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I also appreciated that when I made a request, Google Assistant displayed the words it heard me say on the screen, so I knew if it had misheard me. . While it’s not as large or loud as the Echo Show, the Google Home Hub is an affordable and capable alternative for those looking for a smart display. While it’s not as large or loud as the Echo Show, the Google Home Hub—now called the Google Nest Hub—is an affordable and capable alternative for those looking for a smart display. Overall, the Google Home Hub provides excellent value at just $149, as long as you’re already a big user of Google’s services.
For those who fear the privacy implications of this, there is a switch round the back that disables the camera, although it also knocks out the microphone. It’s a pity you can’t turn off just the camera while leaving the microphone on this way, although you can do this on the display with a swipe upwards. If you use Google Photos, the Google Nest Hub can display them on your home screen, but instead, we opt for Google’s splendid art gallery slideshow. The screen, which also boasts ambient adaptive brightness, won’t blow you away in terms of resolution, depth and clarity, but it’s more than acceptable for the money. PCMag.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering lab-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services. Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.
What's new for Google Home?
As well as being able to have a two-way conversation, the Home Hub also allows you to use the quick responses. If you don’t have the time or inclination to deal with someone, you can just let the Nest Hello give a canned response and you’re off. This is a great update to the Google Home Hub, although it also works on all other Google-powered Smart Displays. With very thin bezels all around the screen adding to the effect; the original Echo Show had the same-size screen but looks massive in comparison. It’s no surprise to see that the Google Home Hub is designed along the same lines, with a display hanging off the material base.
If approved, Project Skyway will connect the airspace above cities including Reading, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Cambridge, Coventry, and Rugby. Drinking two or more cups of coffee each day may DOUBLE risk of heart disease death - but only in people... The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. Still, Google seems to have made the Home Hub with privacy in mind, opting to leave a camera off the device entirely.
Google Nest Hub Max review: What you need to know
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. As you’d expect from a £130 device with such a small footprint, the Home Hub’s sound quality won’t blow you away. Having said that, for its size it’s decent enough and is a good step up on the Home Mini.
Then, if you tell the Nest Hub to use pictures of your kids in ambient mode, you can keep taking shots and Google Assistant will automatically add new ones to the mix. It filtered out the bad ones where the subject was out of focus or not properly framed, and showed the rest on the Hub. And the JBL Link View, Google Assistant makes good use of the touchscreen with helpful visuals after you ask a question.
Everything the Google Home Hub can do
The app used to be strictly for setting up Google's smart speakers and connecting your smart home devices. You can also segment your gadgets into multiple homes if you have an office and an apartment. Change the temp of your thermostat, and you'll see buttons and sliders to tweak the temp further or change the mode.
We stream Coheed and Cambria’s A Favor House Atlantic on Deezer and the tricky and snappy track nips along happily across the frequencies with a relatively generous dollop of texture through the vocals. The album continues to Blood Red Summer and guitars are sensibly handled within a cohesive mix. You can tweak the bass or treble under the Hub’s audio tab in Settings, but with these set at neutral for our test, we struggle to enjoy the promised bass injection in the updated model.
Google Home Hub review: The small smart display with big potential
Google hasn’t released the specification for its LCD display, but it’s excellent for the price. Photos and videos look beautiful, with great colour reproduction and superb viewing angles. The interface is also beautifully presented, with nice big icons and text that you can read from across a room.
The Ambient EQ system makes your photos look realistic in colour in varying lighting conditions, but it was a bit dim in low-level lighting for my liking. You can boost or reduce the brightness by a couple of notches in the Google Home app, but changing the brightness on Home Hub itself disables Ambient EQ. Swipe up from the bottom to access manual brightness and volume controls. By swiping up from the top of the screen, you’ll see a control panel listing all of the smart devices in your home. You can select a smart device category, or a room in the “Rooms” overview, to control them individually.
But Google has finally put a stake in the ground with the Home Hub - its first branded smart display that functions as part photo frame, part control center for all your smart home devices. All of these features are the same on all of the Google Assistant-equipped smart displays, and my favorite feature of both the Lenovo Smart Display and the JBL Link View has made its way intact to the Google Nest Hub. Search for a recipe by voice, or find one in your phone and send it to your display. Google Assistant will read the ingredients and directions out loud and you can see them listed on the screen. The Google Home Hub (and third-party smart displays) fill in a gap with the Google Assistant. Having video, pictures and a touchscreen display, as well as voice responses, is a compelling package.
Playlist, tap the bottom left of the screen for available devices, select the Google device and it begins playing on our Hub. The display is raised about 2cm from whatever surface the Hub is placed on and mounted at a fixed but sensible viewing angle to its driver-filled plinth. The product feels rock-solid and takes up little more space than a small photo frame or hardback book stood on its spine.
Like the Echo Show, the Nest Hub's speaker is hidden behind the grille cloth on its base. On the Home Hub answers are accompanied by visual information, such as the hourly or daily weather forecast or a photo of Jeff Goldblum as it explains he is 65 years old. Weather reports are accompanied by sound effects such as birds tweeting for sunny days and rain for typical British weather. I do wish that Google had a similar feature to Alexa’s Follow-Up Mode to keep it listening for the duration of a task.
And it’s not just Search to receive the visual update - major Google services, like YouTube, Photos and Maps have been optimized to provide both relevant audio feedback and visual feedback based on your voice search commands. That said though, there’s lots to love about the Google Home Hub, and given that highly attractive price, we can easily recommend it as the best screen-based assistant on the market right now. The cooking feature is one of the more compelling reasons to buy the Home Hub over a smart speaker, because you can visually see the ingredients and follow along to step-by-step instructions as you go.
Google describes the Home Hub as having a full range speaker, but there’s no more information than that. It’s safe to say that this isn’t a smart speaker in the same vein as the Google Home Max or even the Echo Show. If you have a Nest Hello doorbell, the Google Home Hub now displays the video feed alongside an audible announcement when someone presses the button. Thanks to a more recent update, you can now answer the door directly from your Home Hub without having to whip your phone out.
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