Nest Hub, Google's new home assistant with screen, is now also available in Italy, about eight months after it went on sale in the United States and one year after the arrival of Google's first home devices on the Italian market. It is the first to be sold under the Nest brand, a company famous for its “smart” thermostats purchased by Google in 2014 for $ 3.2 billion, and now used as a single brand to encompass all household products made by the company. agency.
Unlike Google Home and Google Home Mini, the new Nest Hub has a screen: it therefore increases the possibilities of interacting with the services offered by Google and the use of other online content. It is 7-inch and is supported by a fabric-covered backing, with the same texture already used for the Home Mini and the Home base. Aesthetically, Nest Hub is reminiscent of a digital frame to see photos – a function that it can also perform – but is animated by the Google Assistant to obtain information and control devices connected to the home WiFi (light bulbs, Chromecast, thermostats and security cameras).
Once you connect it to the internet and your Google account, Nest Hub displays the time, weather forecast, and photos from your Google Photos album on the screen. The choice of images is automatic and based on the various times of the day, on the photographs in their albums and on other parameters, such as the presence in the images of people connected to their Google account. By sliding a finger from top to bottom on the screen, you access a control panel where you can adjust numerous settings and manually control the connected devices in the house, without having to give voice commands.
Nest Hub does all the things the Google Assistant usually does, but with additional information on the screen, without having to search for your smartphone: you can write reminders, perform searches, calculate routes on Google Maps, set events on the calendar and listen to music through YouTube Music (by subscription, or with free thematic channels) or Spotify. The speaker is placed in the Nest Hub support and has a good performance, both in terms of volume of the audio output and quality. The screen is useful in various circumstances, for example to follow the step-by-step instructions for a recipe, or to activate a video camera to check what is happening in the garden or on the landing.
Nest Hub keeps the screen on all the time and doesn't give you the option to turn it off. However, a sensor detects the amount of light in the room and automatically sets the brightness, reducing it to a minimum at night, if you keep the device on the bedside table.
As with the Home and Home Mini, having a device at home that is always listening and activates as soon as it receives the words “OK / Hey Google” – sometimes misunderstanding words that were not a command, sometimes responding to something heard on TV , etc – and which records what is said after the command, may not leave many users quiet, especially those most interested in protecting their privacy. However Nest Hub, like other Google / Nest home devices, has a physical button that can be used to physically disconnect the microphone.
Accepting criticisms received in the past about the processing of users' personal data, in recent years Google has made progress to reduce the amount of information it collects about its subscribers in order to offer them various services. The company is looking to make the issue of privacy more central by integrating new solutions to track user activity less, while maintaining its services and personalized advertising that are its main source of revenues. It is a less categorical approach than that of Apple, which seeks to combine the need to offer services such as those of the search engine and the protection of user data. Google has formalized in a document its commitment to privacy also with regard to devices for the home, establishing principles that it will undertake to respect even with the introduction of new services and solutions.
Nest Hub costs 129 euros and can be booked starting today, Thursday 6 June, online on the Google store and on the websites of some retailers such as UniEuro (here for the light version, here for the anthracite gray one). The first deliveries and sales in stores will begin on June 12.
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