The Nest Hub 2nd Generation is the newest version of the Nest Hub Google released that
updates the original with better sound, new hands-free gestures, and the main new feature
of this device, sleep tracking.
I've had my second gen Nest Hub for over six months now.
So, I'm gonna walk you through everything new with this device, the core features, any
downsides and then ultimately, who I recommend this device for.
Now, by far, the largest addition to the second gen Nest Hub soli radar chip that has been
embedded into the top of the device where you see that little grey circle.
The soli radar chip on the Nest Hub has a few purposes.
It's used for sleep tracking, quick gestures, and proximity detection.
Sleep tracking works by using the radar inside the Nest Hub to detect movement and breathing
while you’re asleep.
The Nest Hub will also use it’s mics to detect sounds like snoring and coughing and
the display can even use it’s ambient light eq sensor to measure the amount of light in
your room and it’s temperature sensor to see how warm or cool it is while you’re
asleep.
Based on all of this data, Google will give a sleep summary you can see when you wake
up.
It’ll show you how long you were asleep for, if you got to bed on time or late, the
points where you woke up during the night, how much you snored and coughed.
The sleep summary UI shows 3 circles, with each one representing a different metric:
the quality of your sleep, duration, and how well you adhered to your sleep schedule.
The goal is to try to get these three circles to overlap as much as possible, when you do,
they'll turn purple.
And that means that you slept well.
When they don't overlap as much, they'll turn into an orangish color, and you don't want
that.
That means you did not sleep very well, and this can happen for several reasons.
For example, if you go to bed late and you sleep in late, you will be dinged for both
of those scenarios by Google even if you got the recommended seven to eight hours of sleep.
Now if you want to see more data from the Nest Hub’s sleep tracking, like seeing how
you slept over multiple days, this data can be accessed from the Google Fit app, available
for Android and iOS.
So far, my impressions of sleep tracking have been pretty favorable.
I like that.
You don't have to wear anything on your wrist, they're no cameras involved.
So, no cameras are pointing at you asleep from your nightstand, which I find kind of
creepy.
And the data that I get from the Nest Hub for sleep tracking is comparable to the sleep
tracking data I get from my Apple Watch.
Now, there are two potential downsides with sleep tracking on the Nest Hub that might
impact you.
One is it cannot track two people sleeping simultaneously.
So for example, if you and your partner both want to track your sleep with a Nest Hub,
you'll need to buy two devices.
The second potential downside is that Google is planning to charge for the sleep tracking
insights starting in early 2022.
If you're like me and you already use a fitness tracker, it's going to be a hard sell to pay
Google for something down the road that your sleep tracker today can already do and do
for free, but who knows, we’ll see what the company comes out with in 2022.
So that’s sleep tracking, next let's talk about another sleep-related feature and this
is one I use a lot on my Nest Hub and that is the alarm settings.
which you get to by swiping up from the bottom of the display and selecting the alarm clock
icon.
The alarm clock functionality of the Nest Hub is quite good in my experience, you can
easily create multiple alarms and see them all in one display on the touch screen.
To change settings for your alarms you can click the gear icon on the alarms page and
set the alarm volume, whether or not you want to enable a sunrise alarm, which will gradually
brighten the Nest Hub’s display with warm colors like a sunrise and gradually increase
the alarm volume as well, also there are quite a few different alarms to choose from, which
I appreciate.
You can also sync your smart lights to your sunrise alarm if you want, so the lights will
gradually dim along with the Nest Hub’s display and even start Google Assistant routines.
I started off having my smart lights connected to the Sunrise alarm, but quickly found out
that you can't actually change the color temperature or if you have a specific scene like in Philips
Hue, you cannot set that scene with the sunrise alarm feature on a Nest Hub.
So if you're like me and you like your lights dimming up with a sunrise color in the morning,
you just, you simply can't do that with these sunrise alarm features, they'll default to
a warm white color.
Lastly in settings, you can enable or disable motion sense for snoozing your alarm by waving
your hand in front of the display.
Now, one concern you may have about using a Nest Hub as an alarm clock is what happens
when the Wi-Fi goes out.
When I have tested this, as long as you've already set the alarm before the Wi-Fi goes
out, the alarm will actually still ring so long as the power doesn't also go out.
The Nest Hub can also help you go to sleep as well by displaying a new evening part of
the UI that’ll show you shortcuts to things like sleep sounds, which help you drift off
to sleep to certain ambient sounds like sounds of the ocean or a rainforest.
You can also set the display to turn all the way off when it detects darkness if you’re
like me and if you wake up in the middle of the night, you don’t want to see what time
it is.
There are actually a lot of settings for the Nest Hub that you can set and forget from
the Google Home app like limiting the speaker’s volume during the night with night mode, or
adjusting the trigger word’s sensitivity when you want to use the Google Assistant.
Let's go back to that solely radar chip for a second.
This technology on the Nest Hub is also used for proximity detection, which will make certain
parts of the Ui larger like a timer when it senses you’ve walked away from the display
so it’s easier to see across the room.
Also you can play or pause music using motion sense by just waving your hand forward towards
the display.
So those are some of the new sleep tracking and motion sense features of this device.
Now, let's talk about a few other new things with these second generation Nest Hub.
While the design has remained largely the same as the original, Google did remove the
frame border for the 2nd gen Nest Hub and the bottom of the chalk version of the device
is no longer orange but white, which I much prefer the aesthetics of.
They also updated the enclosure so its now made from 54% of recycled materials
Google also improved the speaker giving it a 1.7 inch or 43.5 mm driver, and it does
sound improved.
However, keep in mind that Nest Minis, and Nest Hubs are the worst sounding speakers
in Google's lineup.
That's not to say they sound terrible or anything.
They sound adequate for what they are given the space constraints Google is working with
with these speakers but you're not buying them primarily for their audio quality.
That's what a device like the Nest Audio is for.
But with the Nest Hub, you're really primarily buying it for that display, not necessarily
the speaker in the back
Now Google also kept the great screen they had on the original Nest Hub with both an
ambient EQ and light color temperature sensor so the display looks good no matter your lighting
conditions and they added an extra microphone to the device as which helps better pick up
my voice.
The setup experience with the new Nest Hub has also been improved as well with a new
QR code during setup to connect the device to the Google Home app and with added steps
explaining the new sleep and motion sense features.
So that's everything brand new to the second gen Nest Hub.
Now it does retain some of the core features from the previous generation of device and
the top one that comes to mind is photo frame.
The 2nd generation Nest Hub can integrate with Google Photos, one of the best online
photo storage services available for both Android and iOS and allows you to easily update
and manage the photos displayed on the frame.
It's one of my favorite features of the Nest Hub.
Especially that memory's feature where the photo display will show me old photos taken
one, two, even 10 years back.
It's a feature that makes me happy, sometimes sad when seeing a loved one or pet that's
recently passed away, but it's a feature that always gets some sort of emotion out of me,
mostly a positive emotion, which is rare to find in a tech product.
And it's weird that it's a positive emotion, It's basically like the opposite of social
media.
You can also use the Nest Hub as a dynamic weather clock, which I absolutely love, it’s
a feature that originally debuted on the Lenovo Smart Clock but it’s just so much better
on the larger Nest Hub display.
Another thing I use, my Nest Hub for a lot is controlling my smart home.
You can swipe down from the top of the screen to enter the home control settings for your
Google Home and I love the card system UI Google has put here which makes it easy to
see everything going on in my smart home and the room my Nest Hub is in which is in my
bedroom.
I can see what level my bedroom lights are set to, my blind tilt settings, the status
of my Roomba running and then I can also see the status of other devices around my home
like my door lock status and a shortcut to see the feed from my Nest Doorbell which we’ll
be reviewing on the channel, so make sure to subscribe to see more Google product reviews.
Another major use for the Nest Hub is music playback and controls.
You can stream music from your favorite streaming service like Spotify, Apple Music, at least
here in the US, Deezer, Pandora, and of course, YouTube Music.
The Nest Hub display makes it easy to play and pause music and skip to the next track.
You can also cast media from your devices to your Nest Hub as well as long as your device
or app supports casting like YouTube or YouTube Music.
And yes, you can play content from video streaming services as well on this Display like Disney+,
Netflix, Hulu, HBO+, Paramount+ and more!
And you can also play games on the display as well and can browse through the different
games available by tapping the screen to bring up the card menu and going to the entertainment
tab.
Back to music for a second, you can also group your Nest Hub with other Google speakers through
the Google Home app to create speaker groups or say if you have a speaker right next to
your Nest Hub that’s better quality like my Google Home Max, in the settings for the
Nest Hub you can set the display to default to playing music on my Google Home Max speaker
or another speaker group instead which is a feature I love.
Now, another way to control your music and your smart home and do a bunch of other things
on the Nest Hub is using the Google Assistant.
The Google Assistant is the native assistant on the Nest Hub and it uses the Nest Hub's
three far-field microphones to answer your requests.
The Google Assistant on the Nest Hub also features voice match, where the Google Assistant
will learn your particular voice so it knows who's talking to it and the Google Assistant
on this device is also great with music controls.
You can ask it to play a specific song, artist, or album from your linked music streaming
service.
Josh: “Hey Google, play the album equals by Ed Sheeran.”
Google Assistant: “OK, Ed Sheeran from Apple Music, playing on Josh’s Bedroom Speakers.”
You can also ask it to do things like control an individual smart home device like running
my Roomba or a group of smart home devices, like controlling all of the lights in my bedroom.
If you decide to put one in your kitchen, you can ask it for recipes and have recipes
there on the screen to cook along with and save your favorite recipes to your cookbook.
The one downside with this feature is not all recipes from all sites are going to work
with it and there's currently no way for you to upload your own recipes to the service.
Now, another kitchen-related feature with the Nest Hub is lists.
You can tell the Google Assistant to create a list or use the default shopping list when
you tell it to add something to your shopping list.
I use this feature a lot, like when I open my fridge and realize I’m running out of
milk I can just say “Hey Google, add lactose free milk to my shopping list.”
The Nest Hub gives you the added benefit of being able to see the list and what you might
have already added to it.
And you can also sync your Google Assistant lists with services like AnyList, Any.do Bring
Shopping lists and Google Keep.
If you decide not to sync your list with these services, you can access your shopping lists
at shoppinglist.google.com, making it easy to check things off your list as you’re
out and about.
And you can also share any list you create with the Google Assistant with others in your
household.
Another thing you can do with the Google Assistant on the Nest Hub is reminders.
And I found this feature very useful.
You can create reminders that’ll appear as virtual sticky notes on the Nest Hub’s
display and best of all, you can assign them to certain people in your household.
So let's say your partner volunteered, to take out the trash, but they forgot to.
You can tell the Google Assistant on the Nest Hub to remind them to take out the trash.
So that's everything new with the second gen Nest Hub and the core features that I've really
found to be useful over six months.
Now, here's who I think this device is for.
I think the 2nd Gen Nest Hub is a perfect device for people who want a digital photo
frame that connects with one of the best online photo services available and makes it easy
to keep your photos up-to-date.
It also acts as a major alarm clock upgrade, with its sleep tracking and extensive alarm
features like the sunrise alarm it acts as a great smart home control display and display
interface for controlling music for one or multiple speakers.
And finally, if you want a kitchen display that can bring up recipes and makes it easy
to start and pause music and media without having to touch the display, I think the Nest
Hub would be a great choice there as well.
The 2nd Gen Google Nest Hub retails for $99 US dollars and comes in several different
colors.
I've left links on the side of this video if you want to purchase this device or learn
more about it and if you want to learn more about building or expanding your smart home,
how to better use the Google Assistant, or see more reviews on Google and Nest devices.
I've left links in the description below to videos we've done that cover all of those
topics.
So make sure to check those out.
If you have any questions about the Google Nest Hub or want to share your experience
with this device, leave a comment below, hit that thumbs up button if you found this video
helpful, and subscribe to the channel to see more six months later reviews like this one
on Google and other tech products.
For 6 Months Later, I'm Josh Teder, thanks for watching.