Google’s environmental reports for the Home speaker include a look at how the new Gemini device is made and images of its internal parts.
The Google Home Speaker has a “tensioned 3D woven surround fabric wrapped over a plastic casing without any adhesive,” according to the company’s report. Guide to recycled materials since March. As such, you can partially stretch the recycled polyester and spandex yarn by lifting the device.
The Nest Mini saw fabric “attached to the speaker casing with a significant adhesive.” Compared to Nest Audio, this home speaker uses “approximately 63% less material and 99% less adhesive” (Product environmental report).
This new approach allows for “manufacturing rework”: “If a defect is found during assembly in either the 3D fabric or the plastic shell, the other part can still be used, reducing both material waste and cost.”
Overall, the Google Home Speaker is made from “at least 37% recycled materials” (based on product weight). This includes metal, rare earth materials and plastic, while the packaging uses bamboo, molded fiber and recycled newsprint.
The Google report shows the fabric stretched over the plastic body underneath. We see three cutouts that are presumably for the far-field microphones. Also taking a look at the 58mm full-range driver.
Another image shows the motherboard with the A55 quad-core (2.0 GHz), NPU, 1 GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 4 GB of eMMC storage.
The included 30W USB-C adapter, a miniaturized version of Google’s 45W version, meets DOE Level VI, which is the “highest efficiency rating available for power adapters as defined by the International Efficiency Marking Protocol for External Power Supplies version 3.0.”
As for repairability, it would have been nice if the USB-C cable was not permanently connected to the home speaker.
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