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The Google Home Hub may be small in size, but it's surprisingly useful in a lot of ways, from organizing your smart home to walking you through a complex recipe, to finding you a place to eat if your cooking efforts fall short.
The small gadget is made mighty by the great Google Assistant, and the line is blurry between where the actual hardware of the Google Home Hub shines and where the digital Google Assistant does all of the heavy lifting. To an extent, that differentiation might not matter for your buying decision. The Hub is a $149 (£139, AU$219) smart display that combines the functionality of a voice-controlled smart speaker like the original Google Home with a touchscreen you can use to look at pictures, watch videos, browse recipes, control your smart home and more.
If you're a fan of Google and want a Google-centric smart home, or if you just like the idea of a smart speaker with a screen and want to try one out for the step-by-step recipe guides, I recommend the Google Home Hub. The seamless touch controls and intuitive voice commands will even help the tech-phobic members of your family get used to it.
The differentiation between hardware and software becomes much more important if you're able to spend a little more and are willing to consider third-party smart displays alongside Google's. Both Lenovo and JBL have smart displays with Google Assistant built-in and most of the same features as the Home Hub. I still prefer Google Assistant's use of the touchscreen to Amazon's, but the new $230 (£220, AU$349) Amazon Echo Show is pretty good if you're already invested in Amazon's assistant Alexa. If not, go with the $250 Lenovo Smart Display if you want a big screen and the most stylish design. Go with the $200 JBL Link View for great sound quality. (Neither are yet available in the UK or Australia.)
The Google Home Hub is the only major smart display so far without a camera, which might be a negative for some, but privacy-minded folks will appreciate its absence. Otherwise, it offers all the same features as the other smart displays for less, which makes the Google Home Hub a cute, useful gadget at a nice value.
Good things in small packages
The Google Home Hub is tiny. It sort of looks like Google stuck a thin, 7-inch tablet onto a Google Home Mini. It's simple -- a screen and a stand covered in fabric.
It has two forward-facing microphones on a bezel surrounding the 7-inch screen. The middle dot between the mics is an ambient light sensor, not a camera. On the back of the Home Hub you'll find a switch that mutes the microphone and buttons for controlling the volume, and that's it. If you want to do anything else with the Home Hub, you'll need to use its touchscreen or give it a voice command.
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That's an ambient light sensor, not a camera.
Chris Monroe/CNETYou can pick from four possible colors for the fabric -- chalk, charcoal, aqua and sand. We tested the chalk model, but all four colors are otherwise the same and all cost $149. You can buy the Google Home Hub starting Monday at Best Buy, Walmart, Target and other electronics retailers as well as online via the Google Store. (See here for the UK and Australia.)
Google bundles a six-month trial of YouTube Premium with the purchase of a Home Hub. The service costs $12 (£12, AU$15) a month after the trial ends and allows you to listen to YouTube's music library without ads.
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The four color options for the Google Home Hub.
James Martin/CNETAn entertainment hub
You don't need a subscription to watch ordinary YouTube videos on the Home Hub. You can search for them by voice and scroll through the options with your voice or with touch. YouTube gives the Google Home Hub an advantage over the Amazon Echo Show. Google pulled the rights to the streaming site from Amazon's competing smart display over a dispute last year. You can watch YouTube on the Echo Show, but only via a browser, which doesn't respond to voice commands.
The videos also look surprisingly crisp on the petite 7-inch screen. If you have a subscription to YouTube's live TV service -- YouTube TV -- you can watch live TV on the Hub as well. It certainly won't replace your main TV, but again, the picture looks good, so this feature could come in handy if you want to watch the news in the morning while you make breakfast.
Otherwise, you can watch streaming videos through services such as HBO Now and CNET's sister site CBS All Access on the Hub itself. You can't watch Netflix on the Hub yet, but as with any of Google's smart speakers, you can issue a voice command to the Hub to start streaming Netflix on any of your TVs with a Chromecast streamer or Chromecast built-in.
You have plenty of options for listening to music on the Hub as well. Other than YouTube music, you can sync your account for Google Play Music, Pandora and Spotify. You can also set any of those services as your default, so Google Assistant will search there first when you ask it to play a song.
Once you start playing music, you can use the Google Home app to customize the speaker equalizer settings if you want a little more bass or treble. You can also add the Home Hub to speaker groups with other Google Assistant smart speakers or speakers connected to a Chromecast audio streamer. If you don't like the sound quality of the Home Hub, you can also set another speaker as your default and it will automatically start playing music on that device instead of through its own speakers.
Smaller hardware, smaller sound
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From left to right, the Lenovo Smart Display, Google Home Hub and JBL Link View.
Chris Monroe/CNETYou might not like the sound quality of the Home Hub if you're an audiophile. It's fine if you want to listen to background music, but it's not particularly loud or crisp. Unfortunately, the sound quality isn't in the same league as other smart displays like the Amazon Echo Show or the JBL Link View. In fact, the sound quality is more on par with Google's smallest smart speaker -- the Google Home Mini, which even beat the Home Hub slightly in our tests.
Thankfully, the Hub's microphones held up better under scrutiny. The Home Hub understood my voice commands from across the large great room of the CNET Smart Home. It even heard me from an adjacent room as long as I had the door open. It also fared well over background noise while I stood in the same room. Expect to need to speak up if you're playing loud music, but that's standard for any smart speaker. The second-generation Amazon Echo Show heard me more often from a greater distance, but the Hub's mics are on par with those in the smart displays from Lenovo and JBL.
Smart display comparison
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Google Home Hub | Amazon Echo Show (2018) | Facebook Portal, Portal Plus | Lenovo Smart Display 10 inch, 8 inch | JBL Link View |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US price | $150 | $230 | $200; $350 | $250; $200 | $250 |
| Screen Size | 7-inch (177.8 mm) | 10.1-inch (256.5 mm) | 10.1-inch (256.5 mm)/15.6-inch (396.2 mm) | 10.1-inch (256.5 mm)/8-inch (203.2 mm) | 8-inch (203.2 mm) |
| Resolution |
1024x600 |
720p (1,280x800) | 720p (1,200x800); 1080p (1,920x1,080) | 1080p (1,920x1,200); 720p (1,280x800) | 720p (1,280x800) |
| Dimensions (WxHxD) | 7.02x4.65x2.65 inches (179x118x67 mm) | 9.7x6.9x4.2 inches (246x175x107 mm) | 9.8x8.2x3.7 inches (250x208x94 mm); 8.8x17.7x5.7 inches (224x450x145 mm) | 6.8x12.3x0.5-5.4 inches (173.87x311.37x13-136 mm); 5.6x10.4x0.5-4.4 inches (142x263x13-111 mm) | 13x6x3.9 inches (332x152x100 mm) |
| Weight | 1.1 pounds (480 grams) | 3.9 pounds (1.76 kg) | 2.7 pounds (1.25 kg); 7.4 pounds (3.36 kg) | 2.6 pounds (1.2 kg); 2.2 pounds (1 kg) | 2.9 pounds (1.3 kg) net weight |
| Wireless Connectivity | Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n/ac, 2.4GHz and 5GHz), Bluetooth 5.0 | Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n/ac, 2.4GHz and 5GHz), Bluetooth speakers requiring PIN codes not supported | Wi‑Fi (802.11a/b/g/n/ac, 2.4GHz and 5GHz), Bluetooth 4.2 | Wi-Fi (802.11ac, 2.4GHz and 5GHz), Bluetooth | Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n/ac, 2.4GHz and 5GHz), Bluetooth 4.2 |
| Voice Assistant | Google Assistant | Alexa | Alexa | Google Assistant | Google Assistant |
| Calling (from US) and messaging | Direct dial (US, UK and Canada, outgoing calls only), video calls with Google Duo | Alexa Messaging, Skype, direct dial (US and Mexico) | Facebook Messenger | Direct dial (US, UK and Canada, outgoing calls only), video calls with Google Duo | Direct dial (US, UK and Canada, outgoing calls only), video calls with Google Duo |
| Smart kitchen features | Step-by-step recipe assistance with YouTube tutorial videos | Step-by-step recipe assistance; Amazon Meal Kits integration | Limited Alexa recipe assistance | Step-by-step recipe assistance with YouTube tutorial videos | Step-by-step recipe assistance with YouTube tutorial videos |
| Onscreen smart home controls | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Built-in Camera | No | Yes (5-megapixel) | Yes (12-megapixel) | Yes (5-megapixel) | Yes (5-megapixel) |
| Privacy Shutter | n/a | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Microphones | 2-mic array | 4-mic array | 4-mic array (2 front, 2 rear) | 4-mic array (2 front, 2 rear) |
2-mic array |
| Speakers | Full range speaker (80 dB SPL @ 1KHz, @ 1m) | Dual 10W, 2-inch neodymium drivers with Dolby processing, passive bass radiator | 10W (2 full-range drivers); 20W (2 tweeters, single 4-inch bass) | 0.75 10W full range speaker, 2x passive tweeters | View More