The unclear market positioning of the Nexus Q was also criticized, as it carried a significantly higher price than competing media players with wider capabilities; The New York Times' technology columnist David Pogue described the device as being 'wildly overbuilt' for its limited functions.

[2] The Nexus Q was given away at no cost to attendees of Google I/O, but the product's consumer launch was indefinitely postponed the following month, purportedly to collect additional feedback.

[6] The sphere is divided into two halves; the top half can be rotated to adjust the audio volume being output over attached speakers or to other home theater equipment, and tapped to mute.

[7][9][2] The New York Times' technology columnist David Pogue described the Nexus Q as being a "baffling" device, stating that it was "wildly overbuilt for its incredibly limited functions, and far too expensive", and arguing that it would probably appeal only to people "whose living rooms are dominated by bowling ball collections.

"[2] Engadget was similarly mixed, arguing that while it was a "sophisticated, beautiful device with such a fine-grained degree of engineering you can't help but respect it", and that its amplifier was capable of producing "very clean sound", the Nexus Q was a "high-price novelty" that lacked support for DLNA, lossless audio, and playback of content from external or internal storage among other features.

On July 31, 2012, Google announced that it would delay the official launch of the Nexus Q in order to address early feedback, and that all customers who pre-ordered the device would receive it for free.

[14] In December 2013, an unofficial build of Android 4.4 "KitKat" based on CyanogenMod code was also released for the Nexus Q, although it was unstable and lacked reliable Wi-Fi support.

Chromecast is contrasted by its compact HDMI dongle form factor, the availability of an SDK that allows third-party services to integrate with the device, and its considerably lower price in comparison to the Nexus Q.