Google recently introduced the Nest WiFi Pro with Wi-Fi 6E capabilities and supports Matter, the latest smart home standard.
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Google Nest
Google's smart home brand Nest has announced the Nest WiFi Pro 6E, and beyond the glossy new design and support for faster WiFi 6E speeds, the most exciting development is the mesh router system will act as a hub for the Matter smart home standard.
The Matter hub built into the Nest WiFi Pro will help fix the biggst annyances about smart home systems, where smart home devices from different brands often need their own hubs, as they use different standards, like Z-Wave, Zigbee, or Samsung's Smart Things.
The various smart home standards are a point of confusion and frustration for many who want to smarten their homes with smart bulbs, smart locks, smart thermostats, smart security systems, smart cameras and doorbells, and so on. It meant smart home users were limited in their device choices to ensure they all supported the same standard. And if you didn't want your choice of devices to be limited, you'd potentially need several hubs.
The Matter smart home standard has the support from several companies that make smart home products, including behemoths like Amazon, Google, and Apple. Matter was officially released on October 4, so it hopefully means that future smart home devices, and even existing models, from supporting companies will function under a single hub, and can be controlled through a single app, like Google Home, Amazon's Alexa app, or Apple's Home app.
Google Nest
The New Nest WiFi Pro 6E is a mesh WiFi system that supports the latest WiFi 6E (6 Extended) standard for devices to connect to — that is, if those devices also support WiFi 6E.
Compared to previous WiFi standards, WiFi 6E introduces a new 6GHz band for supporting devices to connect to, which delivers incredibly fast speeds. More importantly, the 6GHz band is less congested than the incumbent 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, which also lends to faster and more reliable WiFi connectivity.
Google's Nest WiFi Pro 6E starts at $400 for a three-pack, which is incredibly affordable compared to the competition, like Netgear's $1,600 Orbi 960 three-pack, or even Amazon's typically affordable Eero mesh WiFi systems — the Eero Pro 6E costs almost double at $699 for a three-pack.
Google Nest
The new wired version of Google's second-generation Nest Doorbell marks the return of the popular 24/7 video recording for up to 10 days that existed in the original Nest Hello doorbell. You'll need a Nest Aware subscription ($12 a month or $120 a year) for 24/7 video recording.
Without Nest Aware, the new Nest Doorbell includes three hours of motion event history.
As it's a wired model, you'll need existing doorbell wiring outside your door. The second-generation Nest Doorbell has a 145-degree field-of-view, 950 x 1,280 video resolution at 30 frames-per-second, night vision up to 10-feet away, and includes two-way voice communication.
