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While the original Nest Hub is no longer sold on the Google Store, you may still find deals on it elsewhere. Speaking of kitchen work, Home Hub can display food recipes in a neat, easy-to-follow list that you step through using voice commands. However, in order to get this clean list view, the recipe needs to be properly formatted by the publisher.
Building a smart display is more than just whacking a screen on a smart speaker and taking it from there. It’s about creating a new interface, combining sight, speech and touch. From this point of view, Google has nailed what it is to have a smart display. In my Google Assistant guide, I’ve covered everything in more detail, but I’ll cover the specific points for the Home Hub here. Around the back of the screen, there are dedicated volume buttons and a switch that turns of the microphone to stop the Home Hub from listening in. For sound, you can just swipe up from the bottom of the display and use the touch controls instead.
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All Google Assistant smart displays make similar use of the touchscreen. It's small - perhaps too small for some people - but it's the best looking of the Assistant Smart Displays so far. It's also a great showcase for what this category of smart speaker can do, particularly with that ambient EQ sensor - and for a fantastic price. If you’re more interested in controlling your smart devices than you are watching movies or making video calls, the Google Home Hub makes a compelling claim to be the center of your smart home. Did you know Google Assistant can deliver personalized information to multiple people in the home?
Paired in a speaker group with other Nest speakers, it keeps up and performs well. Mileage may vary based on your wearable, but my watch and the Nest Hub were never more than 15 minutes apart in their estimation of when I fell asleep and when I woke up. I definitely get more detail from my wearable about sleep quality, like how much time I spent in deep sleep, light sleep and REM sleep. Nest Hub offers more detail on my environment and how it affects my sleep. Nest Hub only knows about the sleep that happens right in front of it. A long weekend out of town will result in a gap in your sleep stats and running averages unless your smart display tags along and you recalibrate it in your vacation digs.
Smart displays let Amazon, Facebook, Google show you answers to your questions
In contrast to the large and flashy Echo Show and Lenovo Smart Display, the 7 x 4.5 x 2.7-inch Google Nest Hub is small and unobtrusive. It’s not ugly, but not beautiful either -- it blended so well into my countertop that dinner guests didn’t notice it. Read our full Google Nest Hub review to learn about all the upgrades you can expect. Pop Team Epic from Crunchyroll to the Nest Hub without any issue, but Netflix was unable to detect the display in its own Google Cast menu. The Home Hub provides great value, providing that you're happy using Google's other services. The software has seen some improvements, though most of the core features remain the same.
That's enough for me to continue to recommend the Nest Hub as the best smart display for most smart homes. With sensible updates, a lower price and more capability, the second-gen Nest Hub is a worthy successor to the original model. New features that might make some folks nervous are totally optional and you can review and delete your data at any time. Google says the new Nest Hub has 50% more bass than the previous model.
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Once that’s locked and loaded on your mobile device of choice, you can simply tap the plus icon under the Home heading, and the app will search for any nearby Made by Google device. After a short pairing process you’ll need to select which room the Hub is located in as well as add any new smart devices you might have purchased alongside the Home Hub. Yes, Sleep Sensing is the shiny new feature on the second-gen Nest Hub, but that's not the whole story. The new Nest Hub is also 30% cheaper than the original, with 50% more bass, new color options and a more eco-friendly design.
When enabled, the Soli motion sensor basically creates an invisible, contactless tracking bubble around the person sleeping closest to the device. It can detect movements large and small—such as when you get up to use the bathroom, take a sip of water, roll over, or even breathe—all without a camera or requiring you to wear a separate device to bed. When Sleep Sensing is active, you'll see a little bed icon in the top right corner of the display.
To this end, Google has also revamped it’s Home app to simplify common functions and introduced the Home View to the Home Hub. Furthermore, if you want to limit Google’s data collection in any way, most of Assistant’s features will switch off. It even refuses to play YouTube video without tracking your browsing history. What confuses me is that I can manually delete my internet history every day and the Google Home Hub works fine, but stop tracking in the settings and Assistant ceases to co-operate. Overall, the addition of a touch display makes interacting with most applications easier and faster, as it cuts down on the “OK, Google” rigmarole. There’s also something oddly satisfying about watching Assistant translate your speech into text in real time.
There’s also a broadcast feature to play back messages across all of your Google Home speakers. This menu goes further, allowing you to adjust settings and configure any compatible smart home devices on your network. This includes Nest, smart lights and plugs from brands like Belkin and Philips Hue, and other Google Home products. Two holes above the screen indicate the Nest Hub's microphones, flanking the small gray mark of the ambient light sensor. Unlike every other smart display we've seen so far, the Nest Hub doesn't have a camera for video chat.
Google has worked hard coming up with a common design language for its more recent products, combining soft-touch plastic and material across its range, from the Google Home Mini to the new Nest Thermostat E . This Explore page is the home screen on the Lenovo Smart Display, and I prefer that to the Google Nest Hub’s. It looks nicer and more colorful and feels more friendly -- like a page I would browse through to get ideas of what to do, rather than a list I have to swipe through to find what I want. Clicking on that leads to yet another list of things you can do, including finding recipes and setting alarms, laid out much more nicely on cards. Unlike the Echo Show and Lenovo Smart Display, which are both heavy and a hassle to carry around, I could very easily bring this from my kitchen to my bedroom and back (though there’s no battery). If you're looking for a powerful audio experience on the Nest Hub, you're going to be disappointed.
Quality smart home controls, integrated YouTube, and a brilliant use of the display to give access to some Google services, such as Maps and Photos make this model better than the Echo Show in some regards. Restrictive Google Account support and the inability to play Netflix restrict the appeal slightly. Google Assistant can answer questions about the weather, sports, and general information like unit conversions and word translations.
A volume rocker sits behind the right edge of the screen, and a mic mute switch sits behind the top edge. Like the Echo Show, the Nest Hub's speaker is hidden behind the grille cloth on its base. I appreciate that the privacy-conscious probably aren’t inviting Google Assistant into their homes at all. However, some granularity on what Google collects and better transparency about which features rely on data collection would be much appreciated. PCMag supports Group Black and its mission to increase greater diversity in media voices and media ownerships.
Add to that basic calling functionality through Duo and some of the oldest members of your family can now keep in touch even when you’re far away. It's the pricing of the Echo Show 8 that really makes the comparison harder than it was last year. Even when it's not on sale, the Echo Show 8 offers a lot of benefits over the Nest Hub for manageable price increase. The Nest Hub remains our Editor's Choice winner for smart displays, but we awarded the Echo Show 8 an Editor's Choice when we reviewed it earlier this year as well.
This will work automatically if you have an Android phone and it works on Apple's iPhones too, as long as you have the Google Assistant app installed. The service costs $12 (£12, AU$15) a month after the trial ends and allows you to listen to YouTube's music library without ads. The Google Nest Hub may be small, but it's surprisingly useful in lots of ways, from organizing your smart home to walking you through a complex recipe, to finding you a place to eat if your cooking efforts fall short. The Home Hub, like so many of Google’s hardware devices, is the culmination of years’ worth of software advantages. Here, they all come together in a nice, compact package, which, at $149, undercuts the competition pretty dramatically. Households that are childless or not packed to the gills with Chromecasts, Wemos, Nests, Augusts, and Google Home speakers may find the Home Hub less useful.
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