If you grew up in the 1980s or ’90s, you likely remember shaky home video footage, taken with a handheld camcorder, of family gatherings, vacations, and other events.

Camcorders combined a camera with a video recorder. They included a rechargeable battery, a slot for a videotape, and a shoulder strap. Most were outfitted with an optical zoom lens and a small, articulating screen—a display mounted on a hinge that could tilt and rotate. The operator could check the screen to view what was being recorded.

The user’s natural hand and body movements when filming led to jittery footage. The best way to get a steady shot was to place the camcorder on a tripod or a gimbal: a motorized stabilizer.

There were fewer poor-quality recordings after Panasonic introduced its PV-460 VHS camcorder in 1988. It was the first video camera to include an optical image stabilizer, which compensated for movements. Stabilization features are now standard in today’s cameras including ones found in smartphones and drones.

The PV-460 camcorder was honored as an IEEE Milestone on 9 July. The dedication ceremony was held in Kadoma, Japan, at the Panasonic Museum, which displays the company’s past products.

The IEEE Kansai Section in Japan sponsored the Milestone.

“The release of the PV-460 fundamentally transformed personal videography, enriching the way people captured travel, events, and family memories,” section members wrote in support of the Milestone nomination. Their proposal is available here.

“Its image stabilization features democratized video creation by dramatically lowering technical barriers, allowing ordinary people to express themselves with newfound creative freedom,” they wrote. “Beyond the home, image stabilization technology found critical applications in specialized fields, contributing to advancements in areas such as educational media and telemedicine.”

The history of camcorders

Before the camcorder was invented in 1982, people filming events in the 1970s and early 1980s used two pieces of equipment: a video camera and a separate video cassette recorder (VCR), which were connected by a multipin cable. The camera was about the size of a toaster, and the VCR could be as large as a suitcase. To record, the person operated the camera with one hand and carried the VCR in the other or rested it on a shoulder. The cable transmitted the images from the camera to the cassette.

The PV-460 was made possible by several groundbreaking innovations, according to the Milestone proposal, one of which dates back to the 1950s.

In 1956 Italian manufacturer Durst released its Automatica, considered one of the first cameras to use automatic exposure technology. By combining a light meter with the camera’s internal mechanical systems, the technology removed the necessity of calculating exposure settings by hand when the lighting shifted or other conditions changed. The innovation enabled amateur photographers to take decent pictures.

The next breakthrough technology—autofocus—was invented in 1973 by Norman Stauffer, a manager of research for Honeywell in Littleton, Colo. It uses a sensor, a control system, and a motor to focus on a selected area. The invention led to the development of early electronic autofocus cameras, which eliminated the need for photographers to manually adjust the lens. Stauffer received the 1990 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Technology Award for his invention.

“The release of the PV-460 fundamentally transformed personal videography, enriching the way people captured travel, events, and family memories.” —Milestone sponsors

U.S. inventor Jerome Lemelson is credited with developing technologies that underpinned the camcorder, according to MIT. In the 1950s and ’60s, Lemelson filed several patent applications related to video and audio recording devices. In 1980 he was granted patents related to a portable video camera system. In 1982 JVC and Sony used the technologies to develop what they called the camera/recorder, which became known as a camcorder.

Sony released the first handheld camcorder in 1983: the Betamovie BMC-100P. It used the Betamax videocassette format and could record up to 3.5 hours of footage on 1.27-centimeter cassette tape. The operator rested the 2.5-kilogram camcorder on top of a shoulder to shoot footage. It sold for around US $2,000 at the time (roughly $33,400 today). The machine couldn’t rewind or play back tapes; it could only record.

Other electronics companies including JVC soon introduced their own models using the VCR format, which eventually replaced Betamax.

Over time, camcorders became more compact.

But none of the companies could fix the shaky-footage problem.

Solving a shaky problem

A team at Panasonic led by researcher Mitsuaki Oshima took on the task of image stabilization: detecting and correcting small camera movements, referred to as camera shake, according to the proposal. Oshima, an IEEE life senior member, is now an honorary Fellow at Panasonic.

“The movements that needed to be detected and corrected included horizontal, vertical, and rotational motions—specifically pitch, yaw, and roll,” the Milestone sponsors wrote. “Rotational motion, in particular, becomes the dominant factor affecting image stability during high-magnification shooting. Therefore, the development team focused on detecting rotational motion and began developing an angular velocity sensor.”

An AVS, essentially a gyroscope, detects how quickly an object is changing its orientation in space.

Sensors capable of detecting angular velocity were large and expensive at the time, making them unsuitable for consumer video cameras, the sponsors wrote. What was needed, they said, was a compact and inexpensive version.

Oshima and his team built a high-performance, small, low-cost vibration-type gyroscope. The stabilization mechanism included a miniaturized sensor paired with an optical-axis correction mechanism.

The mechanism adjusts the lens or image sensor to counteract physical shifting and vibrations, ensuring that the light path remains centered on the sensor—which is crucial for maximizing sharpness and quality, the Milestone sponsors wrote.

“The system detects lens displacement caused by camera shake and immediately compensates for it, ensuring stable video footage,” they wrote. “As a result, the effects of camera shake are minimized, allowing users to capture smooth and steady videos with ease.”

Without Oshima’s image stabilization technology, the PV-460 wouldn’t have been developed and released in 1988.

The technology was patented and broadly licensed by other companies. It has become a standard feature in a variety of imaging applications.

Awards and accolades

The PV-460 gained instant popularity when it debuted in June 1988. It received rave reviews at that year’s Consumer Electronics Show.

Panasonic received a 100 Award in 1989 from R&D World magazine for “the development of a VHS camcorder with an antishake mechanism.”

Oshima’s research paper, “VHS Camcorder With Electronic Image Stabilizer,” and others are available in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

To learn more about historical figures in engineering, IEEE Milestones, and IEEE History Center programs and events, check out The Institute’s IEEE Tech History collection. IEEE Spectrum also covers aspects of tech history.

Milestone plaque display

The Milestone plaque is to be displayed on the ground floor of the Panasonic Museum, which is open to the public. The museum is located near the now-shuttered Panasonic research lab where the technology was developed. The plaque reads:

“In 1988 the pioneering PV-460 camcorder equipped with image stabilization for enabling smooth and steady video capture was introduced by Panasonic. By pairing a miniaturized vibrating-structure gyroscope sensor with an optical-axis correction mechanism, the PV-460 eliminated the jitter caused by hand motion. Broad international licensing of this patented scheme made it a standard feature in film and digital cameras, smartphones, and related imaging devices.”

Selected by the IEEE History Committee and endorsed by the IEEE Board of Directors, IEEE Milestones recognize outstanding technical developments around the world that are at least 25 years old. The Milestone program is administered by the IEEE history and heritage group.

E Ink is cool. It’s easy to read, doesn’t drain the battery and looks like real paper (kind of). Having more than just one phone screen is also cool. The new Hisense A10 fits both those bills, and that’s why it’s piqued my interest.

Hisense — a Chinese company known for consumer electronics, primarily televisions and appliances — officially announced the A10 on Monday. As posted by reputable insider Experience More on Weibo, the phone’s main screen uses E Ink, and it also has a detachable color LCD screen on the back. Hisense had teased the A10 last month. 

Available initially in China at around $600, it’s unclear when it might reach US markets. Gagadget said it’s possible that US buyers will have to go through AliExpress, eBay or other specialist traders.

The insider said the detachable magnetic screen might not be included with the phone and will be sold separately. It could be similar to the Vamvo screen that can be attached to iPhones and Android phones.

A10 could offer customers a lot of flexibility. They could take just their main E Ink phone with them for simple calling and texting, keeping their battery life strong, or they could attach the second screen for videos, gaming or other apps that need color and graphics. Hisense didn’t specify how the two screens would communicate data.

In terms of specs, Experience More said the A10’s main screen measures 6.13 inches and is a black-and-white E Ink display. With Android 16, the phone runs on 5G and uses a 4nm Qualcomm octa-core chip, which is not quite as powerful as the Snapdragon 8 Elite.

A Hisense representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Drawn toward E Ink

I’m fascinated by Hisense’s unique twist on the trend of “the more screen, the better,” as foldables take center stage and the Apple Ultra or Fold potentially debuts this fall. But I’m even more interested in a second screen being paired with an E Ink main screen.

E Ink phones are a small market gaining big traction. By replacing harsh, glowing screens with paper-like displays, they eliminate glare, reduce eye strain and significantly boost battery life. The major trade-off is that they aren’t built for fast scrolling or watching videos. But for fans, that distraction-free simplicity is the main attraction.

I’ve used Amazon’s Kindle and a Kobo e-reader — two of CNET’s most highly reviewed brands — and it’s amazing how easy it is to read books on them. With glare-free screens and matte finishes, they even look and feel like real paper. I’m liking the combo of E Ink phone simplicity with video and app versatility.

Tech tester Austin Evans, who has nearly 6 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, said the Hisense A10 offers a nice return to a more minimalist phone experience without sacrificing useful apps.

Though most of us know we spend too much time on our devices, going back to a flip phone means losing access to convenience and social connection, Evans told CNET. 

“An E Ink phone is generally compatible with the apps you rely on, but the screen quality and refresh rate are too limited for extended doom scrolling.” In other words, an E Ink phone could give us the functionality of a smartphone without the addictive nature of a smartphone.

Nous Research, the startup behind the open-source Hermes agent, is finalizing a new round of funding led by Robot Ventures, with significant participation from USV and other prominent investors at a $1.5 billion valuation, according to three sources with knowledge of the deal. The company is raising at least $75 million, and fielded a high level of interest from investors, according to the people.

Nous Research declined to comment. USV and Robot Ventures didn’t respond to our request for comment.

The company was founded in 2023 by Jeffrey Quesnelle, Karan Malhotra, Ryan Teknium, Shivani Mitra. Before this round, it had raised a total of $70 million in funding from investors including Paradigm, Robot Ventures, North Island Ventures, OSS Capital, and Balaji Srinivasan, according to Crunchbase.

Weeks after Openclaw’s agent went viral, Nous Research released its own competitor called Hermes. OpenClaw is an agent that runs locally on a PC and can perform tasks on behalf of the user. One key difference is that Hermes shipped with built-in “skills,” such as web search, coding and image understanding. Furthermore, it was designed to automatically learn from people’s usage and build more skills without manual intervention. Additionally, the startup has released language models focused on coding and math.

Just like Openclaw, users can automate tasks with Hermes and chat with these agents or receive messages from them in apps like Telegram and Discord. These tools have become increasingly popular as they allow users to run their AI agents remotely and around the clock.

Open-source and widely adopted, Hermes has amassed a massive following on GitHub, boasting roughly 214,000 stars and nearly 40,000 forks. Developers can run Hermes on a desktop or on a virtual private server.

But Nous Research also offers a cloud-hosted version, which some users may find to be more user-friendly, avoiding any setting up on their own machines. The hosted version is available via various paid tiers ranging from $20-$200 a month.

Sources say the new funding will help to expand Hermes’ products and business model further.

• Xiaomi reveals its first extended-range electric vehicle
• SkyNomad will sit separately from its pure EV Xiaomi Auto company
• The 1.5-liter engine is manufactured by Changan’s subsidiary Harbin Dongang

Xiaomi is set to enter the hotly contested luxury SUV sector with an all-new business that it has dubbed SkyNomad.

Fresh off the success of both the SU7 and YU7, the former of which has outsold the Tesla Model 3 in the Chinese market, smartphone-maker Xiaomi sees a gap in the market for its first extended-range electric vehicle (EREV), which sees a gasoline engine act as a generator to charge battery packs on the move.

Try the new Siri AI and system-wide performance improvements.

Siri and Apple Intelligence

Apple

Speed boosts and more features

watchOS 27, macOS 27 Golden Gate and iPadOS 27

Apple

How to install

A pattern is emerging among people who’ve already made it big. They’re rolling up their sleeves again, seemingly out of fear of missing AI’s defining moment and, presumably, the irresistible allure of making even more money — potentially a lot more.

Tom Blomfield, who co-founded GoCardless and Monzo before spending 4.5 years mentoring founders as a Y Combinator Group Partner, announced on Monday that he is taking a leave of absence to join Anthropic’s compute team — not as an executive, but as a member of technical staff.

He’s not alone in making that kind of move. Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger joined Anthropic as Chief Product Officer in 2024, and Andrej Karpathy, a founding member of OpenAI who went on to lead AI at Tesla and start his own company, Eureka Labs, joined Anthropic’s pre-training team in May, framing the decision almost identically to Blomfield’s, writing that “the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative.”

Not everyone is joining someone else’s lab. Chamath Palihapitiya, the “SPAC King” who has mostly stuck to boardrooms and all things “All In” since leaving Facebook in 2011, just took his first full-time operating role in over a decade as CEO of 8090 Labs, his enterprise AI coding startup, which he announced a couple of weeks ago along with a $135 million Series A led by Salesforce Ventures. Wrote Palihapitiya on X, “I am convinced that what we are building now is even more important, so there was no decision to make except to be all in.”

Similarly, Eric Wu, who ran Opendoor for a decade before stepping back in 2023, recently launched NavigateAI, an AI “copilot” for construction workers, with $25 million in seed funding. Wu told me directly on a recent call about his decision to dive into an AI startup, “I knew if I looked back in 10 years and didn’t do something related to it, I would probably regret that.”

The clearest sign of how keen people who’ve already “made it” are to work on what they view as the still-early-innings of AI might be the job title itself. “Member of technical staff” is the deliberately flat, non-hierarchical label that Anthropic and OpenAI use for nearly everyone on their technical teams, regardless of seniority. It’s the same title Blomfield is taking.

It’s also the title that Peter Bailis took this March, just months after becoming Workday’s CTO, a role overseeing AI strategy across an $8 billion-revenue business. Bailis lasted less than a year before trading it for a spot at Anthropic.

from the alarm-bells dept

I’m not sure who out there is in RFK Jr.’s corner anymore, beyond some unfortunately powerful people in seats of federal power at the moment. That Kennedy’s tenure at HHS has lasted even this long is as absurd as it is dangerous, given the mountains of chaos he’s created in a mere year and change thus far. All of this anti-vaxxer nonsense, the seemingly random attacks on Tylenol of all things, an ongoing measles outbreak he’s mismanaging, and an inability to follow proper governmental procedure has produced a sample size of sucking that really should have been enough to get him booted from office at this point. Whatever you might think of Kennedy’s conspiracy theories and policies, there is simply no arguing that he doesn’t completely suck at his job.

The public polling around Kennedy has reflected this reality. Spineless senators who once supported him in the role are turning their backs. And then there are the warning bells being rung from people who were very recently insiders at CDC, such as its former Chief Medical Officer.

Dr. Debra Houry, the former chief medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), decried the direction of the agency under Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

“I think the secretary has caused a lot of irreparable harm, and when you look at many of the polls out there, the trust in public health, specifically CDC, has decreased dramatically, over 20 points in many polls,” Houry told host Margaret Brennan in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”

“That’s really difficult to recover from, and when states are removing links to the CDC website and following other medical organizations, I don’t know how you build back that trust overnight,” she added.

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You absolutely don’t and this is a point I’ve been making for many months. It doesn’t take much skill or time to destroy the trust the public has in federal health officials. That part is very fast and very easy, as Kennedy is demonstrating. But to rebuild that trust, to win back the faith of the public, is going to take years, or decades, or perhaps may never really happen at all. The consequences of the idiotic placement and confirmation of RFK Jr. to lead HHS is going to span decades. The nihilists who managed to put this current cadre of clowns into federal office may not understand that, or may simply not care. But that is the reality.

A poll conducted by Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the de Beaumont Foundation’s Public Health Listening Lab from March 19 through April 1 found that 50 percent of 2,205 U.S. adults said they trust health recommendations from the CDC. 

In spring 2025, 77 percent of respondents to a similar survey conducted by the joint pollsters said they trust recommendations from the agency.

Whenever this country moves past the MAGA era, it’s going to have what might be the Sisyphean task of repairing all of this damage. And not just in terms of reestablishing good, sane health policies. That’s just part of the task. The other will be the public messaging that must go along with it. That is equally, if not more important to repairing all of the damage Kennedy has and is doing. It’s not enough to have good policy built on science. Someone has to actually get the public to buy into and trust in those policies.

And the public is going to be in a very reasonable place when they ask why they should trust the next government to not be anymore idiotic than this one.

Filed Under: cdc, debra houry, health, health & human services, rfk jr.

Google Home Speaker

MSRP $99.99

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“A delightful smart speaker that’s easy to love.”

Pros

• Gemini makes voice control feel genuinely conversational
• Strong smart home integration
• Better sound than previous compact Google speakers
• Modern, compact design
• Excellent value at $99

Cons

• Advanced features require a subscription
• Best experience requires buying into Google’s ecosystem.
• No display for visual controls or information

Quick Recap

Google just introduced a new Home Speaker powered by Gemini, and it may represent the biggest shift that the company’s smart home lineup has seen in years. This isn’t simply a hardware refresh with improved sound or a new design. Instead, Google is positioning Gemini as the foundation of a smarter home assistant, one that understands natural conversation instead of relying on rigid voice commands. At $99, the new Home Speaker also enters one of the most competitive segments of the smart home market, where it will inevitably be compared with devices like Apple’s HomePod mini.

Having used the speaker for the past couple of weeks, it quickly becomes clear that Gemini is the real upgrade. The hardware itself is a step forward over Google’s previous compact speakers, but the biggest difference comes from how naturally the speaker understands requests and carries on conversations. Rather than forcing you to think about the right command, it adapts to the way you naturally speak.

Google Home Speaker specs: What’s inside the round shell?

Google Home Speaker design and setup: It’s clean and breezy

Measuring 3.44 inches tall, 4.2 inches in diameter, and weighing just 0.9 pounds, the new Google Home Speaker is compact enough to blend into almost any space while still feeling more premium than Google’s older Nest speakers. Setup is straightforward. Inside the box, Google includes the speaker, a 30W USB-C power adapter, and a 1.5-meter power cable, with everything configured through the Google Home app.

Google is offering the speaker in four colors: Hazel, Porcelain, Jade, and Berry, with Jade and Berry currently exclusive to the U.S. The Porcelain model used for this review has a clean finish that should fit comfortably into most homes without drawing attention to itself. Overall, the design feels minimal, modern, and understated. Rather than becoming the focal point of a room, it blends naturally into a desk, shelf, or living space. Like much of Google’s recent hardware, recycled materials are used throughout the design, including the 3D-knit fabric exterior, which immediately brings Apple’s HomePod to mind.

One of my favorite details is the dynamic light ring around the base. It changes depending on whether the speaker is listening, processing a request, or responding, so instead of wondering what it’s doing, you always have visual feedback. It sounds like a small addition, but it makes the entire experience feel more alive. Omnidirectional microphones round things out, allowing the speaker to hear requests clearly from across the room without constantly asking you to repeat yourself.

Google Home Speaker interactions: Gemini changes how you use a smart speaker

The biggest shift with Google’s new Home Speaker has very little to do with the hardware. Instead, it comes from replacing Google Assistant with Gemini, and that fundamentally changes how you interact with the speaker.

Previous Google smart speakers worked best when you thought in commands. You would ask it to turn off the lights, set the thermostat, or play music, usually one request at a time. Gemini moves away from that approach. Rather than remembering specific phrases, you simply talk to it the way you would another person. Saying something like, “Set the house up for bedtime,” is enough for Gemini to understand the intent behind the request and carry out the necessary actions. It can also handle multiple requests in a single sentence and even adapt if you change your mind halfway through speaking.

Reasoning is where Gemini begins to separate itself from Google’s previous assistants. During testing, asking whether it would rain during a baseball game didn’t just produce the day’s weather forecast. Rather than simply pulling information, Gemini reasons through the request by combining context from multiple sources. Google calls this real reasoning rather than simply retrieving data, and it is one of the biggest differences between Gemini and the Google Assistant experience that came before it.

Gemini is just as useful for everyday tasks. It can help with reminders, calendar events, shopping lists, and planning your day while supporting natural follow-up questions that build on the conversation instead of starting over each time. Users can also choose from 10 different voice options to personalize how the assistant sounds.

Google is making the core Gemini experience available without an additional subscription. Buyers who purchase the Home Speaker before the end of September also receive six months of Google Home Premium, which unlocks Gemini Live. Instead of issuing commands, you can simply say, “Let’s chat,” and have a full back-and-forth conversation with your home assistant. Premium also introduces more advanced smart home features, including camera search history that lets you ask questions like whether someone left the garage open or whether the dog jumped on the couch, along with Home Briefs, which summarize everything that happened while you were away. Google Home Premium is available in two tiers, with the standard version included in Google AI Pro and the advanced tier bundled with Google AI Ultra

Google Home Speaker sound quality: It’s okay for the mission

Audio has received meaningful upgrades alongside Gemini. Google says the new Home Speaker features improved microphone processing for better voice pickup, true 360-degree sound, and 2.5 times stronger bass than the Nest Mini. Compared to Google’s previous compact smart speakers, the difference is immediately noticeable, making this a worthwhile upgrade for anyone coming from an older Nest Mini.

Stereo pairing is available when using two Home Speakers together, while integration with Google TV Streamer, Nest devices, and Cast-enabled products allows it to become part of a whole-home audio setup. Rather than existing as a standalone smart speaker, it slots neatly into Google’s broader ecosystem. As far as the raw audio quality goes, it avoids the expected pitfall of overtly-processed and synethetic tunes. It can fill a small to medium-sized room with punchy audio without any jarring distortion at high volume levels.

The sound profile is pleasant, in general, it’s sufficiently clear for listening to podcasts and audiobooks. Notably, it excels at mids, which means vocal-heavy tracks and classic music will please you ear canals. On the flip side, don’t expect delicate instrumental separation and at high volumes, complex tracks definitely get a tad muddy. If you seek that kind of audio nirvana, you might want to pay up a little bit and get the Sonos Era 100, or the bigger Google Nest Audio.

Google Home Speaker vs. HomePod mini

Comparison with Apple’s HomePod mini is almost unavoidable since both speakers occupy the same $99 price point. Both feature compact, fabric-covered designs that are meant to blend into a room and are available in multiple colors. The difference lies in what each product is trying to be. HomePod mini feels like a music-first accessory for the Apple ecosystem, while Google’s new Home Speaker is designed as a display-less AI hub powered by Gemini.

Gemini is also where Google creates the biggest distinction. Natural conversations, follow-up questions, and multi-step requests all feel more fluid than the command-driven interactions that have traditionally defined smart speakers. Apple has introduced Siri AI, but the current HomePod mini will not support those new capabilities. Anyone looking for Apple’s next-generation AI assistant will likely need to wait for future HomePod hardware.

Buyers already invested in HomeKit will still find plenty to like about the HomePod mini, but Google’s approach feels more flexible today. Gemini supports multi-action commands, context-aware conversations, and AI-driven automation, making interactions feel less reactive and more conversational.

Audio performance is another area where the two speakers differ. HomePod mini delivers clean, balanced sound for its size, while Google’s new Home Speaker focuses on stronger bass, wider 360-degree room-filling audio, and stereo pairing. Neither is intended to replace a dedicated speaker system, but Google places greater emphasis on creating a more immersive listening experience throughout a room.

Should you buy

Stepping back, this is more than a speaker upgrade. Google is rethinking what a smart home assistant should actually feel like. The future is not about commands or repeating yourself. It is about natural interactions, and that is ultimately the biggest selling point of the new Google Home Speaker. For its size, the sound quality is surprisingly punchy, and it performs pretty well if you’re more into listening to podcasts or music without deep audiophile expectations.

It, however, excels with arguably the smartest on-device AI assistant out there. Voice interactions are natural, the cross-device interplay is rewarding, and it can actually get work done across different apps and services, if you have linked the respective accounts with your Google account. The biggest caveat is that some of the smartest capabilities are locked behind a subscription, but if you merely need a no-frills tiny smart speaker, the Google Home Speaker’s latest avatar is as good as it gets.

Why not try

Amazon Echo Dot Max — If audio quality is your top preference, the two-way speaker fitted on the latest Amazon Echo Dot Max is right up your alley. Packing a dedicated woofer and tweeter, it delivers a surprising amount of bass and clarity. The cool Omnisense system brings presence awareness to the table, and it also offers support for multiple smart home protocols, including Matter and Thread. On the audio side, it even adapts to the layout of your room or home space. Plus, the new Alexa+ assistant is a meaningful upgrade.

Apple HomePod mini — The direct rival to Google’s speaker, Apple’s HomePod mini offers a similar design and build profile. It offers a signature audio output that is pleasing, though not hte loudest or room-filling kind. Where it wins is the deep Apple ecosystem integration, and finally, a much smarter Siri AI that is now ready to pull intelligence from — and get work done across — third party apps. But if you have an Android device in your hands, it’s not the best bet because a healthy bunch of features get locked.

Sonos Era 100 SL — In case you’re chasing a true audio pedigree, the Sonos Era 100 SL is arguably the best bet, even though it’s slightly more expensive. It delivers more refined audio, deeper bass, wider soundstage, and stereo separation, thanks to the combination of dual-angled tweeters and a bigger mid-woofer. It seamlessly allows multi-room audio playback and offers meaningful EQ tuning, as well. The assistant situation takes a hit, however, and the Sonos app still needs some work.

How we tested

We tested the Google Home speaker for a couple of weeks. In that span, it was linked to a personal Google account for accessing all the Gemini smart home features and automations. The audio quality was tested standalone, and to get a better perspective, it was also compared against the latest Apple HomePod mini. While testing, we focused on three core areas for qualitative evalauation, and they include raw sound quality, responsiveness and accuracy of the onboard AI assistant, and the wider cross-device weaved around it.

For audio quality evaluation, we played a variety of songs across difference genres to gauge how it handles different frequency ranges. Additionally, the onboard AI assitant was tested by throwing natural language queries its way, ranging from day-to-day smart device controls to knowledge delivery. We focused on accuracy and latency as the key metrics to assess the digital assistant’s efficacy. For the overall setup, we tested it across different positions under varying network and cross-device syncing environments.