Affordable alternatives to Sonos speakers

Google's main pitch for the Home speaker is a way to get Gemini off your phone and into your house, serving as a voice-enabled assistant like the Google Assistant before it. Smart home controls are a big part of the equation -- especially since Google now sells a few different subscriptions that add features like sound detection or the ability to voice-search your video history. Fortunately, if your main concern is multi-room music, no subscription is needed beyond one to your music service of choice. Google Home works with all the expected players like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music and a few others. Unsurprisingly, everything you want to do with the Google Home speaker is set up in the recently-redesigned Google Home app.