Google’s new Nest Hub tells you how well you slept last night

Google has announced a new version of its Nest Hub smart screen. The updated Nest Hub features several improvements over the model that started as the Home Hub in 2018, including a refined design, faster processor and a louder speaker. However, the most important upgrade comes in the ability to measure your sleep without having to wear anything. The new Nest Hub is $ 99.99, comes in four colors and will ship on March 30, with pre-orders starting March 16.

The new Nest Hub looks basically identical to the previous model, but you can now get it in a light blue color (Google calls it ‘fog’), in addition to the light pink, light gray and dark gray options. Google says that the ring around the screen is the same as the rest of the frame, which would make it easier to clean. The screen itself remains unchanged – it’s a seven-inch, 1024 x 600 pixel touchscreen LCD with Google’s automatic brightness and color adjustment features. There is still no camera on the Nest Hub. If you want to make video calls from a Google smart screen, you need to use the larger Nest Hub Max.

Google claims that the new Nest Hub has 50 percent better bass performance thanks to a larger speaker (now up to 43.5mm in diameter), which addresses one of our biggest complaints with the original model. A third microphone and machine learning slide on the device has been added to improve the response to voice commands. Google claims that over time, the Nest Hub will learn your general commands and then process them locally to speed up responses as well. Inside the new hub is a faster processor and a wire radio for smart devices. Google tells me that the Thread feature will not be available at launch, but if enabled, it will allow the Nest Hub to act as a thread router and a CHIP hub, with support for compatible devices .

Image: Google

The hardware enhancements are appreciated, but the biggest difference between the old and the new model is the ability for the Nest Hub to track your sleep patterns and assess your sleep quality. The new Hub does this thanks to the integrated Soli sensor technology, which can measure your movement during the night, even down to your breathing patterns. The company has been trying to find the right use for Soli technology since it first appeared on the Pixel 4 smartphone in 2019. Since reaffirming its commitment to technology last year, Google has been using Soli in the Nest Thermostat and now the latest version of the Nest Hub.

Google takes the data captured by the Soli sensors, combines it with your sleep schedule and routines, and analyzes it to give you a summary of your sleep duration, consistency and tranquility. It can do all this without you having to place special devices under your mattress or wear a tracker on your wrist. It can also detect your sleep automatically – you do not have to tell it when you go to bed or when you wake up.

The data provided by the Nest Hub tells you how long you have slept, how consistent you are with the times you go to bed and wake up, and a general calm. It identifies when you coughed or snored during the night, as well as the times you would get out of bed. Google says that there is a configuration when you first install the Nest Hub on your bed to tell it exactly where you sleep, so that it can ignore your partner’s movement when sharing a bed with someone else.

Google claims that it does not evaluate your sleep cycle patterns (such as deep, light, or REM) at this time, but it does not rule out doing so in the future. Other popular sleep tracking devices usually include this information in their reports, but how accurate it is remains to be seen. “I tend to trust when the devices can tell me that someone is awake, fresh when someone is asleep,” said Susheel Patil, clinical director of the Johns Hopkins Pulmonary Sleep Medicine Program. The edge last fall. “But I do not place much emphasis on the distinction between light sleep and deep sleep.”

Google tested Nest’s ability to accurately track when someone was asleep and when they were awake by comparing it to the type of sleep study conducted in laboratories and clinics, called a polysomnography, in 33 volunteers. “This is the gold standard we use in the clinical community,” said Logan Schneider, a sleep researcher at Stanford University, who consulted on the project.

The Nest also measures respiratory rate, which also compares it to polysomnography. In addition, the team measured it by the breathing rate captured by other medical devices, such as straps that people can wear during sleep, Schneider said. The edge.

The Nest Hub also uses other sensors to inform you what can affect your sleep, including the brightness and temperature in the room. Pulse-twisted sleep trackers generally cannot measure the data points, giving the Nest Hub a small leg up when it comes to context.

Image: Google

Google says that motion data captured by the Soli sensor is represented by spectrograms, which display the intensity of movement during the night. It cannot be identified individually, and the captured audio and raw data is processed locally on the device itself. Google does send what it refers to as “sleep event data”, which includes the time you went to sleep, the time you woke up, coughing and tranquility to the cloud. You can see this data on the Hub itself, by tapping on the screen or using a voice command to ask how you slept, or in the Google Fit app on a smartphone.

A bed monitor like Nest has advantages over a wrist-worn sleep tracking device – users do not have to deal with the inconvenience of sleeping with a strap tied, and do not have to remember to charge it before bed. It can give people more consistent information about their sleep, instead of just information about the nights they decide to wear a smartwatch. Gathering information over time is also an advantage over medical tests, which are often invasive and only take one or two nights to take a snapshot of someone’s sleep. “You gather more data to get a realistic snapshot of what a person’s sleep looks like each night,” says Schneider.

For now, Google says the Nest cannot diagnose any sleep-related medical conditions. It is a common wellness device, but like many health detection products, it is not a medical device. But that’s something that may come in the future, said Ashton Udall, Google Product Manager. The edge during an information session. “Coughing and snoring can, of course, be very telling for more serious conditions,” he says. “We think there really is a rich, rich future to give people more insight.”

Google says it has partnered with the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) to provide guidance on improving users’ sleep, which it provides in the Fit smartphone app. It will provide suggestions on how to get better sleep based on your own data, including the proven “go to bed every night at the same time”, as well as smart home routines and reminders for when to go to bed. After 14 nights, the Hub will offer a recommended schedule for when to go to bed and when to wake up.

In addition to sleep detection, the Nest Hub also uses the Soli sensor to enable basic gestures, such as ‘tapping the sky’ to play or interrupt music or video. You can also wave your hand over the device to snooze an alarm.

Google says the sleep tracking features will be available for free to all Nest Hub owners until next year. The company would not say how much the features could cost once the preview period ends, but is working to integrate the Nest Hub’s sleep tracking with Fitbit’s existing sleep tracking features.

Sleep tracking devices have become popular over the past few years, with most smartwatches and fitness groups offering the feature. Google’s bet that the Nest Hub’s sleep detection that you do not need to put on anything, load anything and even say you are going to sleep will make it easier for people to use consistently. It also offers a bit more context than average, thanks to the brightness and temperature monitoring. But there is still the question of whether all this data can lead you to improve your sleep or that it is just more noise in a noisy world.