Google revealed today that it is unifying all of its Home products under the Nest brand. Instead of having smart speakers from Google and smart home speakers from Nest, everything will be Nest. To kick things off, the company debuted a new product too: the Nest Hub Max.
Nest Hub Max is a lot like the smaller Google Home Hub which has been rebranded to the Nest Home Hub. It’s a 10-inch display with speakers and a camera that is good at displaying your photos and connecting to Google Assistant. The new version has some neat Nest features too.
The new 10-inch display comes with a 1,200 x 800 pixel resolution. YouTube and Hulu can be watched from it. It also is great for displaying recipes when you’re in the kitchen, or for video calls. Google added two front-facing 10w tweeters and a 30w woofer on the back to give it better sound too.
Google added a hardwired switch to turn off the new camera. This also turns off the microphone though so if you want to use Google Assistant with the camera off, you’ll have to dig through the settings and select that option. The camera has a 127-degree field of view and a 6.5MP sensor. It has the ability to keep faces in the frame thanks to facial recognition software.
Hub Max’s facial recognition tech can be used to do some pretty cool things. Once it recognizes your face, Hub Max’s display will show things are personalized just for you, stuff like reminders, calendar events and other info. You can also pause video just by raising your hand.
With the new camera, Nest also doubles as a security system. When Nest detects activity, it will automatically turn on the camera. You can then check out the live feed from your smartphone. It can also be used to manage all of your connected smart home devices from one pages.
Google didn’t give an exact launch date but said Nest Home Max will launch later this summer for $229.
