Google Home Hub review – in pictures

HELPING HAND

Google has been modest when it comes to its first screen-based device, the Home Hub. It’s more compact and stylish than the Echo Show, and it’s only £140, making it much more affordable than Amazon’s equivalent. There are still issues with the limited amount of things it could do at launch, and it lacks the video conferencing ability of the Echo Show, but it’s a neat little device that won’t break the bank. Having used the Google Home Hub for the last week, we’d say that if youe smart assistant does have to have a screen, Google’s Home Hub is the one to go for.

SMALL BUT MIGHTY

Google Home Hub is relatively compact, certainly next to Amazon’s Echo Show. Everything is focused on a 7-inch touchscreen display (the new Echo Show is 10-inch), surrounded by a white bezel. You can’t choose the colour of the bezel, but you can choose the colour of the stand, which is covered in a nice fabric (ours was grey, but black, green and pink are also available). The benefit of the screen is that it can display information, rather than just telling you about it, so you can see at a glance what the weather’s going to be like, what events you’ve got in the calendar for the day, or what the score of the game was last night. The screen itself looks fantastic, but it doesn’t tilt or turn, so if you can’t see it, you have to move the whole unit. Also, it’s worth noting this is a mains-powered device, so there’s no taking it outside or on-the-go.

APPS AND DOWNS

Right now, the number of supported music and video apps is relatively low. There’s a free version of Spotify as well as the option to use Deezer, Google Music or YouTube Music, but there are still a lot of services missing, including Tidal and Apple Music. On the video side, YouTube is supported, so you can search for the latest trailers, music videos and Fortnite videos using your voice. All 4, the on-demand service from UK broadcaster 4 is supported, so as long as you have an account, and while you can also link your Netflix account, you can’t actually view Netflix content on the device. Weird. You can also cast from some apps on your phone to the Home Hub, like iPlayer and ITV Hub, but not others, like Google’s own Slides app. Not that you’d really want to show a slideshow on there, but the point is, it is a little limited right now.

THE MISSING LINK

Really, the only big thing missing from the Google Home Hub is that it doesn’t have a video camera, which the Amazon Echo Show does. This means that it doesn’t support video calls, but it also means that the device can’t film you and send that footage back to Google, which has been a concern for people around these sorts of devices. Personally, I’ve had an Amazon Echo Show for around a year, and I’ve used the Drop In feature like, once, and that was to test it out for a fellow Stuff staff member’s review. If I need to video chat with someone, I’m much more likely to use my phone or a computer. You can, however, broadcast voice messages across your various Google Home devices using Home Hub, and make Google Voice calls.

GET SMART

Our smart home contains devices from Philips Hue, Hive, Nvidia, Sonos and Netatmo. Both Google and Amazon controlled the lights and heating from Philips and Hive just fine without any setup required. Google’s Home Hub was able to see our Android-powered Nvidia Shield and Philips OLED TV and use them as a display if we wanted to watch YouTube clips on there instead of the Home Hub, whereas Amazon only supports this functionality via its own Fire TV devices. However, Amazon does have one up on Google when it comes to multi-room audio on Sonos speakers, which isn’t yet supported on Google (but is supposedly on the way). Neither Amazon or Google connected to our Netatmo cameras or Healthy Home Coach, whereas Apple won here thanks to Homekit support which would allow Siri to report on temperature readouts.

AN IDEAL INTERFACE

The interface is also really snappy and never slows down — if you ask for a party playlist, the device will figure out it needs to open Spotify and start playing music within seconds. If you ask for Kiss FM, it’ll open TuneIn, and again it’s all pretty much instantaneous. We also liked that you can add various profiles to the Google Home Hub and allow other people to access their information through the device. Finally, we also really liked that Google had integrated YouTube into the News app, so that stories were delivered in video form, rather than being in text or read out by the AI assistant.

IMPRESSIVE VISUALS, DISAPPOINTING AUDIO

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 device only has two front-facing microphones, but we found voice pickup to be excellent, even from afar. Sound is less good, lacking punch in the bass, so if you’re looking for a music-playing device, we’d suggest a dedicated speaker as the Google Home Hub has no audio out port.

GOOGLE HOME HUB VERDICT

The Google Home Hub doesn’t cost too much more than a standard smart speaker but it comes with a fair few caveats. Google still doesn’t support all the smart home devices that Alexa does, the audio quality isn’t as good as on a dedicated speaker, and there are a lack of basic video apps at this stage. The ability to Chromecast covers some of these issues, but we had problems casting from Netflix and Google’s own apps at launch. 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.