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Ninety7 Loft review: Loft is a solid add-on that makes your Google Home portable

Don't worry about plugging in your Google smart speaker. The Ninety7 Loft lets you take it on the go with plenty of battery life for a day of use.

Andrew Gebhart Former senior producer
4 min read

The Ninety7 Loft invites you to take the tether off of your Google Home . A battery-powered base for your smart speaker, the Loft lets you bring your Google Home with you from room to room without needing to find a new place to plug it in. If you own a Google Home and want it to be portable, the Ninety7 Loft makes for a solid, if pricey, purchase.

The Good

The Ninety7 Loft easily snaps onto the Google Home and gave it a solid 10 hours of battery life in our tests -- a number that even exceeds the company's claims.

The Bad

The battery life indicator isn't accurate.

The Bottom Line

The Loft adds a sizable battery to your Google Home without taking away any smarts or sound quality. If you want your smart speaker to be portable, it's a good option.

You can buy the Ninety7 Loft now on the company's site for $49.95. We tested the carbon-colored variety, but it also comes in copper and snow. It's also available on Amazon and on Best Buy's site in the US, it's available in the UK for £49.95 and the company plans to bring the base to Australia as well. The US price converts to roughly AU$65. Note that this is a third-party add-on for the Google Home. You'll need to buy Google 's smart speaker separately for $130/£130/AU$200.

Staying out of the way

Here's everything the Google Home can do

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The Loft doesn't affect the basic functionality of the Google Home. You primarily control a Google Home with voice commands. You can ask it to set a reminder, search the internet, turn on your smart lights or a number of other functions enabled by Google's digital assistant (just called Google Assistant). The Loft doesn't hinder Google's ability to hear you, so you can issue a voice command from anywhere in the room.

The battery base also doesn't noticeably affect Google's sound quality. The company's previous product -- the Ninety7 Vaux -- gives Amazon's fun-size  Echo Dot a boost in sound quality, but the Loft mostly just stays out of the way. To test the Loft's battery, I played a rock-and-roll playlist at 50 percent volume. The songs sounded good if unspectacular -- just like they would normally on a Google Home.

unnamed

Align the Loft's plug barrel with the bottom of the Google Home.

Ry Crist/CNET

Installing a Loft takes a matter of seconds. You'll need to twist off the Home's magnetic, decorative base. You then push the Loft in place, aligning the plug barrel inside of the Loft with the plug on the Google Home. The Loft weighs just under a pound, so it'll make your Google Home heavier. It'll also make your Google Home taller, so bear that in mind if you have your smart speaker set up in a tight spot.

You can then plug in the Google Home with the Loft installed and the battery will charge. You can use the Google Home normally while the Loft is charging, and leave it plugged in if you don't need it to be portable for a while.

Battery testing

Unplug the Loft, and it'll last a good long while on its battery. Ninety7 claims the Loft can last for up to eight hours, and from our tests, it looks like the company was being conservative in its estimates. Playing music at 50 percent volume, the Loft lasted for just over 10 hours.

Four LEDs on the front light up sequentially while it charges to 25, 50, 75 and 100 percent. Then they go dark in reverse order as you use the battery, with the last LED blinking a warning before it dies. My only nitpick with the performance of the Loft stems from these LEDs. The battery lasted 10 hours, but they still showed full health after five hours and 75 percent after eight. The LEDs don't precisely track how much charge you actually have left, as they tick down quickly in the last couple of hours of life.

ninety7-loft

You can also turn the Loft off by holding the button below the LEDs.

Ry Crist/CNET

Still, eight-to-10 hours of charge should be enough to use your Google Home in the garage or on the patio for a day's worth of work. Note that the Home still needs to be connected to Wi-Fi if you want to issue voice commands, though you can use it purely as a Bluetooth speaker if you want to take it to the park and play music.

Watch this: CES 2018 Smart Home Panel: Shopping and the smart home

The verdict

If you're primarily looking for a portable Bluetooth speaker, you can readily find one with more battery life and better sound quality than the combined $180 cost of the Home plus the Loft. Check out our favorite Bluetooth speakers here. If you just want to use a Google Home in a couple of rooms of your house, it makes more sense to buy a couple of $50 Google Home Minis , which offer the same smarts as the original.

I'd specifically recommend the $50 Ninety7 Loft if you already have a Google Home, and want to use it frequently in multiple rooms of your house. For most other circumstances, you probably have a better option. That said, the Ninety7 Loft doesn't have a lot of flashy extras, but it serves its one purpose well.

7.9

Ninety7 Loft

Score Breakdown

Features 7Usability 8Design 8Performance 9