Google Nest Hub (2nd Gen) Reviews: Excellent smart display and mediocre sleep tracking

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It’s an idea of ​​someone or something that looks at you sleeping is scary like hell – unless you are Bella Swan from dusk. But the latest efforts of Google in the health and wellness space are almost exactly enough. The new hub nest has an integrated radar sensor that detects movement in your bed to determine if you fell asleep, then follow the duration and quality of your sleep. It will also see if you cough or snore and monitor simultaneously how bright or hot it is in your room. It’s all in the name of helping you sleep better while avoiding the use of a real camera – an intentional design choice designed to soothe privacy concerns.

For $ 100, the hub nest is already a compelling intelligent display that is cheaper than the original, with sleep tracking being an extra bonus. But on the basis of my tests, I’m not sure I can count to improve my sleep habits.

Sleep tracking by radar

First, the configuration. You would think you can simply stick the nest hub on your bedside table to monitor your sleep, but it’s a bit more delicious than that. The display must be placed somewhere near your head at the same height as your mattress. If your bedside table is larger or shorter, you will need to make adjustments. I do not have a night table and the edge of the window that I count on the use was too high (I sleep on a pretty low platform bed). In addition, the hub nest must be at hand and in the face of your chest to detect your motion, the office I had on the other side of the room would not work either. I ended up using boxes and books to create a fortune podium for display.

Fortunately, looking for an appropriate point was the only Hiccup in a smooth configuration process. I connected the nest hub to my home network via the Home app and in a few steps, I was finished. I had to choose to sleep and agree to activate the microphone to detect sounds like snoring and coughing. Then I crossed a calibration process involved on the top of the leaves and stay still for 10 seconds.

Once I’ve been done, a small bed icon appeared at the top right of the screen to indicate that sleep detection was lit. There was nothing more to do but go to sleep and wait my results the next morning. Was it strange to know that my bed movements would be connected by the hub nest? Yes. Am I used to it with time? A little. Do rewards deserve discomfort? Kind of.

Every morning I looked with impatience the wellness panel of the hub nest to see how my night went. (You can also just ask the wizard “How did I sleep last night?”) Google’s reports focus on three aspects of your sleep: the duration, quality and timetable, which refers to the way You are stuck with a routine to go to bed and wake up at regular hours. These are displayed in the form of three circles that overlap almost as a Venn diagram – your goal is to get them to overlap perfectly and become one. The more your sleep is relaxing, and the more closely you are working on your schedule, the more your circles will probably merge.

Despite my occasional efforts to deceive the nest hub, it was generally able to recognize when I fell asleep. Even when I was on my side facing the screen for a while, it was not wrong to believe that I had been drifted. And although I’m always for periods of time, awake awake by my busy brain, the hub nest did not take this lack of movement to signify that I had died. For sleep tracking that relies on motion detection, this device is surprisingly accurate.

It is less effective when I want to be drafted and counted the minutes (sometimes hours), I have passed to rub the sleep of my eyes and dread the starting work like sleepy time. Only after I draggle out of bed, the hub nest said that I had really awake. Google said the display can also follow the day Naps of at least 20 minutes, although I have not been bold enough to sleep at work on behalf of the test test.