The superb Nest Audio smartspeaker is £65 for Black Friday

Given Amazon tends to be most people’s go-to shopping page on Black Friday, the company’s Echo might be the obvious choice for those in the market for a new smart speaker. But if you prefer Google Assistant to Alexa, then step this way, because the Nest Audio speaker has a decent discount at two well known retailers.
 
It’s the same £25 price cut at both, so it’s really down to personal preference, but good to know that there’s a backup should one or the other go out of stock. It’s £64.99 at both John Lewis and Argos — a solid 27% saving. At the time of writing, the ‘chalk’ colour scheme is out of stock at John Lewis, but both that and ‘charcoal’ are available from Argos.
 
Like the Amazon Echo, the Google Nest Audio is a smart speaker that can play music and answer useful questions on demand. Just say something like “Hey Google, what’s the weather like?” or “Hey Google, play Disney songs” and your speaker will automagically respond to your demands.
 
Personally, I find Google Assistant a lot more intelligent than Alexa, making it a bit more useful for day to day use, and it’s much of a muchness in terms of sound quality: both sound great these days. 
 
As our Head of Reviews Jon Bray wrote when he tested it: “the long-awaited Google Nest Audio is the successor the Google Home has long deserved. It sounds great, looks great and works just beautifully; the only missing piece of the puzzle being the lack of 3.5mm input. For £89, though, you simply can’t go wrong.”
 
If you couldn’t go wrong for £89, it stands to reason that it’s even harder to be mistaken at £65. And remember if you decide to get two, they can be easily paired for surround sound, too. 
 
Buy now from John Lewis

Buy now from Argos