Google Home Hub Review

I don't think any gadget has made me feel quite as a conflicted as Google's Home Hub. While Google Home Hub is a polished product, my time with it left me with a single burning question: "why?"

On the one hand, it's a cute idea packaged up in an equally cute design. An always-on, always-listening screen that can answer your questions and show you the answers. It's a sci-fi pipe-dream brought to life in a family friendly package.

On the other hand, the Google Home Hub feels entirely superfluous. Very little of the Home Hub's functionality is unique. While Google and Amazon are trying to create a new "smart displays" category, any internet connected devices you own accomplish the same things. Your smartphone is a smart display. Your computer is a smart display. Your tablet is a smart display. Your TV is probably a smart display too.

In short, Home Hub is a Google Home speaker with a 7-inch touchscreen stuck on the front. It can do anything Google Home can do - play music, provide news updates, set calendar appointments, et al - plus Home Hub will provide visual feedback for queries that include weather forecasts, traffic, recipes, and Google searches. It is also a smart home dashboard for controlling compatible gadgets, like your light bulbs or sound system. 

The Home Hub screen itself is nice enough. It's low resolution, but not to the point of being annoying. Viewing angles are wide enough that you don't need to be right in front of the Home Hub to see the display. And it automatically adjusts its brightness to adapt to your environment and the ambient light, so you don't just end up with an obnoxious glowing screen in the corner of you eye. The design is quite human for a piece of tech. 

For some tasks, adding a screen to a smart speaker makes sense. A display can show more information - such as maps, extended weather details, or multiple calendar appointments - without Google Assistant vomiting words at you. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words delivered in a monotonous computer voice.

But all of these tools are also installed on the phone in your pocket. I’m unlikely to ask Home Hub for detailed directions when I can just pull out Google Maps on my phone. I could watch YouTube on the Home Hub, or I could watch the same videos on my laptop, tablet or TV.

This is compounded by the fact that the Home Hub doesn’t have a battery and needs to be plugged in at all times. Google suggests that Home Hub could be useful in the kitchen or on your bedside table, but you'll need to choose one or the other - or pick up a second. There's no easy way to use the Home Hub as your alarm clock AND your baking assistant.

In some ways, visual feedback almost defeats the point of an always listening speaker. You can't just blurt out commands into the ether and get a complete response. You need to walk up to your Home Hub, and by the time you've done that, you may as well have just picked up your phone or tablet and asked Google Assistant or Siri the same thing. 

As damning as it may sound, Home Hub's strongest selling point is how well it works as a digital photo frame. As a Google device, Home Hub has deep integration with Google Photos for a feature dubbed Live Albums. You can pick out specific friends or family members, and photos of them will rotate on the screen. This album will continuously get updated as you take new photos. While this works best with Android, syncing an iPhone with the Google Photos app will also do the trick.

You can also share your Live Album with anyone else who has a Google Photos account which makes Home Hub a great gift idea for relatives you don’t see regularly, but want to share family photos with. While you might have some doubts about trusting Google to decide what photos Mum and Dad get to see, Google says the smarts in Home Hub means it won’t display anything potentially explicit or risqué - bikini shots, for example. These smarts also extend to avoiding blurry photos and presenting vertical photos side-by-side, rather than cropping them.

There's some versatility in Home Hub as a communal device. It's an okay smart home interface that shows you a complete overview of connected Google Home enabled devices - such as a smart bulbs. You can access the smart home hub with a single swipe down, and you'll get quick controls for appliances in the same room. Controlling devices in a different room is a bit more of a hassle, typically requiring four steps. It took me about 15 seconds to turn off my living room lights from my bedroom. It would have been faster to use voice commands. Hell, it would have been faster to get up and walk to the switch.

User interface issues aside, the Google Home ecosystem isn’t quite as fast for controlling smart home devices as Siri on iPhone and HomePod or Alexa on Amazon Echo. Devices take almost twice as long to respond (approximately six seconds for a light bulb), which is long enough to make you wonder if something has gone wrong.

Google says music is the most common use case among Google Home owners, which makes sense - Google Homes are fundamentally speakers after all. With this is in mind, it’s sad to see (well, hear) that Home Hub’s speaker isn’t very good. It’s roughly on par with the $79 Google Home Mini. Quiet background music sounds okay, but it starts to abrasive when you crank the volume too loud.

While the vast majority of devices in the burgeoning "smart display" category include a camera for video chat purposes, Google intentionally omitted one on Home Hub. During setup, the companion app explicitly points out the ambient light sensor isn't a camera. We think this is for the best. Always listening smart speakers are creepy enough. Adding a camera to the equation - especially when you're suggesting people use them on their bedside table - is doubly uncomfortable. Google doesn't want to watch you sleep, it just wants to listen.

Who is the Google Home Hub for?

Google Home Hub is a cute, polished product that accomplishes what it sets out to do. It expands Google Home beyond voice with visual feedback that's presented in a slick and easy to understand manner. At the same time, I haven't been able to find a place for it in my home. It feels like a new device for the sake of a device. Anything Home Hub can do, your smartphone can do better.

Home Hub isn't without merits, but at $219, you're paying a steep premium over the $79 Google Home Mini or the Amazon Echo Dot. Still, if you buy the Home Hub and decide smart home gadgets aren't for you, at least you still end up with a cute, if expensive, digital photo frame.

Alex Choros

Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor | X | Instagram | Threads | LinkedIn

Alex Choros is the Managing Editor of WhistleOut Australia and an award-winning journalist. He's been writing about consumer technology for over a decade and is an expert on the Australian telco sector, to the point where he knows far too many phone and internet plans by heart. In addition to leading the WhistleOut editorial team, Alex is responsible for ruining the office Sonos with his troubled taste in music.

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