An era is over: Google has officially discontinued the Nest Mini and Nest Audio, the two speakers that defined its smart home lineup for the better part of a decade. The new Gemini-powered Google Home Speaker is now the company’s only dedicated smart speaker — and the Nest name survives solely on cameras and doorbells.
What was discontinued
- Nest Mini (originally $49.99) — production ended in 2026
- Nest Audio (originally $99.99) — discontinued alongside the Mini
- The Nest brand continues for cameras and doorbells only
- Existing devices keep working; the change affects new sales
The end of a six-year hardware drought
The Nest Audio launched in 2020, and for six years it was Google’s flagship smart speaker — joined by the budget Nest Mini as the entry-level option. No new speaker hardware followed until the Google Home Speaker arrived on June 25, 2026. That gap is remarkable in consumer electronics, and it showed: by the mid-2020s, the aging Nest lineup was widely described as sluggish, with an Assistant that felt frozen in time while AI raced ahead.
Discontinuing both models at once is Google drawing a line. The company is consolidating its speaker range around a single Gemini-first device rather than maintaining budget and midrange tiers — a bet that one $99.99 speaker with a subscription upsell is a better business than two cheaper ones.
What happens to existing owners
If you own a Nest Mini or Nest Audio, nothing stops working. Both devices remain eligible for Gemini for Home, Google’s early access upgrade that replaces Google Assistant with Gemini on every speaker and display Google has made since 2016 — including the original 2016 Google Home. The upgrade is optional, managed through the Google Home app (version 4.1 or later), and brings more natural phrasing, short-term conversational context, and follow-ups without repeating the wake word.
One caveat: once you move a home to Gemini for Home, you cannot switch back to Google Assistant. And Gemini Live, the continuous conversation mode, requires a Google Home Premium subscription on select devices.
Why Google is doing this now
The discontinuation is part of a broader repositioning. Google is splitting its assistant strategy in two: Gemini for Home on stationary speakers and displays, and a full Gemini replacement of Google Assistant on phones, tablets, watches, and cars (mandatory via app updates starting September 2026). The old “one Assistant everywhere” model is gone.
Keeping the Nest brand for cameras and doorbells while rebranding speakers as “Google Home” also clarifies the lineup: Nest means security cameras, Home means the assistant and the speaker. After years of confusing overlap between the two names, that is a welcome simplification.
Background: the $49.99 era
The Nest Mini’s $49.99 price point was once the smart speaker industry’s loss-leader weapon — cheap enough to give away during holiday sales, which Google frequently did. That strategy built an enormous installed base but trained buyers to expect speakers to be nearly free, a dynamic that made the hardware business itself unsustainable. The new $99.99 speaker plus $10/month subscription is the correction: Google would rather sell fewer speakers with recurring revenue than millions at a loss.
Outlook
For shoppers, the message is simple: don’t hunt for clearance Nest Audios expecting a bargain upgrade path — the future is the Google Home Speaker and its subscription. For the millions of existing Nest Mini and Audio owners, the Gemini for Home upgrade offers a free second life for hardware that was starting to feel obsolete. Whether that is enough to keep them from eyeing Amazon’s Echo Dot Max at the same $99.99 price is the open question of the 2026 smart speaker wars.