In a bid to keep ahead of online leakers, Google has revealed what its next smart speaker will look like.

Expected to be a Nest-branded successor to the recently retired Google Home, the new speaker has a design that falls somewhere between the Nest Mini and older, larger Google Home Max.

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It has an all-fabric case with the familiar four lights on its front to indicate when the Google Assistant is listening to your voice commands. Google released the above image, plus a short video of the new speaker, embedded below, just hours after the unreleased product was leaked online via a regulatory filing in Japan.

That leak showed the new speaker, complete with 'G' Google logo on its back, photographed next to a ruler. From that, we're able to say the speaker is approximately 22cm (8.5 inches) tall and 15cm wide.

The images show the familiar microphone mute switch on the back, along with a single port that is likely for the included power supply. It looks like there is no USB port and no 3.5mm audio jack. As such, it looks to be a truly wireless speaker.

With the Google Assistant onboard, the speaker will be used to control smart home devices, just like the current range of Nest smart speakers and displays.

Google's video shows how the speaker can be set up as a stereo pair, and across the various images and video shots we can see the speaker will be available in pale blue, pink and gray.

Although Google is yet to give any specifics, we expect to see improved sound quality over the original Google Home, which is now approaching four years old, and a louder maximum volume with more bass, too. We expect the product to be called the Nest Home and cost in the region of $100 to $130.

As for a release date, we doubt we will have much longer to wait. But with the pandemic affecting product launches (and cancelling Google's own I/O developer conference in May) suggesting a launch date for now would be a complete guess. Hopefully we'll have some more information to share soon.

Check out The GearBrain, our smart home compatibility checker to see the other compatible products that work with Google Assistant enabled devices.

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