but I agree with you. A lot of people are stupid. No, I think... I didn't say that. I inferred it. That's all that matters. I think...

I think it would be good if Google does this well, and I think this is the perfect way to test, if it is a test bed. I mean, obviously, I'm thinking out loud, like I say. So I feel like this is the perfect opportunity to do it. Like you say, there's a lot of... technical overhead here that is needed to summarize video into short snippets and i mean if they do it well which i don't kind of don't doubt that they will because of the way that they're the current nest

notifications work like obviously familiar faces they've had a long time being able to do this person detected package yeah person detected package detected i think that it is a natural step um

I'm excited to see what kind of crazy and wonderful like kind of summaries we get. Like obviously Will with his 500 reindeer at the door and Santa banging down the windows. Like that would be kind of cool. I think... it'd be cool to see the limits of it like what are the what are the actual limits is there like because being completely honest the safety limits as well right like yeah

There could be any, any number of things that happen outside your front door. Like how is Gemini and Gemini and Google systems? I've had people, you know, um, walk in front of my you know out my neighbor's brother but like he there was one night where like he he was coming back from his car and he like walked like through my yard to get to the house. And I don't care about that, but it wasn't like two in the morning and we were on vacation.

And I was like, and even even then, you know, doing the opposite of what I how I just said, like, I like the idea of these notification descriptions for these videos. It's like, oh, but like. At the same time, if I woke up to a thing that was like, oh yeah, six hours ago, there was a guy at your front door. I'd be like, oh, okay, great. I guess I'm going home now. Yeah, that would be terrifying.

in many ways this for the people in the google ecosystem this is their first interaction with these ai summaries on the mass scale for something that's very important anything that happens in your home is pretty important so yeah besides these ai summaries the other thing it can figure out what's happening in your home i think the most interesting example that they gave was let's say you have a garden you have cameras pointing at it you can ask if somebody ate

the leaves the plants and gemini can go back and tell you that there are rabbits on such and such a day or whatever i think In theory, that sounds fantastic. It really depends to see how it is in practice. And this is the thing that Google is rolling out now. join the subscriptions and all that but yeah it's it's this they're definitely starting on the highest difficulty again yeah a specific hardware needed for this because i wasn't really clear

That's how that's going to work. Do you need to have the new AI cameras or do existing hardware, like I already have a lot of Nest hardware already, is that kind of, am I going to be able to access this with the premium tier that I'm subscribed to or do I need to have specific hardware for it? so yeah let's start there in terms so google home premium which is the nestware rebrand is what they are what they're transitioning to just to spend a second on that google home premium bit long

Bit. Yeah, I get what you're saying. Yeah, especially because it's Nest, right? It feels weird. Then there's technically it's Google Home Premium Standard and Google Home Premium Advanced, which fall. four four things in the name is too much um so but on the other side if you are a google ai pro subscriber or you're paying 20 a month you do get home premium for free basically it's including a bundle and we do make this a tangent we're finally seeing ai pro come together in that um

It's a bundle for everything Google. I still don't think we'll ever get YouTube premium in there. That's another thing. No, they're going to keep that. I had this feeling this morning, and I'm curious about... what you guys feel and and and maybe this was because i watched the reaction the the

that I knew was, I feel like I've known this was coming for like eight years. Right. But like I watched the reaction to the, the, the game pass floor kind of falling out. Right. And like those prices becoming expensive to the point where a lot of people don't want to pay. them anymore there was a lot of oh no what happens when one company buys every single studio never guess well but like well that that is we could have a no a separate podcast on that but it's um

I get worried when I see how many things Google is dropping into this $20 a month plan that I'm like, OK, this is going to go up in price eventually. You are you're bundling so much in to get people onto this AI pro plan that you clearly. I feel like Google clearly doesn't see that like Gemini Pro on its own is worth paying $20 a month for. So if they just put a lot of stuff into this bundle, I think it's a good deal.

currently i get worried that in two years this bundle is going to be like 40 a month no that's interesting because a lot of people like with the gemini stuff they don't think that it's worth it right now and yeah To be fair, they can stay on the $10 plan. Yes, correct. Although they hide it from you. You got to look for that $10 plan I found out a couple months ago, but it is there. Yes, so...

Yeah, the idea of raising the cost is... I'm a little ahead of myself, right? It's just one of those thoughts that floated through my head of like, well, this won't be $20 a month forever. And I don't think Google's even, you know...

I don't think they'll add YouTube Premium, but I don't think they're done adding perks to this plan. If they're Fitbit Premium, which is only the case in the UK, which Damien can speak to, would be the last, the main... so these these ai services google helm god premium is a whole name google home premium is a a it's ai is at the core we are you it adds so much ai stuff fitbit premium

that when the Fitbit coach stuff comes, that's also an AI services. So it makes sense to have those three things with the main Gemini app combined. But yeah, we're getting ahead of ourselves. But I do, I, I, the Gemini app usage alone, I think I can see that cost rising in the medium term. Yeah. But yeah, so that's Google Home. That's the way... that transition is a straightforward to go home premium it's still ten dollars then if you go ten dollars more you you get all the

24 24 7 for 10 days video recording 60 days event history you get all that but that's how you start unlocking all the other ai features like home brief like the camera descriptions search and i do wonder how people are going to react to that in terms of You really need to pay $20 to unlock the full features of these newer devices. That's one thing that I'm kind of hesitant to do.

I think I paid a yearly fee and it was something like, I think it was discounted in the UK, like £50. I think that was maybe about $65, $70. I'm not sure what the current exchange rate is. If you pay for a year, it's $10 per month for standard. $100 per year, $20 for advance, or $200. I think, okay, so this is not defending the decision to make it that price to get all of the features.

But when we look at it from a security perspective, I think people would, if you're a security conscious person, I think you were happy to pay probably $200 a year for added security, peace of mind, that kind of thing. But me personally, I'm happy to pay 50 UK, or I think it probably will be about 60 or 70 with the annual subscription for the base one. Because I don't necessarily, I don't feel like I need all of the extra features.

When I start seeing them rolling out, I might feel differently. I think it's a peace of mind kind of thing, but at the same time, I do wonder if there's some way of Google kind of...

I don't know. I feel like you get this free with the AI Pro, right? The AI Pro tier. Because in the UK, that's like £19.50 a month. Because I would consider doing that because I get all the benefits of... uh gemini all the gemini updates all the features there and then also this on top with the extras of um fitbit premium and all of the 24 seven recording like that i can potentially see but as if it was if it's being kind of touted as its own thing which i think is a little bit confusing

I wouldn't pay that separately. I think with all the extras, it is worth it. It makes a lot of sense. Yeah. You'd be just go to the bundle $20 a month. And the thing with other... previous upsells and especially as with nestware before Well, I don't know if people appreciate it, but $10 is getting you a lot of AI processing that Google has to do on its side, like these descriptions.

media files are very complex. And this is a lot of processing that they're doing on the cloud. So there is an actual value for all this stuff. Maybe on-device AI will change that in the medium-term future, but we're not there yet. If you want the best possible quality, it has to be in the crowd and there's a real value to that. But I do wonder if people will see.

um that i do also you you raise a good point in terms of our own device processing do we ever get a tensor powered home device i mean i wouldn't rule it out at this point in time i wonder how much that would cost yeah It would have to be something like the Pixel tablet again. Yeah, I could see how. But as I keep complaining about. A full SoC. A full SoC in the camera with cooling with, well, it has the benefit of constant power, but I don't know, 64.

4GB of memory, RAM, all that. I think that would be a true smart camera. I can honestly see it happening. I can see it happening. I mean depending on how... how many leaps we see from Tensor processors over the next, what, five to six years. So let's get into some of the actual hardware then because there were some announcements here which kind of, they caught me by surprise initially. I just thought, oh, Gemini's coming.

smart speakers but google was like here have some hardware as well throw some hardware yes let's get the cameras out of the way they look exactly there's a new doorbell there's a new nest cam indoor and nest cam outdoor looks exactly the same google

definitely made the point of saying that you can easily upgrade all your stuff with the existing mounts and all that um 2k is the big sell here from 1080p it's not the 4k of the past but 2k seems like a good compromise in terms of people's bandwidth but yeah so looks the same this is this very red berry color which is a bit much i do wonder if it's like meant to purposely scream i have a security camera

I was trying to figure that out too, because I had the same thought of like, I don't know, I usually want, if I'm going to put up a camera, I want it to blend in to the surroundings. I don't want it to be... immediately apparent but maybe there's maybe people feel differently about that it only sucks that the black ring is already so noticeable when you get it head on and they don't make it small or whatever but I don't know

berry seasonal colors maybe that's a good point i yeah i do agree there's probably some sentiment that having a bright red camera means it can't be misconstrued as anything else like maybe there's a reason why they've made it that color but it's a nice color I can't deny that we complain that Google doesn't make enough red products and red kind of colors and they've done it with a camera of all things I was going to say I don't know if this is what I meant when I was

like make more red devices we want a red pixel no here have a nest indoor cam bright red like it seems a bit like counterintuitive but hey at least they know we know they can make a lovely red color Bet there or not was the product we wanted to be. I mean, the biggest disappointment is I know that Google said they were not going to do the Nest doorbell wired for outside of the US. I'm a little bit disappointed that I can't get a wired doorbell here apart from the first gen still. I'll see how...

I guess the context of them making new home hardware is that they obviously retreated from the thermostat outside the US, which is a real shame. They cited the UK and European... I think complexity is just the word they use that we'll see but they are all in on cameras I'll give them that and

it's like it is an easier thing for them to sell so hopefully they will expand it over time especially if this gemini thing gives them a meaningful boost if the ai stuff is a meaningful competitive differentiator Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of hardware out there, isn't there? I think, obviously, Google needs to keep putting out cameras in a lot, like, just logically, because...

Amazon drops like 50 different variations of every single camera that has ever existed, right? This week. Yes, this week. We'll get on the timing a bit, but...

I think a word he mentioned to the US is this Walmart on stuff. $20 home indoor camera, $50, was it doorbell? Or mine escapes me, but it's- 50 to 20 dollar hardware which is crazy cheap in essence Walmart like the streaming devices is making the hardware the mass consume affordable hardware and it does look like they're off-roading all the processing all the software to google which honestly good because they they have the expertise

Do you think people are going to be annoyed about the 2K thing? I know you briefly mentioned it. I think my thought process is obviously now, again, thinking out loud, I tend to do this a lot on this podcast, which is a bad thing. Good for entertainment, I guess. The idea that you'd have a 2K video when we're in a 4K video era seems silly. I just see processing. But I guess it's just my first thought is the bandwidth, the processing.

When everybody in the States has gigabit internet, we can reassess. But I don't think we're quite there yet. Yeah, I mean, most of the time 1080p is fine, right? Like I've seen some 4K cameras and not all 4K cameras are made equally. I think there's some less to 1080p cameras than there are 4K cameras.

I don't have, like looking at it logically like that, I don't have as much of a problem, but I can understand why people would. But then a 2K image that's processed and has contextual information is always going to be better than a raw 4K image that has no... kind of data points i think i'd also think i'd take just a better 2k sensor over a like worse 4k sensor just overall like if it's better in low light especially like i think that's more important to me

let's get into this one final piece of hardware then that i think is the biggest talking point we get we're finally getting this new speaker that was kind of half teased a few months ago yeah with lando norris like

First thoughts, go. The timing is, it's not coming into the spring. The way they phrased it is, in their point of view, they're giving Gemini... Gemini to all existing users first, which is, that's a charitable interpretation. The more cynical one is they are waiting for every existing customer to beta test it so that by the time it launches in the spring. It's the best possible experience for the new Google Home Speaker. Generic name, but straightforward, I guess. Yeah, I...

I really wish, because I did a whole thing on it on this show, that it was ready for the holidays. Because I think that this is custom built. Exactly. It's built to be... I hesitate to say stocking stuffer because $100 is a little expensive for that, but it's not far off the price that you would want of like... oh, well, I need to get somebody a gift. Like here's like a really easy layup. Like it's a, you know, it's presumably a good speaker if it's got all the smart stuff behind it.

um you know especially if it's someone like maybe a decade ago you got them the original google home and sure you'll get that new but this this should be a much better device overall um including more modern and so and better looking i think than the original home design. So, you know, I think that's really my biggest frustration here is that I just, I agree with you, Abner. I agree with your more cynical take that I think this is mostly about, you know.

being slow to roll uh this out to make sure it's as it's as uh ready for prime time as possible especially ready for new hardware um but it feels like a real missed opportunity i i almost I almost wish that it was out with a similar early access program with the full experience coming in April. But I think if they had done that, the three of us would be complaining about it too. So maybe there was no winning here.

Yeah, I get the impression that it is a no-win situation to release this kind of hardware because it's, what, is it nearly... It will be six years almost since they released the previous one, which is insane to think of. It's crazy. With the company that pioneered the, I nearly said the phrase out loud then, the Hey Speaker phrase, I feel like...

Yeah, it's almost like they've allowed Alexa to kind of power through and capture a huge portion of the market. And obviously I understand that Amazon is very different because they're less of a service company than Google. Yeah. So how long is it from now? It will be potentially, I'm potentially seeing us on storefronts. Is it March? March, 2026. I think it says on the Google store in Australia, I think somewhere like that. So.

Five-ish, six months, nearly? Five to six months, yeah. It's a bit of a long time. To what you were saying, Will, about the shopping, only early adopters are going to buy this in March. Right, exactly. Maybe. Yeah, but does that allow, you make a good point there. If it's early adopters in March, does that mean by the Christmas period in the following year, the prices is way cheaper. We're getting it at like $30, $40. Because Google will do that, I imagine. Any early bugs?

worked out too maybe that's maybe that's the idea with this but then I still kind of it's a speaker they should know how to make a solid speaker at this point I agree I guess I'm just trying to figure out I'm trying to square If all of that is accurate and that's kind of their thinking behind it, then I don't really understand the... the such an early announcement now beyond i guess that they have all of this other support ready to go and yeah because the new hardware alongside it

Honestly, they could have announced an I.O. and made that a big thing. If they wanted a mid-year cycle for hardware, the speaker would have absolutely read that with same-day availability or whatever. i guess they are announcing it so that they can have a complete family but i don't know it it's a shame that we obviously want to play with things now uh but this speaker it

It's engineered for Gemini. There's a new white ring at the bottom, which especially comes into play for Gemini Live. Oh, we haven't talked about Gemini Live yet. You need to subscribe. You need to be on that Google Home Premium via AI Pro, whatever, to get to Gemini Live. It's free on phones, paid on smart home. That seems a little bit backwards.

But then again, I guess the amount of, I don't know, where do you think Gemini Live has been accessed the most? I think it probably would be accessed in succession. That's a weird way to phrase it. But say you're in the kitchen.

And Google gave some examples in the kitchen. If you cook every single day, you're going to potentially be talking to Gemini Live for upwards of an hour, two hours, potentially in the kitchen. Yeah, especially since you can keep it open that long. Yeah, so you can keep that kind of... session open for a long period whereas on your phone it feels more like you would do it sporadically 20 minutes here 20 minutes there 10 minutes even i wonder if they see the phone as a gateway right

Get users into the idea of using Gemini Live for these 10, 15, 20 minute periods, whatever they are, and then be like, hey. You know, if you have an existing Nesta Max or you upgraded this new Google Home speaker, right? Like you have options here. You can get this experience in your house whenever you want without having to grab your phone or keep your phone like.

you know, nearby, like it can just be there. You don't have to worry about battery usage on your phone or whatever, all this stuff. And all you have to do is, you know, pay us. All you have to do is pay us. I wonder if there's another thing here at play that they might be working on currently.

What if they did handoff for Gemini Live? You're on a conversation on your phone. Continue that conversation because that's going to have to happen at some point, right? Is this the way that they kind of do that? They bridge that gap. It's like, okay.

eventually there's going to come a point where you have to pay for this because you want to carry your conversations on in your home speaker and around the home. Like, because I could see that being really, really popular. Like that is like her, the film, which we all talk about whenever we talk about these AI, chatbot AI.

the bloody ending apparently neither here or everybody has conveniently forgotten how that movie ends but whatever anyways to your point okay so other grants zooming out gem there's a gemini and this gemini live gemini has a voice experience on speakers it's exclusively a voice experience in this gemini live which i think google's best branding is to like

to familiarize people with it to say you're having a phone call Gemini in the long term I don't think these two things stay separate it doesn't I think there's too much confusion and cognitive load for people to have why they're two different voice experiences. Maybe the phone call is what sells it to them as that's a deeper experience.

I have to feel in the long term that they get combined that you just get one voice experience and with that taken to the logical extreme when they when it becomes combined i know this is probably a few years down the road how are you going to tear that how you're going to make people pay realize they have to pay for something different it's to me it's a bit

paying for Gemini Live seems like a bit much in this current iteration. Yeah. I mean, how many people are relying on Gemini Live to the point where they would pay for it? $20 a month just to have Gemini Live on a speaker, then paid another $100 for and potentially bought multiple. Because, I don't know, that is a big expectation for people to be paying to have.

an experience like that i think you can see why people potentially be annoyed like i i've seen people's comments on on on site at the moment where there's obviously the some people fall on the side of it's worth it's potentially going to be worth the money and some people say it's absolutely complete waste waste of money but um

Yeah, there's a lot of question marks just in general about AI. And I do wonder what the end goal is for a lot of these companies. Can they continue to give away certain things for free and then expect people to pay? I don't know. I think I would be more inclined to do it for professional reasons, not for personal reasons. Do you know what I mean? Like to access certain tools, it's highly unlikely that I do it just because I can follow a recipe because I have recipe books that...

I don't read as it is. So it would force me to go analog as opposed to digital. So it's going to be, it's going to be fascinating to see what happens in this next six months, how the opinion. kind of ebbs and flows as people see this hardware. I think a lot of people were desperate for hardware. Like we talked about multiple times on the podcast.

Are they desperate enough to pay to get access to Gemini Live? Are they desperate to pay and then not get access to Gemini Live? I don't know. Well, it's full circle, right? It's exactly why Google is adding... Why Google's AI pro plan has other perks to it because they know that nobody is or very few people are going to just pay for, you know. improved gemini performance right now so this is very much like the the ground work being laid for um you know the next 10

20 years of what Google sees as its strategy towards monetization. The question is can they pull it off and I don't think we have any way of knowing because I don't think right now that these assistants are really worth paying. a monthly subscription fee on their own. I think it's nice that you get this along with a ton of other perks, including cloud storage and this new home plan and so on and so forth. But...

Yeah, I don't know. I really am curious to see when Google finally gets it to the point, if Google can get it to the point, where... people want to pay for for the service even maybe on its own maybe you know who knows what these subscription plans look like and at the same time google also has to keep in mind uh that they need to overcome not just um

these early days of of gen ai but also subscription fatigue in general right they're they're not just going up against you know chat gpt's 20 a month plan but they're they're they're going up against the fact that You have Netflix and Disney and all these other and Spotify and all these other companies taking a chunk of your income every month for the services they provide. And those are not getting cheaper either. And so I, you know, I'm curious to see where this.

all ends up because i could see it succeeding i could see it kind of spinning its wheels for a while i don't know Yeah, I suppose that comes back to Google Assistant. The Google Assistant kind of stagnated for a long period of time, and obviously that's because Gemini was going to supersede it. There's not going to be much that supersedes Gemini, so it's kind of like a war of attrition with people, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, we're going to be here talking it, discussing it and ruminating over these thoughts all the time. But let me talk about the hardware because I want to get into this. What do you guys think in terms of the design of it? Because to me, there's a couple of...

press shots of this where they're using a yarn fabric cover and it literally looks like a ball of yarn with a string of like, yeah, it is yarn. It's not a word I would use in England. I think it would be more like just thread, but. It's so generic, it's hard to describe. I'm annoyed that the HomePod mini comparisons are pretty apt. I'm annoyed that I was like, what? No, it looks like a Nest Wi-Fi or whatever. It's just covered in this finish. And then I pulled up an image of the HomePod mini.

refresh my memory because I don't have one. And I was like, oh. I see it. I do see the comparisons. It's just upside down HomePod mini. Basically, all of it is covered in fabric, but the base with the aforementioned light ring, it is pretty generic.

Pretty generic. I mean, it stayed true to the original Nest Mini in that it's got a massive head. It's like inflated, isn't it? It's like an inflated Nest Mini, like a big bulbous head on it. I don't know if you guys ever played the theme hospital, but it reminds me of theme. or three points hospital. They have like a, you treat guys who get a big inflated head. It looks like someone took a bike pump. I think, I think, um,

I mean, it speaks to Google's kind of hardware design team because they do tend to make things that fit into a specific in-home decor style, which I like. I mean, my partner likes it as well. So it's kind of like it fits into your home decor, but there's some pretty... garish colours for... I mean, we finally get that red, which is going to be cool, I guess, but...

I love seeing the press shots cause it's like, it's in a kitchen on a tiled floor. It's like, why would you put the speaker there? That would be terrible. The audio would sound horrendous. Why would you do that? But, um, The light bar, I mean, is that going to work when you're not interacting with Gemini Live or is that just for Gemini Live? That's one thing I'm questioning because I quite like the fact that...

i'm sure they'll give us controls to turn it off i probably won't have it active because it will just be really really irritating in darkened rooms yeah i i i guess to me it's it is one of those products that is is designed to kind of just blend into the background and i am curious about how the the rgb ring like adds to that because it feels at odds with the goal of the rest of the design kind of not being something you notice ever right and and so um i but

But you need it at the same time. You need some kind of visual indicator to represent all of these these actions and all of these other, you know, all of Google's other rivals use this same idea. And Google has basically done the same thing in the past with lights on top of the. speaker, anything like that. Um, you know, I don't, I don't know. I'm, I'm curious, I guess if as long as I can like kind of customize how that light shows up.

Um, even if it's not fully off, but I can, yeah, can adjust the brightness. Um, can, can maybe even, even if it was just like, oh, just like, you know, When we hit when we hit sunset time, like local sunset time, maybe it goes into a dim mode or something. I would that would probably be appreciated. But I don't know. The design is OK. Like like comparisons aside, like it kind of just looks like the.

a generic idea of a smart speaker of the last 10 years like this is what they've all sort of morphed into um i i would like to see more colors i hope especially with such a weight like i i kind of wish google was launching this with like eight colors to really you know blend into the idea of like this will match your we have a way to to make this match um

your your room and the way didn't they with the original home didn't have replaceable uh bases yeah bases and they they sold a bunch of them and i i that would have been a smart idea to kind of bring back um in some way uh but but um absent that i'd like to see more colors than you know our living room is fairly navy blue themed um the red one would work maybe work okay because that's there is an accent color to that but um you know i'd like to see some blues i'd like to see

You know, maybe if you wanted to make more bold colors, purples or pinks or something, you know, especially for for kids or, you know. Although there's privacy things. Putting that aside, you know, for a kid's room or something, I think that would be that would be cool. But but I think these are a good start. I do really like it wouldn't.

work in my um it would work in my kitchen actually but the that teal color or whatever the jade of course of course it's jade this year um the jade looks nice uh but but yeah i don't know it it is a it is what it is it's a smart speaker Um, yeah. Do you think Google, I think Google might have designed themselves into a corner with this because they pioneered that like fabric covered speaker. They did. The original Nest Mini, Home Mini, sorry.

Well, that was why I was so hesitant to even give into those HomePod comparisons because I was like, well, Google already did finishes like this. And I was like, oh, but I do. I get it. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I guess this is just what smart speakers are and somebody else will have to come along to be a little more daring if we're ever going to see this sort of look change.

Well, I mean, there's only one other thing that I really thought was massively notable here is Google clearly is like kind of standing by the sound of these because it's a smaller speaker. It's not as big as a Nest Audio. Like this is the device that is finally going to be able to do that two speaker pairing with your Google TV streamer, which you've expected for so long. I don't know. I'm so curious of the size of it's loud enough for that. Yeah, that is a big question because like...

people have clamored people have wanted this for so long we see it in our comment section all the time when is it going to come to the next audio it was promised so long ago or it was teased so long ago like if they're going to do this with smaller speakers they're going to have to back it up with quite high quality sound right so yeah There must be something here that we're... Not that we're missing because we haven't been able to hear this or see this in person. I'm hoping that...

Like any smart speaker, it lives and dies by its sound. If you're going to be putting music on it and you're putting potentially movies and TV shows through these speakers in a stereo pair, hey, Google's got to back it up. And I hope that much like their...

audio products of the last few years have improved a lot this is the one that i'm guessing six years people have waited for this they want they want some decent audio so two tiny little speakers in your living room are you going to do it are you going to like I don't think I will. I mean, I wouldn't be allowed to. So I'll leave it at that one, I think. Theoretically, Google just has to sound, just has to make this experience sound better than

every $200 soundbar on the market, right? That is, that's the bar they have to beat. And if they can, if they can offer a better experience than every 200, even maybe a little more expensive, $250 soundbar. And that's, that's. you know, especially these days, like relatively budget for soundbars, to be honest, like I don't, you know.

I don't think that goal is out of reach, but if they can't hit it, then I can't, I can't imagine recommending anybody go out and build this experience for themselves. And we won't know what that sounds like till, you know, March or April. So. Yeah. Yeah. So all we know so far is spring 2026. It looks like, according to some of the Google stores around the world, that it might be March 2026. Don't quote us on that. It's something that...

a comment or a set online on the australia store uh i could see that maybe maybe alongside like whatever pixel 10a launches like because we saw the 9a arrive in march this year google seems to make sense you know, maybe like that early spring slot right now. Yeah, I think it's good. They've got a decent group of countries that are going to get this first. I imagine it'll be available a bit more widely in a few ones. I'm guessing legal.

restrictions due to Gemini and stuff. So US, Canada, UK, Republic of Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand to begin with. I think that's... a pretty solid group because i know the original google home mini i mean i mean it's nearly a decade ago and tech has changed a lot since then was not available quite as widely but um yeah 99 i hope i think it's about 99 pound

or equivalent everywhere else. What more can we expect from it? I don't really know. I think maybe temper your expectations. I'm excited to see what happens. I'll probably pick it up in that. I might pick it up in that really garish red, just to say I have it. Maybe put it on my shelf and speak to it on a day-to-day basis. But yeah, that's the Google Home. There's a hell of a lot of smart homes talk there, right?

And I'm sure we'll get to grips with things over the next few weeks. If you're on the public preview. Or if you're not, go and do that on your device right now. I think it's, is it tap your profile icon, add them on the home app, and then you can join the public preview to potentially get the new update and a few other extras as well. But yeah.

Love talking smart home because I'm a smart home guy, but thanks for joining me guys. I really, really appreciate it. And yeah, we'll be back with more smart home content hopefully in the coming weeks and months. We'll have it until everything launches. So keep talking about it. Of course. Of course.

cheers guys thank you bye bye thanks for listening to pixelated a nine to five google podcast If you enjoyed the show we ask that you rate and review it on the podcast platform of your choice and help spread the word by sharing the show with friends or on social media.