Google Home Hub Unboxing

The Google Home Hub has a relatively small screen at 7 inches. It’s light but neither cheap nor exceedingly premium-feeling device. It’s soft edges, pastel colors, and fabric body should help it find a home fairly easily in most any household, straddling the line between high-tech and home decor pretty well. As mentioned, there’s no camera on this device, only an ambient light sensor and a two-mic array along the top edge of the screen. This was a deliberate exclusion on Google’s part, meant to make buyers more comfortable with leaving such a device in personal spaces, like a bedside, for instance. The ambient light sensor also allows the screen to adjust not just brightness but color tone as well – another way Google makes this a better bed-side companion.

Around back you’ll find a volume rocker, as well as a switch to turn the microphone on or off. The back is also where the single speaker faces outward, which you won’t be able to see, but we are curious to hear.

The Home Hub supports Bluetooth 5.0, multi-room audio, and, of course, Chromecast streaming.

The Experience

The UI found on the Google Home Hub is a unique one which has a very slight learning curve, as it is quite new. Fortunately, it’s a very simple UI and there’s an intro video which shows pretty much all of it before you get started. Swiping and tapping through the UI to listen to music, watch YouTube, check the weather, or otherwise is pretty simple and intuitive, as is the ability to swipe down from the top for access to whole-home smart device control.