Google Home now available for pre-order in Canada

Google Home is now available to pre-order for Canadians. Google had announced at I/O this year that it would be coming to the country this summer, but now the smart home speaker with Google Assistant built-in is available on Google’s own online store, as well as at retail partners including Best Buy.

In Canada, Google Home is selling for $179.00 CDN, which is actually pretty much in line with U.S. pricing once you factor in the current currency conversion rate. The shipping time for the Google Home is listed at “2-3 weeks” for customers on Google’s own online store, and Google’s official blog says the in-store release date is June 26. Best Buy is also offering a free Chromecast with pre-orders for the Google Home, and it’ll also be available at Bell, Indigo, London Drugs, Rogers, Telus, Staples, The Source and Walmart.

Google officially launched Home in the U.S. on November 4, and it became available in the U.K. on April 6, 2017. The speaker offers built-in support for Google’s virtual assistant, which can integrate with services and smart home devices and which responds to voice queries made by the user. It also features swappable base accent colors, and can work with Chromecast Audio and Cast-enabled speaker devices for whole-home synchronized audio streaming.

Google Home is the search giant’s answer to Amazon’s Echo, which houses its Alexa assistant and which pioneered the home smart speaker category. Home is also launching in Australia, France, Germany and Japan this summer.