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When I first experimented with the “Smart Display” market, I started with Amazon Echo Show… mostly because it was first to market and the pricing was attractive with flash sales.
At first, it was great… but as I used it more and more, I started to see its limitation. I soon realized that Amazon just basically wanted me to pay for all of its services. For example, if I wanted to listen music, I would have to pay its Amazon Music subscription. If I wanted to display my photos (to use the Echo Show as a photo frame), I would have to pay for Amazon Drive (which comes with a Photo service). Want to watch movies? Amazon Prime, etc. It’s that classic razer blade strategy - get them in with a cheap product, but sell them reoccurring blades or services.
When the Lenovo Smart Display was announced, I quickly jumped ship. Switching over to Lenovo meant that we had to become a Google home, as everything is built around the Google Home Hub application. If you don’t mind giving Google your information, you can use many of their services - for free. That’s the attractive thing, it’s mostly free.
Using Google Music, I can stream all my music on the Smart Display. Using Google Photos, I can setup my display as a digital photo frame. It is awesome… and for the most part, they are all free services.
I love the Lenovo Smart Displays, I currently own three of them (one 10” and two 8”). I was eagerly looking forward to buying larger displays or a better redesign… but unfortunately the new redesigned is a smaller version: a 7” display.
As stores like Best Buy are phasing out the Lenovo Smart Displays in favor of Google Nest Hub (7”) and the Google Nest Hub Max (10”), I decided to get a Hub Max on sale. The Nest Hub is a re-branding from Google Home Hub.
The key differences (and improvements) in the Nest Hub 10” vs Lenovo Smart Display 10” is that the audio is a million times better thanks to its 3” subwoofer. The Nest Hub also features a better microphone to hear over distance and has an “ultrasound sensing” technology (to recognize the tiniest “hey google”).
If you have a Nest account, you can use the Nest Hub to spy, I mean view your room, as a security camera. Unfortunately, it does not work if you have a G Suite Account. You need a raw Gmail account… so this feature is useless to me.
There’s also face recognition, to display your personal calendar, but because I’m the only user in the household, this feature is somewhat useless to me.
Now, for the main reason why I am going to not recommend the Google Nest Hub Max: the screen is simply terrible. It is only 1280 x 800 pixels. You might think, oh that’s not so bad. But when you were going from an HD display from the Lenovo 10” at 1920 x 1200 pixels, you can clearly see the differences. The Lenovo displays are amazingly better, thanks to the high resolution, but also deeper blacks.
The final nail against Google is its price. The Nest Hub Max retails for $229, while you can get the Lenovo Smart Display 10” for around $149. Personally speaking, based on my own needs (since many of Nest’s features doesn’t work for me), I would just go with the cheaper (and better) Lenovo Smart Display 10”.
The Lenovo Smart Display does almost everything that the Google Nest Hub Max does, and despite a worst speaker system, I can live with that over a better screen.
P.S. I tried to use the Google Nest Hub Max as my main display on my desk for a few hours, but staring at that awful screen, I simply had to swap it back to my original Lenovo Smart Display.
At first, it was great… but as I used it more and more, I started to see its limitation. I soon realized that Amazon just basically wanted me to pay for all of its services. For example, if I wanted to listen music, I would have to pay its Amazon Music subscription. If I wanted to display my photos (to use the Echo Show as a photo frame), I would have to pay for Amazon Drive (which comes with a Photo service). Want to watch movies? Amazon Prime, etc. It’s that classic razer blade strategy - get them in with a cheap product, but sell them reoccurring blades or services.
When the Lenovo Smart Display was announced, I quickly jumped ship. Switching over to Lenovo meant that we had to become a Google home, as everything is built around the Google Home Hub application. If you don’t mind giving Google your information, you can use many of their services - for free. That’s the attractive thing, it’s mostly free.
Using Google Music, I can stream all my music on the Smart Display. Using Google Photos, I can setup my display as a digital photo frame. It is awesome… and for the most part, they are all free services.
I love the Lenovo Smart Displays, I currently own three of them (one 10” and two 8”). I was eagerly looking forward to buying larger displays or a better redesign… but unfortunately the new redesigned is a smaller version: a 7” display.
As stores like Best Buy are phasing out the Lenovo Smart Displays in favor of Google Nest Hub (7”) and the Google Nest Hub Max (10”), I decided to get a Hub Max on sale. The Nest Hub is a re-branding from Google Home Hub.
The key differences (and improvements) in the Nest Hub 10” vs Lenovo Smart Display 10” is that the audio is a million times better thanks to its 3” subwoofer. The Nest Hub also features a better microphone to hear over distance and has an “ultrasound sensing” technology (to recognize the tiniest “hey google”).
If you have a Nest account, you can use the Nest Hub to spy, I mean view your room, as a security camera. Unfortunately, it does not work if you have a G Suite Account. You need a raw Gmail account… so this feature is useless to me.
There’s also face recognition, to display your personal calendar, but because I’m the only user in the household, this feature is somewhat useless to me.
Now, for the main reason why I am going to not recommend the Google Nest Hub Max: the screen is simply terrible. It is only 1280 x 800 pixels. You might think, oh that’s not so bad. But when you were going from an HD display from the Lenovo 10” at 1920 x 1200 pixels, you can clearly see the differences. The Lenovo displays are amazingly better, thanks to the high resolution, but also deeper blacks.
The final nail against Google is its price. The Nest Hub Max retails for $229, while you can get the Lenovo Smart Display 10” for around $149. Personally speaking, based on my own needs (since many of Nest’s features doesn’t work for me), I would just go with the cheaper (and better) Lenovo Smart Display 10”.
The Lenovo Smart Display does almost everything that the Google Nest Hub Max does, and despite a worst speaker system, I can live with that over a better screen.
P.S. I tried to use the Google Nest Hub Max as my main display on my desk for a few hours, but staring at that awful screen, I simply had to swap it back to my original Lenovo Smart Display.
Breakdown below:
| Product: |
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| Price: | $229.99 | $149 (10”) | $229 |
| Release: | October 11, 2018 | July 2018 | September 2019 |
| Size/Resolution: | 10”/1280 x 800 | 10”/1920 x 1200 | 10”/1280 x 800 |
| Speakers: | 2 x 10W and Dolby processing for room-filling sound | 2" 10W Full Range Speaker, 2 x Passive Tweeters | Stereo speaker system (2x 18mm 10W tweeters, 1x 75mm 30W woofer) |
| Camera: | 5MP | 5 MP Wide Angle | 6.5-megapixel camera with 127-degree wide field of view |
| Processor: | Intel Atom x5-Z8350 | Qualcomm® Home Hub Platform (Snapdragon™ 624, Octa-Core A53 1.8 GHz, 14 nm) | Amlogic T931 chip |
| Software: |
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| vu ([email protected]) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ facebook.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic |
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