![]() Of course, having one device that can pump WiFi around your home and act as an Assistant makes plenty of sense. This will not, however, replace a proper speaker if you need room-filling sound in your room, even at maximum volume. The one difference is that the Point is taller, with a down-firing bass speaker that, when on a table, makes the sound a little punchier. Both have the same max volume and offer clean but not very detailed audio that's fine for background music. There's little to distinguish the sound quality from the Point compared to the Home Mini I tested next to it, either. And it is a Google-specific problem: Ask for the same thing on Siri and you get the proper version. If I have one complaint, it's with playing music requests Google's platform has a knack for picking obscure covers and remixes of songs in Spotify. The company hopes you'll use your voice rather than the app to control it - for instance, to activate Bluetooth pairing mode. Naturally, Google wants you to use its Assistant, here, and there's little new to say about the well-worn voice service. Thankfully, glowing lights underneath, which turn on when you approach the device, direct you where you need to tap. There are four cut-outs for microphones, and the symmetry means it's hard to know, at first glance, where you need to tap. The top of the Point is a touch surface you tap the center of for play/pause, and hit either side for volume control. You get a lovely white glowing light at the base of the unit, which pulls double duty as a volume indicator when playing music. The pair have been redesigned to look like one seamless whole. That's gratingly reductive but also completely true. Then there's the Nest WiFi Point, which is a Google WiFi puck with a Nest Home Mini stuck on top. You'll just need to factory reset all of your gear and then set up the Nest hardware first, adding each Google puck individually. Here, the only fiddly bit is to set your cable modem to modem-only mode and connect it to the Nest Router.Īnd, if you're thinking about upgrading from Google WiFi, it's possible to add Nest gear to your existing network, or vice versa. Those new to Google's WiFi efforts will be surprised at how quick it is to get everything working, especially if you're normally used to fiddling with the equipment thrown in with your cable provider. It took me half an hour to get it working, which, for Google, is an eternity, but I'll blame this isolated incident on pre-release software for now. That should have been the case here, and it nearly was, but the system kept freezing in the last phase of setup. Google prides itself on the power of its software, and its devices barely require any sort of setup at all. The Nest is taller, so it can't unobtrusively sit below my TV like the Google WiFi does, which is frustrating - for me. ![]() Nest WiFi is a lot softer looking, and there isn't a straight line anywhere on its body. ![]() The original Google WiFi pucks were tidy and austere, but not unpleasant to look at. On one hand, sure, WiFi 6 won't be ubiquitous for another couple of years, but that also means that your WiFi gear will need yet another pricey upgrade by 2021. And its omission here rankles because Google's Chris Chan told VentureBeat that it was down to cost and complexity right now. ![]() WiFi 6 isn't just a speed boost on the existing wireless technology it also makes it easier for multiple devices to run at once. It offers support for 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, but not the new WiFi 6 standard, which is disappointing. ![]() And it has a quad-core, 64-bit ARM CPU clocked at 1.4GHz, 1GB RAM and 4GB onboard storage. Inside, the Router's wireless radios are twice as powerful as Google WiFi, with far better support for multiple devices - making it easier to, say, watch Netflix on multiple devices. The Router has a range of around 2,200 square feet, with each Point adding an additional 1,600 square feet. The Point, meanwhile, is a mesh repeater with a speaker and Google Assistant built-in, making it do the work of both a WiFi point and a Google/ Nest Home Mini. The Router is a featureless dome that sits by your modem and pumps WiFi around your home. This time, Nest WiFi is split into two units: a dedicated router (the Router) and an access point (a Point). Modularity offered flexibility, and that was a big selling point for this and every other mesh WiFi system of its type. If you had a gnarly blackspot or a house that was bigger than the maximum range, you could just tack on another unit to improve speeds or reception. The (old) Google WiFi was a series of interchangeable pucks that, when put together, created a mesh around your home. ![]()
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