Blog

Bought the Google Home Hub during Black Friday as Google is having US$50 off the retail price of US$149.

I did not get the Google Home Hub from Google US Store as the chances of my order going through is close to zero. Similar to the Google Home Mini that I got for Black Friday last year, I got it directly from B&H Photo Video. They have the same promotion as Google US Store.

There are four colors available for the Google Home Hub, Chalk, Charcoal, Aqua, and Sand. I chose Chalk because I find the color to be more uniform. If you get other colors, the bezels of the screen are still in white.

I paid US$99 (S$136) for the Google Home Hub. Shipping from my freight forwarder, HopShopGo, to Singapore is an additional US$25.68 (S$36). The chargeable weight is 2 kg.

Google Home Hub features a 7″ LCD touch screen and comes with a full range speaker (80 dB SPL @ 1KHz, @ 1m) with two far-field microphones.

Google Assistant is built-in.

It measures 68 x 179 x 118 (mm) and weighs 480 g.

Regarding connectivity, it supports Bluetooth 5.0 as well as 802.11b/g/n/ac wi-fi on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz band.

There is no camera on the Google Home Hub, the small cutout on the top bezel is the ambient EQ light sensor.

Google Home Hub is much smaller than I expected. It is almost half the size of the Amazon Echo Show (1st Generation).

It is an ideal alternative to the Amazon Echo Spot rather than the Echo Show due to its size.

My smart home integration works fine with Google Home since Google Home supports SmartThings. I am using Homey API with HA Bridge and linked it to SmartThings V2.

I find the sound a little flat, and the bass is weak. Amazon Echo Show sounded better. So I don’t think it is suitable to be used as an audio device.

Overall, I would say it is a good purchase. Between the three devices, Google Home, Google Home Mini, and Google Home Hub, I would say go for the Google Home Hub straight away.