New version can track your sleep with radar

Google unveiled the second-generation Nest Hub on Tuesday, a smart display and speaker that can track your sleep using a built-in radar sensor. It will launch on March 30 for $ 99, but customers can order from Tuesday.

This is the latest way that Google is trying to make its smart home hub stand out from similar devices sold by Amazon and Facebook, and is the first to offer sleep tracking.

The second generation Nest Hub is similar to the first model, launched in 2018. It has a 7-inch screen that you can use to watch streaming video services, check the weather, receive alerts, turn on the lights and more. The latest model also has better speakers, which offer 50% more bass than the first model.

But the real new trick is the radar sensor.

Users can set the new Nest Hub close to where they sleep, as on a bedside table, and it will guide them through a “Sleep Sensor” setup process, which helps align the radar with where you sleep. Google said it can measure micromovements, like your chest moving while breathing, to determine when you’re sleeping. The microphones can determine whether you are snoring or coughing, and other built-in sensors can determine the room temperature and the brightness of the lights. He takes all this information and tells you how well you slept and can make recommendations, like setting a reminder to go to bed at a certain time to improve consistency, or trying to meditate with a relaxation routine before bed.

While it can be useful, it looks like Google is trying to put the radar sensor on any product it can imagine. It was developed as part of the Soli Project, which was first introduced in 2015. Soli made his debut on the Pixel 4 smartphone, which allowed him to skip songs by waving his hand over the screen, but was removed on the Pixel 5. Since then, it has been introduced in a new model of Nest thermostat, where it is used to see if you are close to the thermometer.

The new Nest Hub doesn’t have a camera, so you can’t see what you’re doing in bed. And Google showed CNBC a sample of the spectrogram that the radar sensor sees – it looks like a lot of confused lines. Still, people may be concerned about a device near the bed that identifies when they are moving or sleeping. Here is an example of what the radar sees:

Google said that all radar and audio data is analyzed on the device and is not sent to Google. But information about how well you slept is sent to the cloud if you want to sync with Google Fit, the company’s centralized health app that pulls data from other devices like phones and smartwatches. Google said that after you sleep, you can delete your night’s sleep report. And you can delete all data at any time.

Sleep Sensing is free next year. Google said it has not yet decided whether to charge for it.

Google recently acquired Fitbit, which also offers sleep tracking through its wearables. The company said that this product is for people who do not use sleep trackers in bed, but did not say whether or not this option is more accurate than pulse sensors.

The radar can also be used for other things. You can raise your hand to pause the music or raise your hand to postpone an alarm, for example. This is similar to the functionality built into Google Home Hub Max, which has a camera to allow for these interactions. But, on the other hand, this product is mainly for people who do not yet have the first generation model or who really want to monitor sleep.