Google Nest Hub 2nd Gen (Charcoal)

I regret buying my Nest Hub Smart Display. When I tell it to turn on a light or smart plug, it'll often take 4-5 seconds--long enough for me to think it didn't register. Which it also frequently fails at. So I'm either having to repeat myself or giving the command again right as it starts while standing in the dark like a fool. These are various smart home devices that worked nearly instantaneously with competitor smart speakers. The microphone sensitivity seems way worse than the competitor I've had or even the Google Nest Mini. If you go to the main dashboard of the device, it includes advertisements for games. I've found no way to customize the dashboard to include only what I want. Some people don't mind, but I'm a personality type that likes to organize things ... MoreI regret buying my Nest Hub Smart Display. When I tell it to turn on a light or smart plug, it'll often take 4-5 seconds--long enough for me to think it didn't register. Which it also frequently fails at. So I'm either having to repeat myself or giving the command again right as it starts while standing in the dark like a fool. These are various smart home devices that worked nearly instantaneously with competitor smart speakers. The microphone sensitivity seems way worse than the competitor I've had or even the Google Nest Mini. If you go to the main dashboard of the device, it includes advertisements for games. I've found no way to customize the dashboard to include only what I want. Some people don't mind, but I'm a personality type that likes to organize things in a way that makes sense to my mind. Or at least, not have a sizable chunk of a small screen occupied by ads for something I will never ever want. On a device I thought I owned. A digital personal assistant that nags or tries to upsell me isn't my idea of a utopian future. Which is why I got rid of competitor speakers after too many unrelated advertisements that I don't want to hear when setting a timer or asking the weather. The Google assistant is better, but just the other day I asked it to turn on a certain smart plug. It misunderstood and went on to launching a long advertisement about smart thermostats available from Google. It was even so helpful to send a link to purchasing it from Google to my phone. I asked for none of that! Have had the device sometimes freeze. One time I had to factory reset it to get it to work again properly.I wish I would not have made this purchase and won't be purchasing any other Google smart home devices.

Pros: Screen looks nice. Voice control works with smart lights.Cons: Touch screen is terribly unresponsive by today's standards. Very unintuitive to set up properly so I gave up.As an example of its logic, at one point it only lets you get to a setting by using voice control but then only lets you choose the following option using touch control. As it's also sluggish in operation you can easily hit the wrong touch button and then there's no option to go back. So you have to start again with a completely illogical sequence.Hence the following examples of things I don't like, may be due to not having been set up properly.Anyway, it only reads my main Google calendar not my sub or associated calenders, which makes it useless to check my agenda.I can't set up the ... MorePros: Screen looks nice. Voice control works with smart lights.Cons: Touch screen is terribly unresponsive by today's standards. Very unintuitive to set up properly so I gave up.As an example of its logic, at one point it only lets you get to a setting by using voice control but then only lets you choose the following option using touch control. As it's also sluggish in operation you can easily hit the wrong touch button and then there's no option to go back. So you have to start again with a completely illogical sequence.Hence the following examples of things I don't like, may be due to not having been set up properly.Anyway, it only reads my main Google calendar not my sub or associated calenders, which makes it useless to check my agenda.I can't set up the screen to show exactly what I want e.g. agenda on one half, notifications on the other.I can't show photos from my local server only those that are stored on Google Photos. I can only show a single Google Photo album album as a screen saver not all my Google photos.The voice commands are not intuitive so you'll have to memorize any you want to use. In other words it will only be useful if you intend to use the voice commands frequently enough to remember them.The automated routines (morning, evening, etc) are another example of big tech companies thinking they know what we want to do better than we know.Mine nearly went into the bin after several hours of trying to get it to do anything useful. I've kept it but only ever use it to turn my smart lights on and off.

I have several of these which I have purchased on sale. Everytime they're on sale, they are amazingly affordable. Quality wise, it's fairly decent considering it's a Google product. The device OS/software doesn't feel as smart as one would hope. There are many times it doesn't understand me or that it interprets the incorrect word. The app feels outdated and not organized. I have added and removed smart items and for some reason they still remain on the app. If they happen to (actually) remove from the APP, it still appears to live somewhere since using voice control does not reflect the change, for example, I once controlled my dining lights with two smart plugs, then I switched to smart bulbs and removed the plugs, but when I ask to turn off all lights in that ... MoreI have several of these which I have purchased on sale. Everytime they're on sale, they are amazingly affordable. Quality wise, it's fairly decent considering it's a Google product. The device OS/software doesn't feel as smart as one would hope. There are many times it doesn't understand me or that it interprets the incorrect word. The app feels outdated and not organized. I have added and removed smart items and for some reason they still remain on the app. If they happen to (actually) remove from the APP, it still appears to live somewhere since using voice control does not reflect the change, for example, I once controlled my dining lights with two smart plugs, then I switched to smart bulbs and removed the plugs, but when I ask to turn off all lights in that room, it tells me "turning off 4 lights" even though I only have two smart devices in that room. I also often have to repeat a request. I have begun switching to Alexa products, because my Google products stopped connecting to my Wyze products. I'm not sure if this is a Wyze issue (which I wouldn't doubt) or a Google one. I just assumed that there was a reason the Google products were so affordable. We all know the saying "you get what you pay for." All that to say, I still recommend as an affordable smart home hub/system. When it works, it works well, but when it doesn't work, it can be very frustrating. I'lll leave you with two more points, it is smart to recognize who is speaking to it (if you have a household) which is convenient when asking to play music (it knows what account to select). If using to view cameras, it takes a while to load and has sort of a buffer/lag.