What is the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition?

The Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition is the project's own voice hardware. It is a small device with a speaker and microphones that listens for a wake word, then sends what you say to Assist, the voice assistant built into Home Assistant. It launched in December 2024 ¹, and the product page lists it at $69 in US dollars or 59 euros ². Home Assistant itself works without the optional Home Assistant Cloud subscription ³.

This answer draws on the project's product page, checked on 17 October 2026. Our full guide to Home Assistant voice explains the pipeline the device feeds, from wake word to spoken reply.

It is a standard voice device built for Home Assistant

The project gives the device its name in its own answer about why it is called a Preview Edition. The reason, in its words, is that an essential ingredient for the community to drive the project forward is a standardized hardware platform for voice, built for Home Assistant from the ground up ⁴. In practice, that gives developers and users one known device to build on.

The hardware is an ESP32-S3 chip with an XMOS audio chip

The device's processing is split between two chips. The main system on a chip is an ESP32-S3, with 16 MB of flash storage and 8 MB of octal PSRAM. A separate XMOS XU316 chip handles the audio processing, including echo cancellation, stationary noise removal and automatic gain control ⁵.

The microphones and speaker are on the device itself. The features list names an internal speaker, an internal dual-mic array and a 3.5mm audio output ⁶. The project says the dual microphones and XMOS chip hear your voice in most environments. That is the project's own claim, and a large room or loud background noise can still make a second device worthwhile.

It listens for three wake words, and the mute switch cuts power

Out of the box, the device can listen for three wake words: "Okay Nabu," "Hey Jarvis," or "Hey Mycroft," using the on-device engine microWakeWord ⁷. The wake word is what starts a request, so the choice affects how you talk to the device every day.

The mute switch is a hardware control. The project says it physically cuts power to the microphones ⁸, so it does not depend on software to stop the microphones from listening.

The price is a recommended price, and it varies

The product page labels the figure a recommended MSRP, and it states that USD prices exclude taxes while EUR prices include them ². Prices differ between regions and retailers, so check the figure in your own region before you buy.

Local or cloud is still your choice

The device is a microphone and speaker. Recognizing your speech is a separate decision that you make in Home Assistant. Home Assistant Cloud is an optional subscription, and the project says you do not need it ³. For some languages, the project says Home Assistant Cloud gives the best experience, because the local speech-to-text models do not support them ⁹. Check your language before you assume the setup is fully local. Our question on the best speech to text for Home Assistant explains the local choices.

When the Voice Preview Edition is the right choice

• Choose it if you want a dedicated voice device that the project designed for Home Assistant, with a speaker, microphones and a mute switch in one box.
• Think again if you already have a microphone and speaker you want to use. The device is one way to hear commands, not the only one.
• Check first that your language works with local speech, because the speech engine, not the device, decides how well it understands you.

What to do before you buy

1. Check the price for your region on the product page, and at the retailer you plan to use.
2. Choose your speech engine. Speech-to-Phrase suits fixed commands on a Raspberry Pi. Whisper suits open speech on at least an Intel N100. Our question on the best speech to text for Home Assistant gives the full comparison.
3. Pick a wake word from the three built in, and test it in the room where you will use the device.
4. Expose your devices to Assist, or the device cannot control them by voice. The question on Home Assistant voice commands explains the steps and the sentences Assist understands.

For the language model options that sit behind Assist, read whether Home Assistant can use ChatGPT or a local LLM for voice. For the broader category of devices that take spoken commands, see the glossary entry for voice assistant, and our overview of voice assistants compared with dictation.