Free Google Nest Hub - but what to do with it?
Discussion
I've recently upgraded my Google account storage to 2TB which costs £79/year. I'd run out of space in the previous tier, since I use Gmail (and don't delete anything), Google Drive for computer backup and Google Photos to sync photos and videos from my phone. About a week later, Google sent me an email saying that as a 2TB subscriber I could order a Google Nest Hub for free, including shipping. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, they say, so I ordered it.
Anyway, it's arrived this morning and I am yet to open the package. I haven't even figured out what it would be useful for. I've done a bit of reading and all I can come up with is that it's a 7" tablet on a stand which can play music, answer OK Google queries, and track your sleep somehow. I already have an old iPad 2 knocking around as well as my very sluggish Nexus 9 tablet as well as my current iPad Air 2020 which I use for work and pleasure. I'm historically an Android person, but work reasons mean I need to use iOS so my phone is an iPhone 12 Pro. I subscribe to both Amazon Music and Youtube Premium which comes with Youtube Music. I have a couple of Roku media streamers and an old Chromecast as well which a friend chucked my way. I don't watch any broadcast TV at all - my watching is confined entirely to Youtube/Netflix and occasionally, Amazon Prime video.
I also have wifi cameras in the form of a Blink XT system, both for external security and to keep an eye on my very frail and terminally ill mother when I need to leave her on her own. I believe you can view the camera videos and doorbell feeds on Amazon's equivalent device, but not sure about this thing. I don't have any other home automation.
So I'm wondering whether to open the box and keep it for some unknown use. If it can run the Amazon Music app you Youtube Music, maybe music and recipes in the kitchen? Does it have usable speakers, or can it connect to a bluetooth speaker? Does it do anything that an old tablet can't? I'm struggling to see the utility of another piece of tech and despite working in IT, I'm not really a gadget person - I have what I need but nothing more than that. Does this do anything that people find compelling, or is it just another piece of clutter? I could give it to one of my nephews for Christmas, or donate it to charity otherwise.
Anyway, it's arrived this morning and I am yet to open the package. I haven't even figured out what it would be useful for. I've done a bit of reading and all I can come up with is that it's a 7" tablet on a stand which can play music, answer OK Google queries, and track your sleep somehow. I already have an old iPad 2 knocking around as well as my very sluggish Nexus 9 tablet as well as my current iPad Air 2020 which I use for work and pleasure. I'm historically an Android person, but work reasons mean I need to use iOS so my phone is an iPhone 12 Pro. I subscribe to both Amazon Music and Youtube Premium which comes with Youtube Music. I have a couple of Roku media streamers and an old Chromecast as well which a friend chucked my way. I don't watch any broadcast TV at all - my watching is confined entirely to Youtube/Netflix and occasionally, Amazon Prime video.
I also have wifi cameras in the form of a Blink XT system, both for external security and to keep an eye on my very frail and terminally ill mother when I need to leave her on her own. I believe you can view the camera videos and doorbell feeds on Amazon's equivalent device, but not sure about this thing. I don't have any other home automation.
So I'm wondering whether to open the box and keep it for some unknown use. If it can run the Amazon Music app you Youtube Music, maybe music and recipes in the kitchen? Does it have usable speakers, or can it connect to a bluetooth speaker? Does it do anything that an old tablet can't? I'm struggling to see the utility of another piece of tech and despite working in IT, I'm not really a gadget person - I have what I need but nothing more than that. Does this do anything that people find compelling, or is it just another piece of clutter? I could give it to one of my nephews for Christmas, or donate it to charity otherwise.
I think you are going to be out of luck getting it working with Amazon tech. Bless their little interoperable hearts.
Useful for recipes, marginally useful as a Google Home with a screen. Too small to use as a video player, speakers are OK, but I am tone deaf, so wouldnt appreciate if it sounded like a 2p speaker in a baked bean tin
If the family gift target is a google home user, good thing.
Useful for recipes, marginally useful as a Google Home with a screen. Too small to use as a video player, speakers are OK, but I am tone deaf, so wouldnt appreciate if it sounded like a 2p speaker in a baked bean tin
If the family gift target is a google home user, good thing.
randlemarcus said:
If the family gift target is a google home user, good thing.
I don't really know what Google Home does. I had to download it to set up the Chromecast on my wifi but it didn't appear to have any other functionality so I never looked at it again. I'm guessing if you have smart light switches or a smart thermostat or something? I don't even own a smartwatch!LunarOne said:
I don't really know what Google Home does. I had to download it to set up the Chromecast on my wifi but it didn't appear to have any other functionality so I never looked at it again. I'm guessing if you have smart light switches or a smart thermostat or something? I don't even own a smartwatch!
Good way to look at it is as an aggregator of smartstuff. You tell Home what toys you have, it allows control of those toys, whether they are lightbulbs, Chromecasts, Nest stuff, and adds some level of intelligence - me saying OK Google, goodnight shuts off the living room lights and TV, and turns on the porch bulb at 20% brightness. Clever ish, I suspect there is more scope for playing if you are highly gadget oriented.Mine does service as a photo frame (you can link it to Google Photos albums), a radio, and a shopping list. Things which it does very well. If I had more Nest stuff then it would probably show me who was at the door and stuff like that, but I don't. But for what I use it for, it's decent enough and if you got if for free, it's pretty good value for money as well 
randlemarcus said:
Good way to look at it is as an aggregator of smartstuff. You tell Home what toys you have, it allows control of those toys, whether they are lightbulbs, Chromecasts, Nest stuff, and adds some level of intelligence - me saying OK Google, goodnight shuts off the living room lights and TV, and turns on the porch bulb at 20% brightness. Clever ish, I suspect there is more scope for playing if you are highly gadget oriented.
Yes, but there's an inherent conflict with smart tech that make it less obvious what the point is. Google Home makes it easy to control things, but much of the point of the tech is to automate the intervention in the first place. It doesn't matter if Home talks to your central heating if you set it up properly, you don't need to dim your porch light when you go to bed, you can just schedule it to dim at roughly the right time. You can have it turn on at Sunset using IFTTT if you're at home using a geolocation trigger. Etc etc.Then when you're not using it, you forget what the voice commands are and then it's much easier to use the Devices drop down in Android 11 onwards. Half the time it's easier to use the quick access thing on the phone anyway.
I use mine to answer the kids incessant questions when I don't know the answer, I use it to sarcastically add items to a shopping list when my wife asks me to add something to the list. One day she'll twig that she can do it herself. The kids use the Broadcast feature to issue unreasonable requests and that's quite neat when I'm in the workshop.
I like that you can default the output on the Minis to a Chromecast Audio as it gives me voice control of my house audio, but for some reason they stopped making those Chromecasts so it's hard to recommend that feature.
The hub with the screen is a bit disappointing and underdeveloped. It doesn't do anything well enough that you won't just pick up your phone, it would be more useful if you could create your own dashboard of phone apps/widgets and have it run off your phone as you like it, rather than the very limited set of things Google think you should want to see.
I do like that you can make calls with it using Duo, I mean I don't ever make calls and I can do it from my PC where the Home Hub is, but it has a Call Another Room feature, which could be decent if you are working at your desk and your wife etc is in another part of the house and you can't be bothered to get up. Problem is unless you have another Hub the other person won't know the voice command to answer on one of the non-screen devices and if you're in another room you won't know how to initiate a call anyway.
The integration with Chromecast is decent, but it's the same as your phone, so whether it's useful often comes down to whether the hub is somewhere handy when you want to use it, because your phone is in your pocket. Eg, I could put one on the shelf by the sofa and it would run a YouTube Queue on the TV very well, but chances are it's easier to use your phone.
Overall, I like the tech, but it's quite disappointing.
Oh, don't ever ask Google about your reminders if you use Keep notes with it, it will proceed to read out the entirety of any note that has a reminder set for it, no matter how long the note is.
paulrockliffe said:
chances are it's easier to use your phone.
If it can play Youtube videos, it might be kind of useful in the kitchen. I'm not someone who carries their phone around constantly. It sits in my bag on the stairs or by the side of my bed when I'm at home. When I'm working I'm in front of two computer screens in my home office and when I'm not working I'm out driving or cycling or playing golf or tinkering in the garage, none of which need my phone. Sure, I do make phone calls, but those aren't that common these days and I can do that through my iPad or Mac...However it's not something I ever would have considered paying for so I think I'll keep it sealed and dispose of it to charity.
Yes, it will play YouTube videos, but then in the kitchen you want to be able to display recipes too, which it can do I think, but only recipes you've arrived at by asking Google, which is too annoying. And maybe you want to see you Calendar, or the kids calendars? Well it will show you what's going on today, but nothing else. FFS.
Mine is still showing the reminders I dismissed on my phone, so the screen is cluttered with stuff I've already done rather than the things I need to do. But it's showing three of them, one it uses half the screen for even though there's nothing to put on most of it, the other two then get 1/8th of the screen which is too small to even tell you what they are. So they're identical - it's so basic to turn them into a stack and put the number 2 on there somewhere instead.
I clicked on a reminder and it's default option wasn't to show me what it was but to start reading them all out. Another WTF. I can't find a way to view the reminder on the screen, but now it's started to read them it's removed them from the screen entirely, even the ones I've not done.
Now half the screen is the weather, 1/4 is time to work, the last quarter is some advert for a feature on the hub that I already know about. None of this is relevant to me. I'd like to be able to tell it to show my Agenda, a list from Google Keep, the weather discretely, maybe my phone notifications, whether the central heating is on or off and a music controller.
But you can't even change the time-out when it goes back to the clock to anything useful. Which is really ironic as the feature it's desperate to tell me about is it's ability to use ultrasonic sensing to detect when you're near. And then do nothing with that information!
To be fair, it does do the music quite well, so long as you have YouTube Music anyway, because you can set it to default to a particular Chromecast and it does then put a controller on the home screen, but it still reverts back to the Clock ever 30s, so you're always a swipe away from being able to use it.
So really you'd be better off, free device aside, getting a cheap tablet and configuring it to very simply deliver just the stuff you want easy access to in the kitchen.
Don't get me wrong, there are some good bits in the UI that are difficult to replicate outside of Home Hub, but it's so limited and inflexible that I can't see how it's ever the best tool for the job.
Mine is still showing the reminders I dismissed on my phone, so the screen is cluttered with stuff I've already done rather than the things I need to do. But it's showing three of them, one it uses half the screen for even though there's nothing to put on most of it, the other two then get 1/8th of the screen which is too small to even tell you what they are. So they're identical - it's so basic to turn them into a stack and put the number 2 on there somewhere instead.
I clicked on a reminder and it's default option wasn't to show me what it was but to start reading them all out. Another WTF. I can't find a way to view the reminder on the screen, but now it's started to read them it's removed them from the screen entirely, even the ones I've not done.
Now half the screen is the weather, 1/4 is time to work, the last quarter is some advert for a feature on the hub that I already know about. None of this is relevant to me. I'd like to be able to tell it to show my Agenda, a list from Google Keep, the weather discretely, maybe my phone notifications, whether the central heating is on or off and a music controller.
But you can't even change the time-out when it goes back to the clock to anything useful. Which is really ironic as the feature it's desperate to tell me about is it's ability to use ultrasonic sensing to detect when you're near. And then do nothing with that information!
To be fair, it does do the music quite well, so long as you have YouTube Music anyway, because you can set it to default to a particular Chromecast and it does then put a controller on the home screen, but it still reverts back to the Clock ever 30s, so you're always a swipe away from being able to use it.
So really you'd be better off, free device aside, getting a cheap tablet and configuring it to very simply deliver just the stuff you want easy access to in the kitchen.
Don't get me wrong, there are some good bits in the UI that are difficult to replicate outside of Home Hub, but it's so limited and inflexible that I can't see how it's ever the best tool for the job.
I think it will be a little pointless unless you are fully into the Google smart home system. I have a nest hub set up in my office and the most useful thing is that when someone rings the doorbell (Nest Hello) the video feed pops up and I don’t miss it. Other than that it’s a photo frame, and I use it to control the Phillips Hue lights but only in that room, Nest thermostat etc.
I don’t use it for audio as I have a Sonos set up, I think you’d be disappointed if it was your only audio device. I can use it to control the Sonos though, as the one in that room doesn’t have Google Assistant built in.
As someone else mentioned, it does nothing that my phone doesn’t already do. I think the little Mini’s that you can put around anywhere are more useful, except for the doorbell thing (and even they will announce who is at the door if the camera recognises them).
I don’t use it for audio as I have a Sonos set up, I think you’d be disappointed if it was your only audio device. I can use it to control the Sonos though, as the one in that room doesn’t have Google Assistant built in.
As someone else mentioned, it does nothing that my phone doesn’t already do. I think the little Mini’s that you can put around anywhere are more useful, except for the doorbell thing (and even they will announce who is at the door if the camera recognises them).
Thanks everyone! In my 20s and 30s I used to have separates CD player (can't remember), AV amplifier (Denon AVC-A1D) and speakers (B&W DM602?) which are gathering dust in the loft and I have reverted to my 6th-form-era (1990?) Sony MHC3600 mini system with Bluetooth adapter on the aux in input in my study. My source is either my iPad or my computer and that's basically it at home. Most of my music listening is when driving, so I invested in a retro-look Blaupunkt SQR46 DAB for my old 1992 730i so I can still stream and hear my phone navigation. So no Sonos, no multi-room audio, no Sky TV, no cable TV despite having Virgin cable broadband. Mum lives with me and watches Freeview and that's more than enough for her.
I was considering getting a smart switch to control the lights outside the front door to come on at dusk and go off half an hour after dawn, but I don't see that I'd need a UI once it's set up unless the smart switch needs something more intelligent to vary the on and off time as the day length changes. But I'm really not a gadget kind of person. It's bad enough having to spend my day in front of a computer screen all day! So I guess it's a nope from me!
I was considering getting a smart switch to control the lights outside the front door to come on at dusk and go off half an hour after dawn, but I don't see that I'd need a UI once it's set up unless the smart switch needs something more intelligent to vary the on and off time as the day length changes. But I'm really not a gadget kind of person. It's bad enough having to spend my day in front of a computer screen all day! So I guess it's a nope from me!
Glad it's not just me!
I got a free Nest Mini from my ISP that's still in its box because I can't work out what I'd use it for. I've got a fair few smart plugs and a Sonos but the plugs are programmed around dusk and my phone lives in my pocket anyway for those rare occasions I change things.
I got a free Nest Mini from my ISP that's still in its box because I can't work out what I'd use it for. I've got a fair few smart plugs and a Sonos but the plugs are programmed around dusk and my phone lives in my pocket anyway for those rare occasions I change things.
Bill said:
Glad it's not just me!
I got a free Nest Mini from my ISP that's still in its box because I can't work out what I'd use it for. I've got a fair few smart plugs and a Sonos but the plugs are programmed around dusk and my phone lives in my pocket anyway for those rare occasions I change things.
The minis like you have are fairly useful, I've ended up collecting a fair few of them as various companies have given them away over the years, including YouTube Music who ended up giving me one per family member when I took out a single subscription. I think I have 7 or something.I got a free Nest Mini from my ISP that's still in its box because I can't work out what I'd use it for. I've got a fair few smart plugs and a Sonos but the plugs are programmed around dusk and my phone lives in my pocket anyway for those rare occasions I change things.
I have them setup to default music to Chromecast Audios that are connected to amplifiers in a cupboard that feed ceiling speakers, with the amplifiers turned on with a mix of timer and whether anyone is home.
The one in the workshop is particularly useful for listening to stuff when your hands are filthy and you can broadcast or call the other rooms, so it's great for passing messages. I use them a lot for adding stuff to lists as they come to mind rather than forgetting them and they're good for answering questions too. Voice control of things like the TV is handy for turning them off when the kids are ignoring their bath time.
The thing is, you sort of need to go all in, it's not much use having one in a room, because you'll end up doing something else when you're not in that room, you need one to be able to hear you wherever you are really.
Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff