After today’s bumper set of announcements from New York it seems Google is taking the fight to Amazon with its new smart speaker, the Google Home Hub.
Designed to be a hands-free hub, the device will listen for you to say “okay Google” before springing to life.
The product was launched at this year’s Google Event held in New York, where a raft of other products were unveiled including the Pixel 3.
There had been rumours a new product was on the way, with most details coming from early leaks .
Diya Jolly speaking at the Google event talked about the "reimagined" product.
You can pre-order for $149 today.
Waking up
yYu can start your day with just saying Hey Google and it’ll wake up and give you all the information you need.
Screen time
Fitted with a seven-inch screen, the Home Hub will offer a way to watch video, see photos and enjoy a rich user interface around the normal Google Home voice commands. Expect a lot of beautiful apps to appear in the future.
Interestingly Google has opted not to include a camera on the Home Hub. Hot of the heels of a major data leak that exposed nearly 500,000 customer records it seems Google is nervous about putting cameras in your home.
Jolly said it was to ensure you could use it in the privacy of your room.
Photos and live albums
One of the best features is likely to leverage Google’s amazing Photos service. Ask the Home Hub to show you pictures of your holiday to New York, or photos with animals or children and the device will respond.
You can select any album you’ve ever created or shared with you.
There’s also live albums, you select what you want to see – then Google groups it. The live albums update everytime you take new pictures.
It’s able to do this because of Google’s cloud-based machine learning algorithms. These sort your photos, recognise people and use geolocation data to find the photos you’re looking for.
Features
As you would expect there are plenty of wireless connection options here. Both 3.5GHz and 5HGHz Wi-Fi are supported. There’s also Bluetooth to connect phones and tablets to the device, to use it’s built-in speaker.
The seven-inch touchscreen will be your interface with the device when you’re not telling it what to do with your voice. The screen will adapt to your ambient lighting too, thanks to a colour sensor called Ambient EQ. And of course it will adjust the screen brightness to match the room. It also automatically turns off at night.
There’s also a full-range speaker that promises great quality sound – ideal for music services and watching video.
Like other Google Home devices, the hub will be able to recognise the voice of whoever is talking to it. This allows you a degree of customisation and to get information that’s relevant to you, rather than other users in the house.
During the presentation Google pointed out you can use your voice to get instructions when in the kitchen, as it’s hands free.
This is possible thanks to a set of far-field microphones. These are able to hear what you say even if you’re a long way from the device and it’s the same tech Amazon uses in its Echo hardware.
Filters
There’s also filters for family friendly content, to make sure parents can limit what kids can use the Home Hub for.
Home view
Hub also has Home View – it’s a swipe down from the top of the screen. It shows the state of your entire home in one place.
It was designed to simplify the device, and you can see things by room – so it’s in one place for the first time.
Google also redesigned the Home App to control the devices from any phone, even when you aren’t at home.
The device is integrated with nest devices, so if someone rings the doorbell it will show you who is there.
There’s 200million devices that work with this, from more than 1000 brands.
Design
The new device has rounded corners and four colours to complement rooms.
It’s small enough to fit in various spaces in the home.
Pre-order
The Google Home Hub will be available from the October 22 in the UK.
Price
Google Home Hub is $149 in the US. Uk prices are yet to be announced.
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