If you want the smartest smart home on the street, you need a Google Assistant-powered home. Why? Because Google Assistant is the best voice assistant around, no question. While it’s a tad chattier than we’d like at times, it’s cleverer than Alexa and works with more kit than Apple’s Siri. Plus, since Google gobbled up the home automation pioneer Nest, it’s got some of the best hardware around for setting up your smart home.
One area Google is not so hot at however, is naming conventions, and this can make diving into its smart home ecosystem seriously confusing. We’re here to help. Google Assistant is your artificially intelligent friend who will attempt to fulfil your every command. You summon it by saying “Hey Google, turn on the lights”, or “OK Google lock the front door”. Google Assistant lives inside Nest smart speakers (formerly called Google smart speakers), as well as in your Android phone. The AI also lives in the Google Home app (which works on iPhones too). The Google Home app is what you’ll use to connect and control all your gadgets.
When shopping for compatible kit, you’ll want to look for the label Works With Hey Google (you may also see Works With Ok Google out there – again, naming conventions, not Google’s strong suit.) This is the program the replaced the popular Works With Nest system, and is the best way to know if something will work in your smart home. The other best way is to check out our top picks for Google Assistant compatible gadgets right here. Read on….
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The best all-in-one device for Google Home
You’ll want a smart speaker or smart display to bark commands at to make your home do the hard work for you. The Nest Hub Max (£219) is the best because it’s a serious multi-tasker. A security camera, smart speaker and smart display in one – this is the ultimate accessory for a Google-powered smart home.
With a lovely 10 inch, 1280x800 resolution touchscreen that you can easily see from across the room and very respectable 10W stereo speakers, this display is great as a kitchen counter TV for watching YouTube or Netflix and as a speaker for streaming music from Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music player. Our fave way to use it though is as a step-by-step recipe digital book.
The built-in, 6.5MP front-facing camera is actually a Nest security camera, and it adds some cool features like Face Match. This lets it know who is looking at it (up to 6 people) and present them with personalised content on the screen, such as commute time and calendar appointments. The camera also works for video calls, both Google’s Duo or Zoom, and it enables gesture controls, so you can raise your hand to silently command the Hub to stop playing music or silence an alarm. Feel the power.
Finally, the Nest Hub Max is an essential smart home hub, an all-in-one place to control your connected gadgets. A quick swipe shows you your lights, locks, thermostats, so you can tap and go to for the times you don’t want to talk or pull out your phone. It also displays live feeds from connected cameras – although in our testing the only cameras that worked reliably were the Nest Cams – a common theme with the Google Home.
Price: £219 | Check price on John Lewis | Argos | Google
The best bedroom speaker for Google Home
In our years of testing smart displays, we’ve found the kitchen and the bedroom to be the two most useful spaces for these handy devices. But we’re not putting a camera from Google - well from anyone - in our bedroom. Ever. And this is why we love the ndndndndndNest Hub (2nd gen) (£119).
A dinkier version of the Nest Hub Max, with same touch screen just smaller (7 inches) and crucially sans camera, this diminutive device does everything its big brother does, if it doesn’t involve a camera. It does have gesture control thanks to Soli - a radar-based system that lets you tap the air in front of the device to pause and resume music or videos and snooze alarms. Speaking of alarms, the Nest Hub is a superb bedside companion. Its ambient light sensor does a beautiful job of tweaking the display to suit the lighting in the room, going dark at night to not disturb, but with just enough light so you can see the time if you need too.
This is the second generation of the Nest Hub and it comes with a new sleep tracking feature. This uses the Soli radar to monitor your movements and breathing patterns. Yes, Google watches you while you are sleeping. It also uses a microphone to listen for snoring and a temperature and light sensor to keep tabs on your environment. But don’t worry, all the raw data stays on the device. We found the sleep tracking itself of limited usefulness – we already knew we’d had a bad night’s sleep – and the “actionable items” it promised us, have yet to magically transform our sleeping habits.
We do love its sleep sounds though and that they intelligently turn off once you’re out cold. Plus the Sunrise Alarm feature that gradually brightens the screen to ease you from your slumber is worth the price of admission alone. Of course, this is a connected home gadget, and you can set it to turn on any smart lights when your alarm goes off, then play your morning routine to get you out of bed. But the real genius here is that when you wave your hand at it to snooze, it not only shuts up instantly, but it turns all the lights back off so you can really enjoy those extra few minutes.
Price: £90 | Check price on John Lewis | Argos | Google
The best media streamer for Google Home
Finally, Google Assistant and Android TV are living together in harmony. The Chromecast with Google TV (£59) is easily the best media streamer you can buy today, regardless of platform. It pairs the powerful Chromecast with an updated, rejigged and very useful on-screen interface. And has Google’s artificial assistant built right into the remote control. Yes, you read that right; there’s finally a remote for the Chromecast. The remote is also a super handy smart home controller, so you can use it to both call up a Friends binge and command your thermostat to warm things up.
Built-in IR control also gives the remote the power to turn the TV on and off, adjust the volume and mute – even through connected devices like soundbars – it’s the all=in-one-remote we’ve been dreaming of. As for the hardware, the Chromecast with Google TV is cheaper than the Chromecast Ultra, still streams in 4K HDR10+ and has Dolby Vision on supported apps, plus access to all the steaming service you could wish for (yes, including Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+). And of course, you can still cast content to your big screen from your laptop, phone or tablet. This little gadget is full of goodness.
Price: £59 | Check price on John Lewis | Argos | Google
