Best Google Assistant smart displays in 2025
Smart displaysmay not be as popular assmart speakers, but they offer a visual means of controlling your smart home. Plus, you can stream music, watch movies, search the web, and call upon one of the best voice assistants in town:Google Assistant. And today, we’ll focus on Google Assistant-powered smart displays.
Google manufactures all three devices on this list, and they bring some impressive features to the table. But which of the three options is best? Let’s discuss them all to find out.
Top Google Assistant smart displays
Great design and value
The Google Nest Hub 2 is a reasonably priced smart display that controls smart home devices via Google Assistant. Its most interesting feature is Soli technology used for sleep tracking. It tracks sleep more accurately than wearables. Clock functionality is loud enough to wake anyone, and voice control is simple and effective. It utilizes machine learning to keep the most common commands at the ready, streamlining the experience. However, it falls short in some areas, such as playing music and video calls. Overall, it is a great choice for a capable and affordable smart display that supports sunrise alarms.
With the future of smart displays in question, it’s important to make sure you don’t overspend on a product, and that’s why theGoogle Nest Hub (2nd Gen)is our top pick for anyone buying a smart display in 2023.
The Nest Hub’s 7-inch display is just 1024 x 600 resolution and isn’t going to be the sharpest screen you’ve seen — chances are your smartphone has a better resolution — however, you usually use the Nest Hub at arm’s length, making the lower resolution less of an issue. The good news is the minimum brightness is very dim, which is great for a device that you want to be visible during the night without being a disturbing light to your eyes.
The Nest Hub comes with Ambient EQ, a color calibration technology developed by Google that adjusts the display to the ambient light in your surroundings. This feature prevents the Hub from emitting too much blue light during the evening, which is especially important for a display in your bedroom. It is even more crucial than it is for a display in your living room or kitchen.
The device boasts a screen that appears to float elegantly in front of its sleek, angled base, which houses the speaker. While audio is not the device’s primary focus, it still delivers a predictably flat and middle-of-the-road sound quality. However, it does have a slightly more pronounced bass than its first-generation counterpart and is on par with the Nest Mini speaker. The volume can be cranked up to surprisingly loud levels, making it perfect for deep sleepers who want to use it as an alarm. The device is perfectly suited for interacting with Assistant, setting alarms, playing white noise, and occasionally listening to music.
Sleep Sensing works, but I wouldn’t pay extra for it
Its $100 MSRP is a decent price, but you’ll often be able to find this display for much cheaper — especially during popular sales events. I would caution buying it at full price if you’re able to avoid it, but it’s not an outrageous price if that’s all you can find it at.
If you want to go all-in on a smart display
The Google Nest Hub Max is a top-notch smart display and an exceptional smart home hub. It offers wide compatibility with multiple smart home brands, enabling you to automate your lighting, robot vacuums, home security, and other smart home devices with ease.
Google’s Nest Hub Maxis the smart display to get if you really want to go all-in on the smart home capabilities that the company offers. While the Nest Hub and the Nest Hub Max two share many of the same features, like Ambient EQ and smart home controls, the Hub Max steps up with a camera, better audio, and a much larger screen. The display is higher resolution than the Nest Hub at 1280 x 800, which is about 150 pixels per inch, noticeably sharper than the standard Nest Hub, but still not super smoother if you get right next to the screen.
The speakers are located on the base and the Hub Max boasts a soft fabric covering. The fabric is noticeable under the display bezel, but it’s otherwise inconspicuous. The most striking aspect of the Hub Max’s design is the inclusion of a camera in the center of the top bezel. Additionally, there are microphones, a light sensor, and a status LED situated on the top of the device. On the back of the display, you’ll find a volume rocker and a switch that can be used to disable the camera and microphone.
The camera is the big selling point of the Hub Max; however, it’s pretty lackluster as a security camera. You need lots of light to clearly see what’s going on through its small little sensor. So, while we don’t recommend the Hub Max for people looking for a security camera/monitor, it is pretty decent for video calls on Duo.
Last thing: It’s not cheap. Its full price tag rings at around $230, but you’ll typically find it for well under $200 because it’s older tech now. Basically, don’t buy it at full price; it’s probably not worth it that way.
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The smart display-tablet hybrid
The Google Pixel Tablet also offers a full-on portable Android slate with a magnetic dock that charges the device and turns it into a smart display. It’s a neat concept, and while it doesn’t nail everything 100%, it’s not a bad pick if you don’t like the limited power of a normal smart display.
TheGoogle Pixel Tabletis a much-awaited tablet by the company, which has finally arrived. It is a mid-range device that boasts a decent 60Hz LCD screen, stereo speakers, and impressive performance due to its Tensor G2 chipset and 8GB of RAM, similar to the Pixel 7 series.
However, what’s even more fascinating is the Charging Speaker Dock that comes bundled with the tablet. Dock the Pixel Tablet on there, and it transforms the slate into a quasi-smart display in Hub mode, where it can accept Hey Google commands and function as a Chromecast target for audio and video. Moreover, the sound is routed through the dock’s speaker, providing an extra boost to the tablet’s mediocre built-in speakers.
It’s a fine midranger, but the Pixel Tablet’s best ideas are half-baked
At $499, it’s certainly a little pricey, and when it comes to the best Android tablets there’s perhaps better out there, but you can’t deny its multifunctional use case isn’t interesting. Plus, we’ve seen it go down to $399 a lot lately, which we think is a little more in line with what the Pixel Tablet offers.
Are smart displays worth it?
As you have probably discovered, smart displays are more expensive than smart speakers. This is because smart displays come with a high-quality touchscreen, which understandably increases the price. Whether a smart display is worth the additional cost depends on your experience with smart devices. If you find yourself frequently asking your Google Assistant-powered device to repeat itself, missing important information, or wishing for a visual accompaniment to better understand commands and explanations, then we would definitely recommend considering a smart display. Smart displays provide an extra layer of information to complement your smart assistant’s responses.
Who is better, Alexa or Google Assistant?
Our virtual assistant research found that Google Assistant is the better virtual assistant — it provides more comprehensive answers, responds correctly more often, and integrates seamlessly with other Google services like Gmail and Google Calendar. However, we noted that Alexa is better for smart home functionality, as the app store provides many more integrations to enable your smart home to do much more.
Is a smart display better than a tablet?
To be clear, smart displays are not an adequate replacement for a tablet. While they can be used for work and entertainment, smart displays are typically better for improving the virtual assistant experience rather than being a viable screen option for day-to-day life. In addition, their streaming service functionality is often quite limited, and the ability to work on them is nonexistent. Simply put, if you’re in the market for a tablet, stick to thebest Android tabletsand save the smart display for another time.
The best Google Assistant smart displays
Google Assistant-powered smart displays are a great way to keep you and your family members on the same page with daily reminders, intercom capabilities, and synced Google calendars. These touchscreen devices also offer many convenient ways to control the smart home devices in your home, while providing hours of entertainment through apps like Netflix and YouTube.
Most folks will love the Google Nest Hub 2nd Gen. Now down to its lowest price, this incredible smart display delivers top-notch visuals, great audio, and plenty of smart home automation tools. It’s also one of the best smart devices for keeping tabs on your sleep habits.
If you’ve got a little more dough to spend, we recommend going with the Google Nest Hub Max. Google’s flagship smart display offers a boost in resolution and sound quality when compared to the Nest Hub 2nd Gen, along with a built-in camera.
For something a little more unique, you might also consider the Google Pixel Tablet. Why not get the best of both worlds? This terrific device does double-duty as an on-the-go tablet and smart home command center.
The Google Nest Hub 2nd Gen is our favorite way to experience Google Assistant’s many capabilities. Plus, it’s one of the best bedside tools for keeping tabs on your sleep habits, including how much you snore and cough throughout the night.
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