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Does Google Nest Slow Down Wi-Fi? (We Checked)

Google nest is a beautiful home automation device that helps you to turn off the lights or adjust the temperature of your house with just a few taps on your smartphone. You can control all the devices by using the Google Home app.

But, it has a major drawback that it consumes a lot of bandwidth and slows down your Wi-Fi network. It is a common problem among users that google nest slows down the Wi-Fi network.

In this article, I will be talking about why Google Nest slows down Wi-Fi and what are some possible solutions to fix this issue.

Here’s If Google Nest Slows Down Wi-Fi

Google Nest devices can use up a lot of bandwidth, which in turn may slow down your home internet connection. The amount that it uses depends on what you are using it for like streaming videos. At most though it should not impact the speed enough for you to notice.

Two Google Nest Mini smart speakers up close

Here’s two reasons why this happens:

  • Your Wi-Fi router only has so much bandwidth to go around. If it gives too much to one device, there won’t be enough left for others.
  • The more devices you have connected to your network using Wi-Fi, the less bandwidth is available for them all. So if you have a lot of smart gadgets on your network (like the ones that come with Google Nest), they might all be competing for limited space. This means they take longer to load pages or stream video. It also means that some requests might not make it through at all — resulting in dropped calls and frozen videos.

Google Nest devices include:

  • Google Home speakers
  • Nest Cam Indoor and Outdoor cameras
  • Nest Protect smoke detectors (wired version)

The Google Nest line of products are designed to work with each other as a seamless platform.

For instance, if you’re using your Google Nest thermostat, it can be programmed to automatically lock your door through a connected device.

It’s these types of connections that help streamline connectivity for all devices connected to your WiFi network.

Smooth operation between devices is important for a number of reasons. For one thing, it means that more data can be transferred in a timely manner without clogging up the network.

Another benefit is that this type of connectivity allows you to connect more devices than you would have otherwise been able to do so on a single network—making it possible for more people to connect at once without losing any speed or quality in signal transmission.

How Come My Wi-Fi Is Slower When Using Google Nest?

It’s important to keep in mind that your Google Nest devices are also Wi-Fi devices. They have a connection to your router and consume bandwidth as well, which can lead you to perceive that your internet speed is slower than normal while they’re running.

Of course, it’s true that Google Nest devices use a lot of bandwidth—they’re designed to be used for streaming video and other intensive tasks.

That said, the amount of bandwidth they use isn’t so great that it should slow down the rest of your home network significantly.

It depends on how you use the device; if you just ask it for the weather every morning or listen to music with it now and then, it probably won’t affect your internet speeds at all.

When you install a Google Nest device, it will request a new IP address from your router, so there may be delays when turning on these devices or using them for the first time.

As long as they have valid IP addresses assigned by your router, though, they should operate normally.

One thing we hear a lot about is latency—which describes how long it takes data packets to get from one computer or device on a network to another one over some distance (e.g., from Atlanta to Chicago).

You can also read more here in our article do games slow down wi-fi?

Can Using Google Nest Directly Affect My Wi-Fi Speed?

The answer is yes, using a Google Nest device can directly affect your Wi-Fi speed.

That’s because if you’re using a Google Nest device that’s connected to your Wi-Fi network, that device is using up some of the bandwidth on your Wi-Fi network.

And when there are more devices connected to your network, you’re more likely to experience a slowdown in network performance.

So what does this mean for you? Well, if it feels like you have slower than expected Internet speeds when using your Google Nest device, it might be time to prioritize which devices use the most bandwidth by assigning them static IP addresses.

This will make sure they can run as quickly and efficiently as possible while still leaving plenty of bandwidth left over for all of the other important things going on in your home at any given moment.

How Do I Check If It Interferes With My Wi-Fi Connection?

Method 1: Use your phone or laptop’s Wi-Fi settings menu. This is the simplest way to check if your Google Nest device is causing problems for your Wi-Fi connection.

  • Start by making sure that your phone or laptop is connected to the same network as the Google Nest device. Then, from there, open up the settings menu on your phone or computer and find where it says “Wi-Fi”.
  • On most phones, you can just go to Settings and then look under “Network & Internet”—this will be a good starting point for finding the right place on any device.
  • From here, you should see a list of all available Wi-Fi networks in range.
  • Look through this list and find the one that matches up with your Google Nest device (it should have a similar name).
  • When you click on it, you can get more details about how good of a signal strength it has—good internet strength is typically anything above -50 dBm (decibels per milliwatt), so make sure that it isn’t much lower than this number if possible.
  • Anything below -65 dBm may cause issues with streaming videos or other applications requiring high bandwidth usage like online gaming which would lead one to think their Google nest slows down their Wi-Fi connection even when not using it themselves but only because other devices are connected via bluetooth etc…

Method 2: Check from another room in your house/apartment building where reception may be worse due to distance from router/repeater etc…

  • This will give an idea if there could be interference between walls due to thick insulation material such as rockwool, lead paint etc…
  • If there is no significant change in signal strength after moving away then chances are good that something else might cause interference such as heaters located near wireless access points (maybe they radiate some frequencies which interfere with those used by wireless networks?)
  • You could also try checking inside an elevator shaft or other area.

How Much Bandwith Does Google Nests Use?

There are a few factors that determine how much bandwidth Google Nests use, but they all revolve around the model and version of your device.

For example, if you have an original Generation 1 Nest Cam, that camera uses approximately 0.5 Mbps on average.

Meanwhile, the Nest Learning Thermostat uses about 0.6 Mbps.

To give you an idea of how much data this is, streaming Netflix only requires about 1 Mbps for HD quality (0.7 for SD). Streaming YouTube? 3 to 4 Mbps for HD and 2 to 3 for SD quality. So as you can see from these numbers, Google Nests don’t use up a lot of bandwidth.

Can You Stop Google Nests From Interfering With Your Wi-Fi?

Adding more of these devices makes the situation worse. As a result, your Wi-Fi network will slow down. Luckily, there are some ways to stop Google Nests from interfering with your Wi-Fi:

First and foremost, try using a mesh network. This is a system that allows you to link up multiple routers in such a way that all of them share your bandwidth equally as needed.

You can also manually configure your Wi-Fi channels to avoid frequency overlap in certain areas of the home.

By checking your router’s settings, you can usually find options that let you change channel width and channel mode which helps avoid interference with the signals being sent by other devices.

Turning off auto-update for Google Nest products helps reduce interference because it stops updates when they’re not necessary and prevents accidental upgrades from happening accidentally during peak hours when people are most likely using their internet connections (like at night).

Conclusion

You now know whether the Nest thermostat will slow down your Wi-Fi network.

In short, Nest won’t slow down your Wi-Fi, but if it’s far away from your router, then it can experience slower speeds.

Be sure to place your Nest as close to the router as possible to prevent this issue.

If you want to read more, read our blog here about does eufy slow down wi-fi?

Sources

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