Google introduces Home Hub smart display with 7″ screen

Google has announced its first smart screen: the Home Hub. It is a device with a 7 “screen with a speaker on the back with a design similar to that of the other Home speakers.

Thanks to the touch-sensitive LCD, the Home Hub not only serves as a smart speaker, but there are also new possibilities with images. For example, the screen can serve to show images from Nest security cameras. In addition, the screen provides visual support for personalized suggestions, such as the weather, traffic, recipes and notifications. The Hub can recognize who in the house is speaking the commands for personalized functionality. Google demonstrated this with YouTube, which automatically showed the user’s playlist. There are two microphones for recording audio.

The Home Hub is intended for use by the whole family and supports options for parents to limit functionality for children. The interface is optimized for Maps and Photos, among other things, and in the latter case there is, for example, a photo frame function with Live Albums. The Hub does not have a camera, so according to Google people feel ‘comfortable’, even when using it in the bedroom. The screen brightness automatically adjusts to the lighting conditions and can turn itself off automatically at night. The resolution is not yet known at the time of writing and Google did not give any details about the other hardware either.

The Home Hub immediately serves as a central component for smart homes and a Home View dashboard shows the smart devices in the home, including Philips Hue lighting, the Chromecast and Nest equipment. The interface of the Google Home mobile app now shows the same dashboard and is compatible with the Hub.

The Google Home Hub will be available on October 21 in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia for $149.