This is a review, teardown, detailed measurements, listening tests and EQ of Google Audio Nest "smart" streaming speaker. It was kindly drop shipped to me by a member. List price is US $99.99 but I see it as low as US $65.
While not very unique in its looks, the Nest Audio nicely fits in the category with the obligatory gray fabric cover. Four or five LEDs shine through the fabric when on. When idle, they are orange but otherwise white. It shows the current volume among other things. Back side shows the plug for the 24 volt/125ma power supply and a hard switch to turn the microphone off:
I read that Google went all out with designing their own simulation tools and even conducting double blind listening tests in the process of developing this speaker! It shows when pry off the front cover:
Some kind of cast metal (aluminum?) contains the drivers. The tweeter has a built-in wave-guide courtesy of that shell. The 6 rubber screws/mounts provide acoustic suspension.
It was non-intuitive to use "Google Home" to configure the speaker. Configure I did using my phone and it all went nicely although I was annoyed by myriad of questions including what my address is! Firmware was updated and the speaker came alive and warned me in a nice female voice that the microphone was turned off. It did that on the next power cycle. I guess they want to avoid support calls for people who like me, thought the switch was for power and not microphone!
Speaking of power cycle, after that, I could not get Google Home to reliably connect to the device and let me change its volume. Roon player however, recognized it through Chromecast protocol and nicely let me change volume control there.
Google Nest Audio Speaker Measurements
Let's start with our standard anechoic frequency response measurements:
I could not believe my eyes when I saw that super smooth bass, midrange and lower treble! It is almost ruler flat with excellent directivity. Some kind of complex interaction occurs between drivers above that causing those jaggies. Fortunately our hearing bandwidth resolution shrinks as frequencies go higher, making us much less sensitive to those variations. To wit, here is the same graph but with 1/10 octave smoothing (instead of standard 1/20th):
There is still a deep trough post 10 kHz in on-axis response which may be due to some diffraction.
Note that I have read there is a bass limiter that reduces bass peak as you crank it up. I meant to test the speaker at my standard 86 dBSPL but somehow it switched down to 80. You can see the slight hump around 100 Hz which is fine in my book.
Good directivity results in good early window response:
Predicted in-room response is smooth as a result with some exaggeration of treble frequencies:
Beamwidth is rather wide which is good for a lifestyle speaker with just front firing drivers:
Vertical directivity likewise allows a bit of elevation change without the response varying a lot:
It is a pain to test these streaming speakers so I only ran one distortion test:
This is quite good for this tiny speaker!
Finally here is the step response:
Google Nest Audio Speaker Listening Tests and EQ
My first standard reference track sounded surprisingly neutral! It was as if I was listening to a small studio monitor. Further listening and cranking up the volume a bit more, resulted in perceived brightness. A single filter cured that nicely:
There is naturally no low, low frequencies. That made music that relied on that sound flat. Otherwise, even techno music sounded good to excellent. Speaker does an excellent job of keeping distortion at bay even at max volume. Then again, it doesn't get very loud by "normal" speaker standard.
Conclusions
Amazing what happens when you apply proper engineering and science to even a tough problem. Small, lifestyle speaker that sells for next to nothing which teaches many speakers what good design is like! Objective performance is excellent up to a few kHz after which it gets a bit wiggly. Subject performance, sans a bit of brightness, is better than anyone deserves in this category. And let's remember this is a streaming amplifier with all the features that come with that and not just a passive box!
I am going to recommend the Google Nest Audio speaker. Someone cared that we get good sound even in this category product.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
While not very unique in its looks, the Nest Audio nicely fits in the category with the obligatory gray fabric cover. Four or five LEDs shine through the fabric when on. When idle, they are orange but otherwise white. It shows the current volume among other things. Back side shows the plug for the 24 volt/125ma power supply and a hard switch to turn the microphone off:
I read that Google went all out with designing their own simulation tools and even conducting double blind listening tests in the process of developing this speaker! It shows when pry off the front cover:
Some kind of cast metal (aluminum?) contains the drivers. The tweeter has a built-in wave-guide courtesy of that shell. The 6 rubber screws/mounts provide acoustic suspension.
It was non-intuitive to use "Google Home" to configure the speaker. Configure I did using my phone and it all went nicely although I was annoyed by myriad of questions including what my address is! Firmware was updated and the speaker came alive and warned me in a nice female voice that the microphone was turned off. It did that on the next power cycle. I guess they want to avoid support calls for people who like me, thought the switch was for power and not microphone!
Speaking of power cycle, after that, I could not get Google Home to reliably connect to the device and let me change its volume. Roon player however, recognized it through Chromecast protocol and nicely let me change volume control there.
Google Nest Audio Speaker Measurements
Let's start with our standard anechoic frequency response measurements:
I could not believe my eyes when I saw that super smooth bass, midrange and lower treble! It is almost ruler flat with excellent directivity. Some kind of complex interaction occurs between drivers above that causing those jaggies. Fortunately our hearing bandwidth resolution shrinks as frequencies go higher, making us much less sensitive to those variations. To wit, here is the same graph but with 1/10 octave smoothing (instead of standard 1/20th):
There is still a deep trough post 10 kHz in on-axis response which may be due to some diffraction.
Note that I have read there is a bass limiter that reduces bass peak as you crank it up. I meant to test the speaker at my standard 86 dBSPL but somehow it switched down to 80. You can see the slight hump around 100 Hz which is fine in my book.
Good directivity results in good early window response:
Predicted in-room response is smooth as a result with some exaggeration of treble frequencies:
Beamwidth is rather wide which is good for a lifestyle speaker with just front firing drivers:
Vertical directivity likewise allows a bit of elevation change without the response varying a lot:
It is a pain to test these streaming speakers so I only ran one distortion test:
This is quite good for this tiny speaker!
Finally here is the step response:
Google Nest Audio Speaker Listening Tests and EQ
My first standard reference track sounded surprisingly neutral! It was as if I was listening to a small studio monitor. Further listening and cranking up the volume a bit more, resulted in perceived brightness. A single filter cured that nicely:
There is naturally no low, low frequencies. That made music that relied on that sound flat. Otherwise, even techno music sounded good to excellent. Speaker does an excellent job of keeping distortion at bay even at max volume. Then again, it doesn't get very loud by "normal" speaker standard.
Conclusions
Amazing what happens when you apply proper engineering and science to even a tough problem. Small, lifestyle speaker that sells for next to nothing which teaches many speakers what good design is like! Objective performance is excellent up to a few kHz after which it gets a bit wiggly. Subject performance, sans a bit of brightness, is better than anyone deserves in this category. And let's remember this is a streaming amplifier with all the features that come with that and not just a passive box!
I am going to recommend the Google Nest Audio speaker. Someone cared that we get good sound even in this category product.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
