It’s not just you; Google’s Nest Hub and smart speakers have gotten louder lately

Ben Schoon | Mar 22 2023 - 11:40 am PT

The Google Nest Hub is a useful device and, with its second generation, it’s also a great option for playing music. But lately, Google seems to have tweaked the Nest Hub and several other smart speakers to be considerably louder when playing at lower volume settings.

If you use a Google Nest Hub, and potentially other smart speakers with Assistant, you may have noticed lately that volume levels seem a bit higher than they have been. This seems to be especially true on lower volume settings.

Personally, I use a Nest Hub (2nd Gen) as my bedside alarm clock, and also to play music at a low volume as I head to sleep. In the past I’ve found that around 5-7% is the perfect setting to have the music heard, but not distracting to myself or my wife. But over the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed that my typical preset is far too loud, and I have to tone it down further. These past several days especially I’ve been trying to dial in the setting, and found that even 1% volume is louder than 5-7% was previously.

And as it turns out, I’ve not been alone in that frustration.

Quite a few users of Google’s various smart speakers, including the Nest Hub, have turned to Reddit lately wondering why their speakers are suddenly so much louder. Given the widespread reporting of this, it does seem to be a change on Google’s end, likely tied to a recent update.

As mentioned, I’ve noticed that even the lowest possible setting of 1% now sounds closer to what 10% used to be, which is obviously frustrating for my use case. And with the Nest Hub (2nd Gen) especially being pitched as a bedside device, it’s incredibly confusing as to why Google would suddenly raise the minimum volume level, and so drastically.

Google has yet to comment on the increased volume, and there’s no way to tell for sure exactly how much of a change has been put in place. We’ve reached out to the company for more details and will update this post when we hear back.