What should be the ‘Google Home Screen’?

The next generation of Google’s smart home era has arrived, the Google Home Speaker has arrived. With the imminent “Google Home Screen” in the pipeline, what does that look like?

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While Google has released some smart home hardware over the past few years, 2021 was the last time the company released any central pillar to the smart home. For years, I’ve been talking about smart speakers and displays that serve as both the hub of control and functionality for Google’s smart home efforts. 2020 saw the latest smart speaker release in Nest Audio, where 2021 saw the release of the second-generation Nest Hub smart display. Other than that, things were quiet until the launch of Google Home Speaker last month.

And it’s a welcome return.

Gemini, although not a perfect step forward, finally moved the experience out of stagnation and into a period of active improvement. The Google Home Speaker is a fairly perfect physical representation of this, offering a fresh take on a familiar experience without having to nail every aspect.

But it’s the next thing that really excites me, and that’s inevitably a smart display.

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Google Home Display is quite clearly visible on the horizon. Head of Google Home pointed to the project Before the speaker’s speech and name Google Home Display now has a code view. This is very clearly the case, and it made me wonder what it’s reasonable to expect, both knowing what I want from such a device and what we get in the Speaker.

Google’s smart display efforts have effectively taken three forms over the past decade.

Home Hub/Nest Hub is a compact little display that’s really a speaker with some visual feedback. Simple, simple, cheap. The $99 device made a ton of sense in the company’s lineup, and the added functionality in visual feedback and casting support made it clearly useful in various parts of the home.
Nest Hub Max took the concept even further, adding support for a built-in Nest Cam, better speakers, and smarter home hardware to really fulfill the “hub” part of the name.
Pixel Tabletmeanwhile, it tried to bridge the gap between smart display and Android tablets. It was a good idea clearly It was originally supposed to be a Nest product, but the execution failed because it tried to go in two different directions. Still part of my personal desktop, but jack of all trades, master of none.

google nest hub max smart display assistant

Looking at these, I feel that the Nest Hub Max is the best model for Google to follow. The size is not so universal, but its modernized version can be a really good addition to the Google Home Speaker. Given that the speaker is at the $99 price point of the smaller Nest Hub, it would also make more sense in the lineup.

A built-in Nest Cam might be at the top of my list for this new device, especially since you can see that the Hub Max leaves a lot of room for improvement in this concept (like the lack of night vision).

But this form factor is probably the one that makes the most sense of the three, unless Google intends to release multiple devices. It was a matter of discussion the last episode of our podcast, Pixelated, with us Abner he explains that Google believes that the future of smart home equipment is not too far from the current Google Home Speaker and the “Google Home Display” for the near future. I agree with this sentiment, though I would like a proper Nest Mini replacement. We already know that third-party brands are making a comebackand it makes some sense for Google to set a template with its own hardware and leave variations to other brands.

So what do you think? What would you want from the Google Home Display if it were to be released?

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