Google Nest Hub (2nd gen) review

Setting up the Google Nest Hub (2nd Gen) is simple: install the Google Home smartphone app on your mobile, sign in using your Google account or create one, and then scan the QR code displayed on the Hub’s screen. It will then install any updates – a 10-minute job – and then it’ll guide you through its various options and privacy settings.  

You can teach Google Assistant to recognise your voice using the phone app while the Hub updates, but do this in another room or you’ll trigger the Hub when you speak the sample commands. There are two choices for your Assistant’s voice: male or female with an accent best described as ‘London TV presenter’.

They’re fine, but rivals have more voice options – for example on some devices, Apple’s Siri has an Indian, Irish or South African accent and there are multiple options for each.  

During installation you’ll also be asked if you want to connect third party music or video services: Netflix, Disney+, Apple Music or Spotify. It’s just a matter of logging in to the applicable service from within Google’s app and clicking on the button to authorise use with your Hub. 

If you want to use Sleep Sensing you’ll need to do a quick calibration in your bedroom. The Nest Hub will show you where it needs to be positioned and will ask you to lie on the bed for a moment so it can configure. 

As smart hubs go, this is one of the best looking. Although the Nest Hub screen is only an inch less than the Amazon Echo Show 8, it somehow manages to look much smaller than that: the slim screen is built out from the base rather than within the device enclosure so it looks much slimmer than rival devices.

The device is attached to a wide base and makes the screen look like a small tablet or large phone on a charging stand. You can choose from four colours for the base unit but the screen bezel is white; darker base shades make it look as if it is floating in the air.  

What looks like a camera is the hub’s sensor, which the Nest Hub uses to detect motion and ambient light. And when the device is idle you can use it as a digital photo frame displaying artwork or pictures from Google Photos. There are several customisation options for the screen brightness, colour, content and behaviours. 

Google’s smart home compatibility is superb, with hundreds of brands and thousands of devices suitable for use. The device doesn’t contain a Zigbee Hub like some of Amazon’s Echos do, so that may be an issue if you have Zigbee products such as some Hue bulbs.

However, with both Matter and Thread (Thread is a networking protocol that makes Matter work better by making it easier and faster to connect smart devices to your home) being compatible, the Nest Hub will work with new devices that support those standards. 

One of the headline features here is gesture control, which Google calls Motion Sense. There are two options: wave your hand in front of the display to dismiss alarms and timers, and ‘tap’ the air in front of the screen to stop Google Assistant mid-sentence or play and pause media.

Both are useful if, like us, you like to use your smart screen to play music or show recipe videos while you’re in the kitchen cooking. And the ‘wave’ option is particularly good when your morning alarm goes off. 

Google’s smart home and information widgets are excellent, very clear and strongly resemble their Android phone and tablet equivalents. And, like Android devices, the Hub has good accessibility features for people with vision issues.

There’s also a YouTube Restricted Mode in the app settings that you can use to prevent children accessing inappropriate content.  

The processor inside the Nest Hub (2nd gen) isn’t very powerful, so on-screen swipes can judder and taps can be slow to respond. Anything that requires internet data – processing voice commands or streaming music – can lag a little too, especially with third-party services such as Apple Music.

However, the voice recognition works well, accurately recognising and responding to commands from multiple family members.  

While the 1.7-inch speaker is more bassy than the first generation Hub it’s still rather boxy sounding, lacking the high treble and deep bass of larger speakers; if you like your music loud, this isn’t the device for you.

It’s fine for polished pop and classic rock if you don’t turn the volume up too loud, and it’s good for audiobooks, podcasts and radio. 

The screen is clear and bright, but while it’s fine for watching YouTube recipe videos as you prepare dinner or for quickly Googling the weather or images, it’s too small to be able to watch TV or movies adequately. It works well in photo mode, though.  

This smart device does have a unique selling point: it tracks your sleep. There’s no camera so you don’t need to worry about being photographed or filmed; it uses the same low-energy radar that powers its gesture recognition to track the sleep of whoever’s nearest to the display.

It does this by tracking their motion, listening out for any noises such as coughing or snoring and monitoring the changing light. The data can be shared with Google Fit so you can track your sleep patterns over time; Google guarantees that the data isn’t used for ad targeting.  

You’ll get an on-screen sleep summary in the morning which generates a report on how well you slept, whether you were snoring or coughing and if there were any other noises that might have affected your sleep quality.

However, in order to produce that, the Nest Hub needs to be close to you while you sleep with nothing in between the device and you, a requirement that our dog consistently chose to ignore. 

Although the official price is £89.99, we’ve seen the Google Nest Hub reduced to as low as £44.99, so it’s worth shopping around and avoid paying full price.

That makes it more competitive compared with the 2021 Echo Show 8 from Amazon, currently £64.99, or the Echo Show 5, currently £49.99. 

With devices like this and the Echo Show, the phrase ‘you get what you pay for’ is very true: at £89 or less you shouldn’t expect iPad-esque smoothness, smartphone quality displays or audio performance that’ll knock your socks off any more than you’d expect that from a sub-£100 mobile phone.

These are devices that do everything reasonably well, but their more expensive counterparts do it better. 

There’s no screen on this device, but that’s not the biggest difference between the HomePod mini and the Google Nest Hub.

This is made primarily for iPhone, iPad and Mac users and works extremely well with those devices; if you’re not all-in with Apple and don’t use its HomeKit smart home tech then this is really just an impressive but pricey small speaker.

Siri isn’t as effective as Google Assistant but is good when it comes to controlling audio, turning the lights on and so on, but if you use an Android phone or tablet you’ll probably prefer Google’s Nest Hub to Apple’s HomePod. 

The newly–announced Echo Show 8 (3rd Generation) is a lot more expensive than the Google Nest Hub, but it’s louder, sounds marginally better and Alexa has a faster-responding digital assistant.

It’s not as pretty as Google’s hub, but unlike the Nest Hub it has a built-in camera for video calls – a camera that can keep you in the frame during calls even if you move around.

It supports Threads and Matter, and it also works with Zigbee smart home devices. If the price is too high for your budget, the second generation, which has less features, is still around and available for much less money. 

The Nest Hub Max is the Nest Hub’s bigger sibling and has stereo speakers, a three-inch bass woofer, a built-in video camera and a 10-inch touchscreen with HD resolution.

It’s very loud, its big screen is much better for watching TV in places like the kitchen or smaller rooms, and you can also use its camera as a security camera that you can access from your phone.

It’s got everything that’s good about the Nest Hub (2nd Generation) but bigger and better, and while it’s expensive by comparison it’s fairly priced for the features and specifications it delivers.  

The Google Nest Hub is a great bedside companion even if you don’t use the sleep tracking features.

It’s too small and underpowered for serious music or TV, but it’s a nice and simple bedroom, hallway or kitchen device and an effective and friendly smart home controller.