The Google Store briefly mentioned the Nest Hub Max on its “Connected Home” page earlier today. The mentions have since been removed, but are still shown in the code for the webpage.
According to the code for the webpage, the Nest Hub Max is apparently a 10-inch smart display with stereo speakers. It doesn’t offer much more about the Nest Hub Max, besides that. But it appears to be a larger Google Home Hub. The naming is a bit strange though, as this appears to be Nest-branded. Which would make it the first Google Assistant-powered device that is using the Nest branding, compared to the others on the market. This could be a move to make the Google Assistant family of devices work better with Nest.
It does also mention that there is a built-in “Nest Cam” on the Nest Hub Max. Which is a bit interesting, considering the Google Home Hub did not sport a camera, and the fact that it is being branded as a “Nest Cam”. The wording makes it sound like it is going to double as a security camera for your home, which means it would always be on. Something that many people may not like.
The Nest Hub Max does follow the Google Home Max naming with the “Max” in the name, seeing as this is a much larger smart display with the Google Assistant built-in, coming in at 10-inches. Though it is not the largest that we have seen – GE announced a whopping 27-inch smart display for your kitchen at CES earlier this year. This is meant to be a central hub for your home, with a big display for doing things like keeping an eye on your home, as well as doing video calls through Google Duo.
Google Home Hub, which Google announced last year, was a pretty impressive smart display, on many counts. It was the smallest at the time, with a 7-inch display. Many were surprised that Google did leave out a camera, though that was for security concerns of course. It was also offered in a number of colors. It’s a great smart display, as the Google Assistant is available in a visual form is a great thing. Being able to ask for the weather and actually seeing the weather is much better than just hearing it. Of course, the ability to ask the Google Assistant to bring up a YouTube tutorial and have it play on the display, is also very helpful. The only real downside, that many complained about, was the fact that you cannot do video calls with other people, since there’s no camera. It looks like the Nest Hub Max is going to fix that.
It’s a bit surprising to see the Nest Hub Max leak so early in the year – especially by Google. Seeing as Google’s hardware event isn’t taking place until October, about six months from now. Google is very unlikely to announce this at Google I/O in May, but there is a very small possibility that it could happen – or be announced in a press release over the summer.