Google Nexus Q review - The Verge

All streaming with the Q is initiated from within one of three Android apps: YouTube, Play Music, and Play Video. The trick here is that it's not actually streaming from your phone or tablet at all; rather, your device is serving as a glorified remote control, telling Google's servers to send media down to the Q over the web. When running Play Music, for example, an icon appears next to the share menu icon. Tapping it allows you to switch the music from playing on the device to playing on the Q, and the transition was usually quick and seamless. Several times one device or the other would lose connection, requiring me to quit the Nexus Q app, but things came back online immediately thereafter.

The good news is that along with Play Store content, any tunes you have stored in Google Music are also available for playback. The bad news is that's it. Any sideloaded music files are out of bounds unless you upload them to Google Music first, and subscription services like Rdio and Spotify are locked out altogether. It's the same story on the video side: Hulu and Netflix customers, you're out of luck.

In terms of sound quality, the 25-watt amp was more than loud enough to fill my apartment, and in conjunction with the speakers I was using provided a clean and detailed sound. In this sense, the Q would be a fine choice for someone hosting a party, or looking for an audio system for the backyard.

During music playback, the LED ring on the Q pulses and breathes various hues in sync with the rhythm and volume of the music. It's joined by a visualizer on the TV, with five different "themes" available via the Nexus Q app. The LED ring is undoubtedly fun; it brings a touch of whimsy to the Q, and only adds to its physical appeal. The visualizer is another matter altogether. It's simply another riff on the same visual gimmickry we've been seeing in audio visualizers for years now — and it feels like it.

Attempting to mute the Q during playback revealed another of its hardware weaknesses. Namely, it doesn't work that well, repeatedly requiring several taps to mute or restore audio during playback.

Google is touting the Q as the "world's first social streaming media player," primarily due to its collaborative playlisting: friends can come over and play their own music on your Q, or you can build a group playlist together. It's a feature with great appeal — there have been versions of the same idea on competing platforms for a while now — but the Q stumbles in the execution. While tapping on the options for a given song allows you to add it to the current song queue, selecting that same song directly will immediately begin playback, bypassing what's already in the queue. Even worse, if you're viewing a list of tunes in playlist, album, or artist sort, selecting one song will add it plus all subsequent songs to the queue. Testing the feature out with a friend quickly pivoted from a fun musical collaboration into a frustrating game of accidental playlist-jacking.

To be fair, this implementation problem could be resolved with a software update — but this is the marquee feature of the Q. It's so important that the device's name is a cute play on "queue." If there's one feature the Nexus Q should nail from the end user's perspective, it's this one — and it falls short.

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