Google Home 12+

As with all new things getting used to the app at the same time as learning about setting up a smart home took a little while. For the most part I didn’t have many problems, the ones I did find are as follows. If you select “more settings” when the Google Assistant” is already open it does not always open the page with the settings on it. If you have this issue make sure you close Google Assistant before selecting “more settings” from Google Home. Occasionally Google Home just closes presumably due to some error and this seems one more to be due to switching from the settings on the Assistant back to the Home app. Finally I would highly recommend the Google Support char web facility which are very good. It will take a while to understand all the verbal and or typed commands but I would recommend making a list of the useful ones.

Having owned and used Nest cameras for a while I bought some more. To set these up I have to use Google Home instead of the nest app where my other cameras were. What I expected was that I’d be so impressed with the sparkly new devices in a sparkly new app that I’d want to upgrade my existing camera network. As it is, I’d sooner swap the new ones for the older ones and have all my cameras in the better Nest app, which used to be even better before Google started to hobble it. My main gripe is how slow everything is. It does not matter how fast your network connection is, viewing history on the camera is a frustrating take of buffering. The thing I loved most about nest was being able to jog quickly through the days camera feed looking for an interesting place to stop. Do that in the Google home app, and it immediately buffers and shows you nothing while it has a good think. Then it does skip to wherever you’ve stopped to wait, but then move the timeline again and… more buffering. You essentially have to rely on what the camera thinks is interesting enough to create an event for. Lots of other cameras do that fine, for much cheaper. If I’d have wanted to work that way I had better options. What I wanted was to be able to jog through the video like I still can in the Nest app. Fast considering trading the lot of them in.

For such a huge company to produce an app like this that is so vital for controlling your Google Nest network is just astonishing. It’s absolutely terrible. You can’t find anything within it, settings for various aspects of your network are hidden inside secret books and crannies that defy logic in finding. They’ve migrated everything from the better (though not perfect) Google WiFi app to this one - why? And I don’t think all the controls have been migrated across. Or else they have and they’ve been hidden somewhere only the designers know where. The app shows, for example, that in this house we have zero devices connected to the Network. So how am I writing this review, Google? I can’t prioritise a device to improve the bandwidth that Google WiFi somehow restricts because there are apparently no devices connected. I can’t see why my Internet quality is so poor on this network despite my “lightning quick” 100mbps broadband service because the testing capability has gone somewhere very mysterious. When I bought the Google WiFi equipment I was told it was smart tech and would optimise itself automatically, but really I’m better off just using the basic hub my broadband company gave me. Good Lord.