is a senior reviewer focused on smart home and connected tech, with over twenty years of experience. She has written previously for Wirecutter, Wired, Dwell, BBC, and US News.
Last week, Google announced a new smart speaker for its AI-infused Gemini smart home platform, but there was no sign of a new smart display. The good news for fans of Google’s Nest Hubs is that Google Home’s Anish Kattukaran tells The Verge the company is “definitely committed to smart displays,” and that they’ll “have news to share there soon.”
“It feels like almost the ultimate form factor to be able to deliver a really great home experience”
In an interview on The Vergecast this week, Kattukaran explained that smart displays are very much part of Google’s plans. “[The smart display] does present itself as an incredible form factor to interact with something like Gemini for Home. If you think about the properties of a smart display — a microphone, which means audio in, a speaker, audio out. It’s got a screen, which complements a voice modality, you can interact with it and visualize information.”
There are also cameras in smart displays, he continued, which adds the vision piece to the multi-modality of Gemini. “As I see where Gemini for Home is going and Gemini more broadly … it feels like almost the ultimate form factor to be able to deliver a really great home experience. So, that’s why we are going to continue to invest in that category, so I think it’s going to be awesome.”
Amazon clearly agrees, having just launched two new Echo Show smart displays built for its new Alexa Plus AI assistant. These are more powerful than its previous smart displays, packing a new AZ3 Pro processor, new edge-based computing capabilities, and a new Omnisense fusion platform that can process data locally from smart home sensors. All of which is poised to feed Alexa Plus more context.
A new Nest Hub smart display or, more likely, Google Home Hub (Google seems to be retiring the Nest name outside of cameras and thermostats) would need to be a significant step up from its existing smart displays.
Last refreshed in 2021, the Nest Hub, with its Soli radar sensor, and its bigger sibling, the Nest Hub Max, which features a camera, are compatible with Google’s new Gemini for Home platform. But running on older hardware, neither device feels like a flagship AI device for the home in 2025.
The Pixel Tablet, which launched in 2023, felt like an early stab at something more powerful for running the smart home, but it was missing too many core features and has since been discontinued.
As a concept, the smart display has struggled to find a compelling use case – beyond a digital photo frame. However, as a multi-modal input system for a smarter voice assistant in your home, they could finally come into their own.
