Google's OnHub comes with much processing power and a cloud connection to a Google update server. OnHub Wi-Fi offers lots of potential in a tiny bundle. The price tag of $200 certainly puts the Google OnHub in the high-end spectrum of the market. For that money, it comes with mostly all the advanced hardware you would expect: 802.11ac Wi-Fi that goes up to 1900Mbps, dual-band 2.4 and 5GHz.
OnHub comes with a smartphone app called Google On. Google's Wi-Fi router is built by TP-Link, but Google says that it plans to also design new OnHub devices in the future with other hardware partners. According to reports, an Asus model might be out on the market later this year.
OnHub features one gigabit LAN port, WAN ports, along with a USB 3.0 port. OnHub also has a speaker that is used during setup. The little Google OnHub, despite its miniaturized design, is packing impressive processing power. The Wi-Fi router is powered by a Qualcomm IPQ8064 processor with a dual-core 1.4GHz SoC based on the Krait 300 CPU architecture. Together with 4GB of storage space and 1GB of RAM, the specs are certainly high-tech for a router.
OnHub's license page makes mentions of Chrome OS and Gentoo. According to The Financial Times, Google's smart router is a project from the Google Fiber and Chrome teams. The interface to OnHub is a smartphone app.
The main page of the interface app displays the number of devices and the network status. Users can configure the usual selection of router settings, like static IP addresses, changes of the SSID, user access password for your home network, port forwarding and other usual stuff.
The router doesn't require a "logging in" account but is using instead the Gmail account that sets up the device as the owner. Users can also set other Gmail accounts as "managers." A manager of the router can do anything besides factory reset the device.
One of the advanced features of Google's OnHub device is the support for smart home applications. The Wi-Fi router comes with features and protocols to control various smart home devices such as motion sensors, door sensors and door locks. OnHub has support for Bluetooth 4.1 along with Google's "Thread" network protocol and "Weave" communication standard.
