This is the review of the comparison between two speakers from two popular brands in the market. The comparison here is between the JBL Link Portable and Google Nest Audio. To know which one is good for you to buy, go to the detailed review.

JBL Link Portable	Google Nest Audio
BUY NOW	BUY NOW
PROS	PROS
Solid audio performance. Packed with features. Combines portable use with Google Assistant for convenient smart home management.	Great sound for a $100 smart speaker. Voice commands are picked up well. Attractive minimalist design. Google Assistant aided by on-device AI chip.
CONS	CONS
We miss dynamics and control, it gets pretty tame. No JBL Connect support. No aux input.	No 3.5mm audio output/input. Harsh sound at top volumes. Google Assistant’s smart home compatibility falls short of Alexa’s. Multi-room could be better.

SPECIFICATIONS:

Detail Review:

INTRODUCTION:

JBL Link Portable

The Link Portable is a great speaker from JBL that comes with the Google Assistant. This speaker is from the Link series speakers from the JBL. This speaker is retailing for around a hundred and eighty dollars which is among the quite higher price range speakers in the market.

Google Nest Audio

The Nest Audio is a major improvement over the Google Home in terms of sound. This speaker also looks like the smaller version of the Google Home Max. This speaker is retailing for around a hundred dollars on the Google store which is quite a good budget-friendly price range.

DESIGN: 

JBL Link Portable

As far as the design of the speaker, it looks almost like the JBL Link 10 and the Link 20 but the sizes are different. This speaker is covered with a cloth-like material that looks really great and this speaker is basically in a cylindrical shape and also, that is designed in a way that gives you 360 degree sound output. This is also designed in a way that it can charge wirelessly using the charging dock that comes in the box and also, it can be charged via the USB-C port that’s there on the speaker itself.

On the top of the speaker, you have got the voice assistant button that activates the Google Assistant on press and holds for around two seconds and a short press will play and pauses your music. There are also volume controls to increase and decrease your volume. There are two microphones that are built-in on the top of the speaker so that the smart assistant can hear you properly. On the back of the speaker is where you have your Bluetooth button, a mute button for your mic, a power button with LEd, a LED panel that shows your battery left, and your USB-C port for charging.

Google Nest Audio

When I opened up the Nest Audio from its neatly packaged box, I was surprised at how nice it looks in person. It looks like a mini Google Home Max but slimmer on its sides. The fabric seems to be the same material Google has used on its Nest Mini and is made out of 70% recycled plastic. You can get them in various colors like chalk, charcoal, sage, which is a new color for Nest devices and matches the Pixel 5 really well, sand, and then sky. When you first pick it up it’s much heavier than you expect which is a sign that this thing probably has some solid hardware in it. It’s powered by a barrel jack connector and thankfully Google got rid of that circular one they include with most Nest devices and replaced it with a more square design which should make it easier to plug into some surge protectors.

The touch controls are at the top of the device volume down is on the top left side, volume up on the right, and then tap in the center once to play and pause media. On the back of the device, there’s a two-state mic mute switch that will cut the connection to the mics physically as opposed to just doing it through software as some other companies do. Also, there are now three far-field microphones found with the Nest Audio compared to two microphones found on the original Google Home.

FEATURES:

JBL Link Portable

In the box, you get the speaker itself, the charging dock, the charging cable, and some documentation. As far as the features, this speaker comes with a built-in Google assistant, and it is IPX7 water-resistant which means this speaker is submersible in one meter of water for up to 30 minutes. As far as the battery life, this speaker features eight hours of playtime. As this speaker uses USB-c for charging, it supports fast charging, and it takes around three and half hours to get fully charged from dead.

There is a mobile app for this speaker that is the Google Home app, that’s how you’re gonna interact with your speaker. It is the only app that works like JBL connect does not work you will not be able to use this device with other JBL products except if it’s exactly the JBL Link with the Google assistant system. So you have all your regular settings for your things, these will have some kind of impact on your device depending on how you like your things like which music streaming service is your default, etc. You can see all the different devices that are in your house, and you can see there’s a JBL speaker in the app, so that is how you access the speaker and everything you can do. You can change volume there and by doing that it changes in the device itself as you can hear. If I play music it will also show the name there so that’s pretty nice.

If you click Settings in the app, that’s where you can see all the settings of the speaker itself, so you can give it a name and whatever name you choose here it will also change the Bluetooth name like the name everywhere, so that’s pretty nice like also on the Chromecast and the Apple Airplay and then, you can give it a home, you can say what room it is in, you can set it in a group of speakers so that you can use it together with other speakers so they’re all playing the same music on the same time, and you can also choose the Wi-Fi you can forget Wi-Fi, etc. You can use things like digital well-being like block the speaker certain hours of the day or so on just to make sure that you relax, you can also correct a group delay in case it’s a little bit off time with the other speakers, like but I haven’t really experienced that myself. You can also tell what is the default speaker when using the assistant of this one, so you could actually even you know link it to your TV or to a Home Hub or another device and then play music through that. So in that case, you’re only using this speaker as a Google assistant and not actually playing the music, you can also choose to know default TV like if it’s something to do with TV where should it cast it to.

Also, in the app you can also set night mode so that the volume gets lower, the brightness gets lower, and it doesn’t like bother you in the evening. You can also turn on do not disturb so that it’s not going to do things like that. You can choose whether it should do a sound at the start and end of using the device which is pretty useful and you can also choose whether when you use the system whether it lowers the volume, so you can better hear what the assistant is saying. You can also add Bluetooth devices here and as you can see it kind of remembers the different Bluetooth devices you chose but it can only be connected to one device at a time, so you will have to ask Google to unpair and pair and disconnect and so on. We can also choose a little bit about restrictions, also whether we want the voice to match, so if you use voice match if I say what is on my calendar it will give back my calendar but if somebody else with a different voice asks, it will say that they do not have access to listen to the calendar, if they have their calendar connected then it will read their calendar, so that’s pretty useful. Not so many settings that you can really change here but still a nice way of getting this done.

Google Nest Audio

Setting up the Nest Audio is incredibly easy especially if you already have Google Home devices. It took me about three minutes to go through all of the steps but if you’re new to the Nest product family it might take you slightly longer to set up things like voice match calling with the Google Assistant and connecting the device to your wi-fi. If you already have Nest or Google devices in your home the Nest Audio will use the same settings as your other Google devices which is why setup is so fast.

One thing that’s even more apparent when you listen to the Nest Audio compared to the Google Home is how much more detail you pick up in the music. The original Google Home had a more muffled sound to it and the Nest Audio definitely fixes that issue. Part of that is I think due to the fact that the Nest Audio is not trying to emit sound for 360 degrees around the device it is a directional speaker so you’re only going to get sound coming out of the front of it not from the sides and not from the rear. Another big change with the sound is that it can get much louder than the Google Home without sounding distorted.

Even with just one it can fill my bedroom with some pretty serious sound and depending on how many of these you get and your room configuration and how you angle them to bounce sound off the walls, you may only need two maybe three of the Nest Audios to really get that surround sound experience so you feel like you’re just enveloped in the media that you’re listening to. You also have the ability to stereo pair two Nest Audio speakers together as well.

Another area where the Nest Audio shines is multi-room music, moving music in between speakers and speaker groups is quite straightforward with Nest and Google devices. You can tell the Google Assistant to move music from say my bathroom speaker to my bedroom speakers and it’ll do it. The Google Assistant is predominantly featured in this device like with all Google speakers and it allows you to do things like play music, set timers set reminders, ask it for the weather, put something on your calendar, etc. When the assistant has been triggered you’ll see four LEDs light up on the Nest Audio.

SOUND QUALITY:

JBL Link Portable

When the speaker’s played out about 70 percent, it allows maximum sound output. This causes the bass to become lower than the mids and highs. It’s not completely absent but you can clearly hear we’re getting quieter. The good thing is the even at full volume, the sound never becomes distorted. At full volume, this speaker has the capacity to fill a medium-sized room which is impressive. 

Google Nest Audio

Sound quality is a big topic when it comes to Nest Audio. Google seriously upgraded the speakers in the Nest Audio compared to the previous Google home device. The Nest Audio comes with a 75-millimeter woofer and a 19-millimeter tweeter and I’ve spent quite a few hours listening to music and podcasts on the Nest Audio and this thing sounds way better than the Google Home-like they’ve improved the bass on it the bass on this is way better than the original Google Home. It’s not like room-pounding bass that you can get with the Google Home Max for example, but it’s still adequate enough and I think it’ll be adequate for most people.

WHICH TO BUY?

In my opinion, the Google Nest Audio is good for buying than the JBl Link Portable because the Nest Audio is the second best-sounding smart speaker from Google right behind the Google Home Max, and it sounds better and it works better than the JBL Link Portable. So I think at $99, the Nest Audio is a no-brainer for anyone wanting a better-sounding Google Assistant smart speaker or an upgrade for their existing Google Home speaker.

Expert Reviews of JBL Link Portable:

By PC Mag
The JBL Link Portable speaker offers Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity along with AirPlay 2, Chromecast, and hands-free Google Assistant…

By What Hi-Fi?
For a great, affordable, durable home smart speaker, you’ll be hard-pushed to find a product that can match JBL’s Link Portable.

By Pocket-Lint
The JBL Link Portable is a lovely, compact speaker that’s a perfect size for delivering decent sound (from what we have heard so far), whilst…

By LB Tech Reviews
JBL Link Portable is both a portable speaker and a smart speaker. It is easy to use and the sound is perfectly OK. But you pay extra for…

Expert Reviews of Google Nest Audio:

By Stuff
If you’re focused on sound quality, you might find the Nest Audio wanting. Look at it as a smart speaker with improved audio prowess, and it absolutely delivers.

By Engadget
While the Nest Audio didn’t immediately impress me, I think Google’s execution is smart. It’s not trying to replace larger, high-quality…

By Tech Hive
The replacement for Google’s original, now discontinued smart speaker is here, and after listening to it for a few days, I’m not missing…

By Trusted Reviews
The Nest Audio is a solid smart speaker that’ll meet most people’s needs.