Google's Home Hub is the smartest photo frame you can buy – Variety

Since setting up an analysis unit of Google's new Home Hub Smart Screen, I find myself much more often in our kitchen. And I am not alone. From the first day, my wife repositioned her so that she could see him better while doing cooking work. The next morning, our youngest daughter visited the Home Hub just after getting out of bed. And her older sister has since started eating snacks in front of her.

In recent days that the new Google smart screen is installed at home, success is at the rendezvous, but not because of its smart features. What captivated us instead is what the device displays when nobody interacts with it: a never-ending stream of family photos, selected in my Google Photo library using the magic of the artificial intelligence.

The Home Hub is the first smart screen made by Google. It combines a 7-inch screen with a speaker and remote microphones for voice control, and will be on sale at $ 149 this Monday. According to your point of view, this device is an evolution of Google's line of smart home speakers or the company's response to Amazon's Echo Show program. Be that as it may, it's really worth paying close attention to all the media and smart home integrations that define the product and differentiate it from the competition.

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But the truth is that the biggest asset of Home Hub is really photo integration. The Google team has not lost its mind. Rishi Chandra, vice president of Google Home, said in a recent interview that the company considered this to be one of its key features. "Photos transform what these devices can be," he said.

Photos are also a good example of Google's benefits in this area. The company has long offered consumers unlimited online storage for high resolution copies of their digital photos. It uses artificial intelligence to make more sense of the innumerable snapshots we all take with our phones every day.

With the Home Hub, this is paying off: when setting up the device, it allowed me to select the faces of friends and family members to include in an "in-room" slideshow displayed whenever the we do not interact with the device. . This stage of setup may have taken a minute – and since then, the Hub has been showing family photos, including some of our kids as babies. Plus, Google automatically selects the best photos, eliminating some of the unstable shots you do not really want to watch.

The home hub does not only display these photos dynamically, it actually uses an RGB sensor to measure the colors and light intensity of the room in which it is placed and adjust its output accordingly. This is particularly useful when the display is placed in a bedroom, where it darkens when you only have the reading lights on and switches to a dimmer clock when the lights are off. I must say that I found the night clock a little too dark to be useful, but I appreciated the display's ability to blend more naturally into its environment throughout the day.

Media control with Chromecast integration

Of course, it would be unfair to describe the Home Hub only as a photo frame. The device is a complete smart speaker, able to do just about anything the home speaker of the company can do, with the added benefit of a visual display. You can ask him the weather, podcasts, news, timers, alarms and manage your shopping list with. You can check your calendar, get updates on your travels and play games of wacky voices. Intelligent routines help combine these tasks and, for example, look at your calendar, inform you of your journey and get started in your morning briefing with a simple "Hey Google, hello!".

Ask for recipes at the main hub and Google's wizard will break it down step by step so you can follow while cooking. And you can use it with music services like YouTube Music, Google Play Music or Spotify to play songs on demand or to play them on playlists and radio stations. The device also integrates directly with YouTube (which Amazon's Echo Show only does with a workaround), as well as a handful of other media services, including CBS, HBO Now, Starz and Viki.

In addition, the Home Hub is directly linked to Google's Chromecast ecosystem. This means that you can stream audio and video from countless applications directly to the device, just as you would on a TV equipped with Chromecast. For example, streaming from Plex worked flawlessly and included the contextual information from Plex displayed while browsing your library. The broadcast also worked from most other apps, with one exception: Netflix still does not allow Home Hub broadcasting. "We are in discussion with Netflix, but I do not have a calendar" to know when this will change, said a spokesman for Google.

About Chromecast: Home Hub also works as a remote control for other devices that support streaming. You can tell them to start YouTube videos and other types of media on TVs with Chromecast, or start listening to music on any other Google Home or Chromecast audio speaker in your home. And yes, this feature also works with Netflix.

No camera, it's good for the room

Another advantage of the Home Hub lies in its intelligent home control, integrated in a special dashboard called "Home View". Slide your finger from the top of the screen down to easily access the multimedia playback controls as well as a room. -by ventilating all the smart appliances in your home. This is especially useful if you have smart locks, security cameras or a smart thermostat. I have to admit that I am a Luddite smart home, with the exception of a group of smart speakers and other multimedia playback devices, as well as a few smart plugs – but I'm not sure. I still found this quick view rather useful.

It should be noted that Google has decided not to add a camera to the Home Hub. This means that you will not be able to chat in both directions with the camera, but you will also have to worry about anyone catching you in front of a camera at a time when you would have preferred to stay private. – especially useful for a device that you might want to install in your bedroom. "We think it's a feature," said Chandra about the decision to skip the camera. "There are many people who are uncomfortable with a camera."

Some inconsistencies persist in the posting of some of this information. For example, the Google Home app on my phone allows me to change the volume of any Chromecast device in my home with the help of a neat circular slider. The Home Hub lists all the same devices and allows me to pause playback of media on my TV, but not to change the volume easily. A Google spokesman said that the company was planning to support this feature in the near future.

Curiously, Home View is not very good either to control multi-room audio. For example, speaker groups are not displayed by default. Not yet anyway. "We intend to strive to better show you what is happening at home," said the spokesman.

Talk about multimedia playback: The sound of the Home Hub speaker is correct and is perfect for podcasts and casual music listening. It will not replace your home stereo anytime soon, and it's also noticeably less powerful and heavier than the original Google Home. Chandra acknowledged this in our conversation by stating, "It's designed to be better than Google Home Mini, not Google Home."

A browser hides under the surface

It is clear that Google has spent a lot of time designing the Home Hub user experience so that it is based on use cases and not on apps. "We did not take a tablet and the voice did not activate it," Chandra said. The post-application approach of the device generally works very well, but it can be confusing when its IT heritage is apparent.

An example: the main hub has no browser application. However, looking for an image often results in results that then return to third-party websites such as Wikipedia. Follow this link and you will be able to browse the entire encyclopedia online, with one exception: the Home Hub does not offer an on-screen keyboard and there is no option to dictate the typing of text. This means that you will not be able to find anything.

The idea of ​​diverting people from tedious web browsing to a more guided vocal experience makes sense. But with a full-fledged browser under the hood, it's always frustrating not to use it occasionally.

The flip side is that Google has been extremely attentive to the combination of touch and voice with the main hub. The voice is a great way to control from a distance, but chances are you'll be close if you're looking for visual feedback. The Home Hub strongly encourages touch by using swipe, keystroke and multi-touch.

At the same time, it's easy to switch between touch and voice. For example, you can request recipes with a voice command, scroll through the list of results to select one, read it, ask Google Home to repeat a step, and then swipe forward to the next statement, etc. "We want these experiences to be multimodal and intermodal," said Ben Brown, Product Manager at Google Home & Nest.

This is also true for the Home Hub's photo function. You can access the slideshow at any time by scanning from the left side of the screen. Missed a photo? Come back with a shot. Do you want to see the next? Another shot. Want to know more about the photo, including where and when it was taken? So just ask. You can also ask Google to show you photos of your last summer vacation, last weekend, photos showing a certain person, animal or thing.

Or you can just do what my family does, let the Home Hub act and enjoy the endless flow of memories.