[Poll results out] Hey Google, can you please fix Assistant issues on Home & Nest devices

New updates are being added to the bottom of the story…

Original story (from June 20) follows:

Your Google Assistant-powered Home or Nest is more than a typical smart speaker, display, camera or any other smart home device for that matter.

Google Home or Nest devices have a full ecosystem of apps aimed at providing users with detailed information and even build their daily routines.

Besides your handhelds, you can use the same Home or Nest to connect with other smart home gadgets such as smart doorbells, smart cameras, smart bulbs, smart thermostats, and so on.

It doesn’t matter whether you own the old Google Home, the newer Nest Mini or even the latest Nest Hub (2nd-Gen). As long as Google Assistant is at the core, there’s a lot more you can do with Home or Nest devices.

Of course, you probably know you can ask your Nest Mini to play music from Spotify or YouTube Music. Heck, you can even go stereo by pairing two Google Nest speakers to play music.

For a full-fledged smart home, Assistant comes in handy with automations like turning on/off smart bulbs, smart thermostats, smart blinds, and a whole bunch of other commands.

For instance, rather than get up to go switch off or dim the light in order to watch a movie, you can simply say “Hey Google, switch off living room lights” without lifting a finger and boom, lights off!

This is the same story with many other Google Assistant commands. And no doubt it’s one of the best things to ever happen to many of us.

However, this only holds when Home or Nest devices work accordingly. Unfortunately, they sometimes don’t. At least for me and a bunch of others who have been ranting in the forums and Reddit for quite some time.

A quick scroll through the Google Home subreddit (r/googlehome) and you are bound to come across multiple reports from furious Home and Nest users about the various issues they have to deal with.

There are complaints about the quality of voice recognition that has deteriorated over time; inability to properly recognize basic commands; and even cases of Google allegedly changing command syntax.

Over here at PW, we’ve been keeping tabs on some of the major issues that Google Home and Nest users have put forward in the support forums, Reddit and other platforms as well.

And truth be told, we got plenty of coverage on this subject. Talk of the longstanding Wi-Fi and Bluetooth disconnecting issues that are still being looked into years down the line or even the annoying “Something went wrong” and Home Ad Triggered issues.

We have also documented the Home/Nest issue where Assistant keeps saying “Sorry, I don’t understand” shortly after executing command, the JBL Link equalizer settings issue in Google Home app, and the “Problem connecting to cloud” issue that resurfaced after a while.

Soon after the 2nd-gen Nest Hub was announced, we came across reports from owners of the outgoing model saying that their units won’t turn on, instead they are stuck on the G logo.

Whether this was a deliberate move by Google to force owners of the older model to upgrade is not known to us. But this isn’t the only Nest Hub issue users are experiencing.

The search giant did acknowledge the annoying no sound issue a while back and even seemingly addressed it. I have been a victim of routines and family bells going off a minute early.

The issue where four solid white lights or one green light is turned on but Home/Nest won’t reset resurfaced a while ago after having been fixed. The issue with some Google Home/Nest units unlinking from user accounts and asking to login via the Home app also lives on.

We have also highlighted the issue with the timer/alarm suddenly playing harp and bird chirping sound, Assistant interpreting same command differently every time you say it, and the “Hey Google” voice proximity issue.

Google has for sure acknowledged some of these Nest issues, but fixes either never arrive or take ages to arrive and when they do, they hardly address the issue accordingly, and even introduce more issues that never existed before.

Make no mistake. Google Home/Nest devices are great when they do work properly. And while some of us are here ranting about the inconsistent performance, others are pretty much happy with their Assistant devices.

If anything, the Google Home/Nest experience is a mixed bag. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t. And Google needs to do something about this to make the experience consistent.

Let us know what you think by dropping a comment below or voting on the Twitter poll. We will be back after a week with the poll results.

Update 1 (June 27)

The results of the poll are out now. While 50% believe there is plenty of improvements needed, 37.5% don’t own a Home/Nest device and the rest are happy in the current state.

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