Google's Home Hub combines a Google Home smart assistant with a 7-inch screen in a small
package.
It will show information from Google Assistant, play music and TV, act as a photo frame and
guide you step-by-step through cooking recipes all at the command of your voice.
It's the first product from Google to do this and competes against Amazon's much bigger
Echo Show and smart displays from other companies.
We've been testing it out.
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When I first saw it I was surprised at the size, it looked bigger in photos but I think
that's something of an illusion because the screen looks like an iPad, and iPads are bigger.
The wide bezel in someways disguises the smaller size of the screen, but I'm not sure white
was the right choice.
Black or a color to match the body might have been more to my taste.
There's a hardware mute button on the back, for when you want the microphone off, a volume
rocker on the rear right side of the screen and couple of microphones and this in the
center is an ambient light sensor, that measures the brightness of a room and adjusts the screen
of the Hub all the way down to just about zero when the lights are off.
There is no camera on here, which means you won't be able to use it for video calls, but
Google said it made the decision so that people wouldn't feel wary about placing one anywhere
in the house.
So, what can you do with it, well first of all the ambient display when it's not in use
can be used to view curated art and photos, show a clock or link to a personal Google
Photos account.
You can curate a gallery if you wish but if you don't want to bother with that you can
have Google's quite good AI find photos of your kids, pets, vacations or whatever and
have them show up.
But that's not very interactive.
What about when you speak to it.
Just like normal you wake it, "Hey Google, what's the weather in London this week?"
And you'll both hear and see that information.
Hey Google, how's traffic from San Francisco to Los Angeles?
One of the slickest interfaces if for recipes.
"Hey Google, show me a recipe for onion soup."
It pulls out the ingredients and steps from a recipe and will walk you though them, all
controlled by your voice.
It's pretty clever but it's only as intelligent as the programming and while it knows how
to parse recipes, it can't do some things I would have thought just as simple.
"Hey Google, what's on TV tonight?"
The Home Hub will play music but it won't replace your audio system.
The sound is good although its small size means it can't produce a deep base for fuller
audio.
It connects to Google Play Music, YouTube Music, Spotify, Pandora and Deezer and you
can stream many radio stations through the voice interface too.
"Hey Google, Play 5 Live."
When Google showed off the Home Hub, I was most excited for the smart home integration.
It promises to provide an interface to your entire smart home on a single page, or at
least all the Google Home-compatible products.
And here it is, everything listed by device type or I can switch to a listing by room.
Products from Google-owned Nest work best, as you might expect: You can use voice or
the touchscreen to adjust a Nest thermostat or stream a Nest security camera.
But non-Google products also work.
That's a step beyond the phone experience, where I still need to a TP Link app to see
the camera feed.
You can see all the Chromecast devices in your house and what they are playing, and
control them or switch on and off lights around the house.
It's a pretty good smart home control panel but your smartphone is still king.
All of the basic controls still need to be handled through the Google Home app, in fact
the Home Hub is added to your network through that app too.
The Home Hub doesn't have a Zigbee or Z-Wave radio, two popular smart home networking protocols,
so it can't talk directly to many products.
You'll still need a hub for those networks, so it's a great visual interface but won't
replace anything you have now.
I've only been using the Home Hub for a few days.
I placed it in my dining room and found the constantly changing photos in ambient mode
a distraction when eating.
If you have a compatible TV service, you can easily stream anything on TV, so that might
also be something you do.
There's nothing wrong with this unless you're trying to reduce the amount of time you spend
glued to a screen.
If that's the case, carefully consider whether you want to introduce another display into
your house.
TechHive rated the Home Hub 4 out of 5.
It's great at providing a visual interface into Google Assistant and your smart home.
It costs $149.