New Google Nest Audio speaker packs a huge punch for $99

The old Google Home that looked like an air freshener has been reinvented, renamed and redesigned to rock out. Now known as Nest Audio, the new editions look more like a tiny, traditional speaker, this time in a multitude of colors (pink, blue, green, white and black), sell for less than the original Home ($99.99 versus $129.99) and the big news is a major sound upgrade. Nest Audio, available today, is still being sold as a personal assistant to run your smart home, answer trivia questions, set reminders, get news updates, translate languages and, of course, play music and podcasts. But the speaker, which runs on the Google Assistant, still lags Amazon's Echo speakers and the Alexa system in doing many obvious tasks that various Google help pages claims it can do, but either can't or require so much setup that consumers will be stymied. But let's start with what does work well: playing music. For $99, you get a speaker with vastly improved sound than the original, in a slightly larger body.