John Lewis now has a Google smart home for you to try out all the gadgets

If you found yourself in John Lewis’s flagship store on Oxford Street this weekend, you might have noticed a new robotic staff member in the form of the Google Assistant.

The high-street retailer has opened an interactive 827 sq ft Google-powered smart home so customers can try out some of the tech giant’s products first hand.

The space has been established to demonstrate how people can use Google Assistant products in their home, whether its in the living room, kitchen or bedroom.

The new Google Home Hub makes an appearance, which is essentially the Google Home smart speaker but with a screen, as well as the Google Home Max speaker, the Chromecast Ultra and Nest security products including the Nest Hello doorbell.

There are also some accompanying smart products from other companies that work alongside the Google Home range, including Philips Hue smart lightbulbs and the LightWave smart sockets.

John Lewis’s smart home buyer, Katrina Mills, said the space is about helping people realise all the ways these smart products can fit into their homes.

“Sales of smart home products double every year but the rapid development in this technology has meant that they do a lot more than any of us realise. This ‘smart home’ gives people the chance to have fun testing the products and decide if they would benefit from them,” said Mills.

The company will also be adding smart home sections to other stores across the country, including Leeds, Oxford, Edinburgh and Southampton.

Around 23 per cent of people in the UK now owns one or more smart home devices, with Argos revealing that more UK households own a smart speaker than a pet rabbit.

According to YouGov, the barriers to the rest of the population owning smart devices is that they don’t really know much about them. That’s why a real home setting like the Google space in John Lewis could help people learn more about the devices and experience their real-life usage, in order to make a decision on whether or not they need one.

Having said that, around 56 per cent of people who do own smart devices told YouGov that they don’t know much about it either, which is pretty high considering they already own the actual device.

YouGov says ownership numbers of smart home devices are “impressive for this point in the product cycle.” However, in order for this to keep moving, it says prospective customers need to be convinced about how the technology works and why it can help them before these numbers start to grow.