It is hard to believe it has been a full eight years since that first unassuming Google Home Mini sneaked onto the living room table. In 2018, that little device suckered me into an entire ecosystem. It has been a really long time since I last touched a physical switch for most of our lighting, or actually had to turn on the computer printer by hand. I'm used to shouting at things in my apartment now.
Today, a new piece of hardware arrived. I ordered the new 2026 Google Home Speaker simply because the old Google Assistant has finally been axed. I've been using Gemini on the old devices since getting back from our winter. It has been a fantastic improvement. The AI integration into my home has been phenomenally useful and, unlike others, I encountered no problems at all. Today's packaging proudly states this speaker is "built for Gemini," which is a bit goofy considering all my older devices received the exact same software update anyway. The new hardware tech inside the speaker is supposed to be more robust for AI implementation.
What was truly absurd was the shipping reality. Because I needed to use store credits directly, I was locked into the Google Canada Store and could not just make the pre-order through Amazon or Best Buy. My device shipped from Ontario and took more than a week to crawl here via UPS. To add insult to injury, UPS promised delivery for the afternoon of June 30. So, we rushed around doing all our errands in the morning to ensure I was anchored to the apartment for my 12:30 to 4:30 pm window. Naturally, I returned to find one of those little slips, written at 11:16 am, saying the driver was sorry he'd missed me! Grrr! And because yesterday was our national birthday celebration, the box sat hostage. I finally got to drive to the UPS Store at Columbia Square this morning just to retrieve the small box myself. Google should consider the time it takes to get to Vancouver via UPS a huge failure for a 2026 order. How about a little west-coast warehousing, please?
The list of complaints about this new device is growing online, and I agree wholeheartedly with the first point. It has a power cord that runs permanently right into the unit. So much for cable management! Even worse, standard troubleshooting by unplugging it now means crawling under the furniture to yank the brick from the wall, rather than just disconnecting the cable from the back of the speaker. Of course, this hardware rollout is perfectly timed with a massive slowdown in Google Home server-side operations today. I am occasionally encountering half-minute delays just trying to get the new speaker to acknowledge a command. It is obvious the stalled pre-order schedule was supposed to buy them time to work out details that clearly have not been completely ironed out.
Despite the absurd shipping saga, the captive power cord, and the server hiccups, the sound quality is a slight improvement over the eight-year-old Mini. Plus, the little LED ring that glows underneath the speaker almost makes up for everything else. The rainbow glow of colours indicates if it is listening, thinking, or answering. So, after a week of waiting and the realization I might have to crawl under furniture to reset it, at least I am aesthetically quite happy with the look of the demure 2026 speaker!