Today, Google announced another product that is centred around its ubiquitous Google Assistant: the Google Nest Hub. The Nest Hub is a physical embodiment of the Assistant that has a 7-inch display for visuals and a built-in speaker for audio. When connected, the Nest Hub is capable of controlling your smart home, showing you YouTube videos, helping you with recipes and even playing music from your Spotify account.
But my question here is if it’s worth splurging INR 9,999 on the Nest Hub when everything it does can already be done on your smartphone?
Launched back in 2016, Google Assistant is now baked into every Android phone and is also available as an app on Apple’s iPhones. And if software integration wasn’t aggressive enough, some smartphone OEMs have also implemented a dedicated hardware button to pull up the assistant. My point is, we’ve grown highly used to using it in our smartphones and it’s really convenient to control all smart devices via our phones.
With Google Assistant already being at our beck and call via our phones, is it really necessary to purchase a separate device that offers the same functionality but just in a different form? If your argument is to have a device that can be accessible to all members of the house (unlike your smartphone), getting a Google Home Mini or an Amazon Echo Dot will pretty much offer the same functionality. It can still control your smart home, update you with news, play music via Spotify or do just anything the Nest Hub can do (except for visuals of course).
And as far as the display part is concerned, current-gen smartphones have caught up in size and offer an equally immersive viewing experience if not better. And if not for phones, we can always resort to a laptop/tablet/smart TV to get a better viewing experience. An existing tablet with a kickstand is equally capable of helping you with recipes.
Hence, if you’re not one of those people, who are looking for a dedicated smart display to control a bunch of smart devices, I don’t see how the Google Nest Hub could add value to your daily routine.
