Google announced today that its second-generation Nest Hub is available for preorder. It costs $99.99 and comes in four different colors. It’s not clear, however, when it will ship to the public.
“We know people already come to Google for information and tools to help them live healthier, happier lives, and we’ve specifically noticed more and more questions about sleep, exercise[,] and health,” Google’s Ashton Udall writes. “So we decided to bring these kinds of solutions to our second-generation Nest Hub, while also improving what people already love about it.”
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New features include:
Sleep Sensing. A new opt-in feature called Sleep Sensing uses Google’s Soli low-energy radar technology to analyze your sleep using movement and breathing, and not a camera or a wearable. It can detect sleep disturbances like coughing and snoring or light and temperature changes in the room. In the morning, Nest Hub will provide you with a personalized sleep summary, and it can connect to Google Fit. Sleep Sensing is free until next year, Google says.
Other sleep features. The new Nest Hub can also dim its display to make the bedroom more sleep-friendly. It provides a “Your evening” view to help you wind down at night with relaxing sounds. And a Sunrise Alarm gradually brightens the display and increases the alarm volume over time; you can use Motion Sense to wave your hand and snooze the alarm.
Thread support. Nest Hub includes a Thread radio and will work with the new connectivity standard being created by the Project Connected Home over IP working group.
The new Nest Hub also provides 50 percent more bass than the previous version, Google says, and it supports Quick Gestures that let you pause or play content at any time by tapping the air in front of the smart display. And as with Nest Mini and Nest Audio, it has a dedicated on-device machine learning chip that moves some Google Assistant experiences from the cloud and directly onto the device, at least in the U.S., resulting in better performance.
The new Nest Hub is available in Chalk, Charcoal, Sand, and a new Mist color. It’s available for preorder now from the Google Store in the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the U.K., and at other retailers.