Smart Home

What you need to know

• Google posted the patch notes for an early July update that's rolling out better reliability, improved sports interactions, and visual refreshes for Gemini.
• The Home app gives better light control for two Walmart onn products, while also delivering "Suggested Automations" for users.
• In June, Google brought Pet Memory to users, improving how their smart home products perceive their pets walking around their home wi

Many cinephiles have amazing home theater setups with projectors, reclining and rumbling seats, multi-channel surround sound systems, and probably even a built-in popcorn maker in their theater room. While that's great for people who want to spend a lot of time setting up all the pieces to the home theater puzzle, plenty of people don't have the technical know-how, time, or money for such an endeavor.

Google is relaunching its smart speaker ecosystem for the "Gemini era," as it has stated so many times with recent products. While I'm not fully convinced this new speaker is a truly revolutionary Gemini-powered speaker when compared to existing Google and Nest speakers, the overall quality of the Google Home Speaker is a great value for $99.

What you need to know

• Google Home Speaker users have reported a glaring issue: their device's assistance has become incredibly sluggish.
• Other users have experienced the same; however, this latency problem appears to affect more than the Home Speaker, as other Nest devices struggle, too.
• Google has responded to this thread, stating a fix is being worked on "ASAP."

Google's latest smart speaker got off to a fast start, but

It's no secret that SSDs and other storage devices are absurdly expensive right now, and it doesn't seem like that's changing any time soon. Fortunately, Prime Day gave us a few solid deals on portable SSDs and other storage devices, and even though that sale has officially come to a close, there are still a few leftover discounts hanging about.

What you need to know

• Google states a fix is rolling out late in June for a bug that impacted several of its smart speakers and SiriusXM radio.
• Users given multiple errors a month ago, when reports surfaced, and were unable to get their content to stream via a speaker.
• While this issue gets resolved, Google's also debuted its new Home Speaker and expanded Gemini for Home to more partners.

Google has been busy with new laun

Google just released the Home Speaker, its first smart speaker in half a decade. It's a small device designed with Gemini at the core, but it's not very impressive as a speaker. A single, tiny full-range driver is responsible for all the sound. Luckily, if you want a smart speaker with high-quality audio chops, you can get the Amazon Echo Studio instead for just $75 more than the Home Speaker during Prime Day.