Google Nest Hub gets the Calm app, better sound detection, and more

Last year I reviewed the second generation of the Nest Hub (formerly the Home Hub) smart screen from Google. It doesn’t have a camera, but it does have a miniature radar sensor that can monitor and analyze your sleep when you place the Hub by your bedside. Overall, I found it to be reasonably accurate and insightful and a great option if you want to track your sleep without wearing a watch in bed.

Today, Google announced that it will be adding updates to the Nest Hub that aim to improve its sleep detection capabilities. Here is the breakdown of upcoming additions.

Among the new features is something called Sleep Staging, which Google describes as an analysis of your sleep stages (light, REM, deep, and awake) in the form of a hypnogram graph. Hypnograms are a popular way for sleep scientists to visualize sleep data.

The Sleep Duration and Sleep Quality screens will let you know how long you stayed in each phase of sleep and what percentage of your total nighttime sleep fell under each phase.

Nest hubs will now have a new “cough and snore” timeline, tracking sounds that are only coming from your calibrated sleep zone. This means that coughing and snoring from partners (or pets) will now be classified in the “other sounds” timeline. And this timeline will also document any loud noises around you that may have disturbed your sleep, such as alarms or dog barking.

The popular Calm sleep and meditation app will be available through Google Assistant on the Nest Hub starting in December. You can ask, “Hey Google, show me some Calm meditations” or “Hey Google, start a meditation”. Calm Premium members will have access to the full Calm library, while non-Premium users will have a smaller selection of tracks.

Google has noted that you can enjoy Sleep Sensing on Nest Hubs until 2022. In 2023, the company plans to integrate Sleep Sensing into Fitbit Premium, currently $ 10 per month or $ 80 per year for a health and wellness subscription. to be.

The new standby features are expected to appear on Nest Hubs in the United States today, and they will go live worldwide in the coming weeks.