Practical product, well designed and made, really nice to use
The screen is very good - sufficiently high resolution, sensible size, and the brightness control is always just right. Sound is loud and very clear but don't expect a hi-fi speaker because it has little bass. Although based on the same software and AI, the Nest Hub really capitalises on its screen, giving it many advantages over Google's Smart Speakers. I use the timers a lot, and often several at once when cooking. Being able to see their progress all at once is great, and they have fun themed sounds and animations if you name the timers. It's also great to see at a glance that what you said was understood, because your voice recognition results appear at the top of the screen as you speak.
When it's not busy it can show photos from albums and I completely underestimated how nice this is. The whole family enjoys seeing forgotten photos pop-up unexpectedly, which would normally otherwise only see the light of day when searching for something else. Search results appear with more context, and they're surprisingly intelligently displayed - gently scrolling over the part of the web page with the relevant answer.
There's no camera so you can't send video calls but the speakerphone audio quality is excellent. If your kitchen counter has too much stuff standing close around the Hub I noticed the precision of the voice control is reduced, but it's excellent otherwise, and works amazingly well with a lot of background noise.
It has real volume buttons on the back that you can use by feel, but you can also use gestures on the screen to show a touch volume slider.
The only downside I can think of is it's not going to fill a large living space with dance music, but for an average room it's more than enough.
It seems very well built, but if it went wrong I would have to get a replacement right away as I would really miss it.
Verified purchase: YesCondition: New