Google Home Max Review - Review 2022

Finally, there'due south a smart speaker where the "speaker" part is equally important as the "smart." If you're interested in large, room-filling sound with voice control, the Google Home Max ($399) is your best bet right at present. While Amazon's Alexa has our favorite smart assistant ecosystem, if yous're focused on music and home control, rather than Alexa's huge grab handbag of random tertiary-political party skills, the Max makes a terrific cadre of a smart home. That makes it our Editor's Selection for loftier-end smart speakers.

Blueprint

While the original, smaller Google Home speaker looks like an air freshener or scented candle, the Dwelling house Max is simple and beautiful. Its smooth contour has rounded edges and a lovely cloth speaker grille that is so seamlessly installed, information technology looks like information technology and the surrounding matte plastic are one slice. The textile has a slight sheen to information technology, and white LEDs glow behind its surface to display volume levels. An ambient low-cal sensor adjusts the brightness of the LEDs. Beneath the grille, dual 0.7-inch tweeters and dual 4.5-inch woofers evangelize the sound. These drivers are powered past Course D amplifiers.

Measuring seven.5 by 13.3 by 6.1 inches (HWD), the Home Max is available in white/low-cal grayness ("chalk") or black/grey ("charcoal") models. It'south rather heavy, weighing in at eleven.7 pounds, but that's fine since it isn't meant to be portable.

Volume

Adjusting the volume is done using the touch-sensitive surface that runs lengthwise forth the speaker's height panel—slide your finger left to lower or right to raise volume. These levels piece of work in conjunction with your mobile device'southward master levels when you lot are continued via Bluetooth. The heart of this panel, demarcated with a short straight line, is the play/intermission button. We found these controls to be exceptionally responsive, but, of course, you can also merely talk to the Home Max. You can say, "set volume," from i to ten, or employ percentages.

Along the back panel, there's a mic switch—this turns the mic for Google Assistant and the speakerphone on and off. The speaker utilizes an array of six far-field mics to pick upwardly your voice commands from a distance.

At the bottom of the dorsum panel, there's a connectedness for the included power cable, a USB-C port (which passes through power to accuse your phone, and likewise surprisingly acts as an Ethernet port with an adapter), and a 3.5mm jack for wired audio input. Y'all can't attach external storage or an audio source to the USB-C port.

A silicone rubber base ships with the Domicile Max, and can be placed beneath it to keep it from dancing across tabletops. The same base, which resembles a gray pancake with a Google G at its center, can be placed on the right side console, and the speaker can be flipped vertically. When placed this way, the orientation sensor shifts the LED display behind the grille so that it stills reads out horizontally, and it too adjusts the audio into mono—if you lot are using 2 speakers as a stereo pair, they are supposed to be used vertically. If you're using but a unmarried Home Max speaker, you should use it horizontally.

Vertical

Assisting Yous

The Max isn't just a speaker, of course. It'southward a Google Assistant speaker. You set information technology up using the Google Home app on your Android or iOS telephone (yes, you need a phone), and then can say, "Hey, Google," to play music, control smart dwelling house devices, or answer internet-based queries.

We pit the Amazon Repeat against the Google Dwelling a few months agone, and listed 200 things you lot can ask your Google Dwelling house. Amazon still has an edge over Google in terms of smart home brands supported, and weirdly, information technology'southward still meliorate at handling calendar data for people with 1000 Suite accounts.

Simply Google Assistant is terrific as a whole-dwelling house system. It can recognize upwards to vi unlike voices for different Google accounts, synchronize music between rooms, and even broadcast letters to all of the Google Abode devices in your home.

Google Banana will play music from Google Play Music, YouTube Red, Spotify, or Pandora. If you want to ask for specific songs, yous have to be a paid subscriber to whatever service you choose. You tin can't trigger locally stored music, or your ain music library, by voice, simply the Max lets you send music via a Wi-Fi Chromecast link, Bluetooth, or an sound cablevision.

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Supported audio streaming file formats include HE-AAC, LC-AAC+, MP3, Vorbis, WAV, FLAC, and Opus. Y'all'll want to use Chromecast over Wi-Fi, if possible, for the all-time audio quality, equally the speaker doesn't list native support for AptX over Bluetooth. That said, not a lot of people tin can hear the difference between the default SBC codec and AptX, but if you're one of them, stick with Chromecast.

The Home Max's far-field microphones are tuned to pick up your vox even when the Max is playing at top volume, something Amazon's Echo Dot isn't particularly good at. Nosotros were quite impressed, for instance, playing Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" at total volume and so maxim, "Hey, Google," in a normal speaking voice—the Max picked it upward every time. When standing in between a Google Home speaker and a Home Max speaker, the mics on each were able to detect which one we were closer to, fifty-fifty if just by a foot or two, and whatsoever commands nosotros uttered would be followed past the closest speaker.

What's missing? We'd like to have seen rail navigation controls onboard—you'll be skipping tracks either on your phone itself or with the ability of your voice and Google Assistant. Simply in that location'south no reason to exclude them from the design if you're choosing to include volume and playback controls. And hey, if we're being pie in the sky, it would take been great to enhance Google's voice options with direct streaming from Tidal or another lossless sound service.

Ports

Audio Performance

And so the Home Max looks proficient and works well, but how does it audio? On tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife's "Silent Shout," information technology delivers powerful low frequency response. At superlative volumes, it doesn't misconstrue, though you can hear the digital betoken processing (DSP) kick in a niggling to thin out the deep bass—this is common with wireless speakers that utilize DSP, and it's meant to prevent baloney at loftier listening levels. Thus, at more than moderate levels, yous become a rounder, fuller sense of bass depth. In fact, for a speaker this size—not tiny, simply not massive—you lot get a disproportionately full bass response. This is a powerful sound that'll entreatment to fans of deep bass, yet the speaker doesn't forsake the overall balance of the mix, every bit the highs are besides well represented.

Bill Callahan's "Drover," a rail with less deep bass in the mix, gives us a ameliorate sense of the Dwelling house Max's overall sound signature. The drums on this rail tin sound overly thunderous on speakers that heave the bass too much, only through the Home Max, you go lovely bass depth. The drums sound full, rich, and circular—neither overly additional nor weak. Callahan's baritone vocals get an ideal low-mid presence also, highlighting their richness, while the high-mids are dialed in to evangelize some crisp treble edge to the vocals, guitar strums, and higher-register percussive hits. The balance here is impressive. Purists won't be thrilled with the bass boosting and sculpting in the highs that goes into making this audio signature, only most listeners volition enjoy the full, clear audio.

Top

On Jay-Z and Kanye Due west's "No Church in the Wild," the kick drum loop receives an ideal high-mid presence that accentuates its sharp set on, while the sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the crush are delivered with near-subwoofer-level power and depth. Again, the louder y'all pump the volume, the thinner the bass gets, but at fairly high listening levels, the bass depth is still impressive. The vocals are delivered with solid clarity and without much added sibilance.

Orchestral tracks, like the opening scene in John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary, sound wonderful though the Google Home Max—the college register brass, strings, and vocals are delivered with effulgence and the lower register instrumentation gets some added, subtle bass depth. When sub-bass moments occasionally occur in the mix, the speakers deliver them with full-bodied presence that doesn't compete with the highs for the spotlight.

So let'southward say the built-in Google Assistant functionality is worth almost $50 of the $400 toll tag—that would mean the Dwelling house Max should audio every bit good as a $350 speaker, correct? Compared with some of our favorite standard wireless speakers in this price range, similar the Klipsch The Three and the JBL Boombox, the Dwelling house Max is most definitely a competitor. From a purely audio-based standpoint, the Boombox is the winner in terms of volume and bass depth, while the Klipsch model delivers the well-nigh refined audio of the bunch. But in terms of clarity, power, and bass depth, the Habitation Max delivers an excellent listening experience that can hang in the same league every bit these speakers, which is especially impressive when you factor in the phonation command.

And, to land the more or less obvious, information technology blows away the audio functioning offered past the smaller Google Dwelling house speaker, though that speaker offers some decent bass depth for its size. If Google Assistant is a priority and solid audio performance is likewise loftier on the list, y'all won't be disappointed with the Dwelling house Max.

Smart Competition

Equally far as smart speakers go, the top competitor for the Google Domicile Max correct now is JBL'due south Link system, specially the Link 500 ($399.95), which we are in the process of reviewing. The Link arrangement has iv unlike speaker options, all with Google Assistant. The major functionality yous lose is the ability to make phone calls, which Google's own speakers have merely 3rd-party models don't. You can also presume, of course, that Google's own speakers will get new features start (that's what has happened with Alexa speakers). Unless the Link is compellingly better, audio-wise, the Max is a safer bet.

LEDs

The best speaker out at that place running Amazon'south Alexa platform is the $200 Sonos One, which sounds good but isn't in the same grade, bass-wise (or price-wise). Apple tree's $349 Homepod may finish up competing, merely it's been delayed, and Siri is far behind Google when information technology comes to vocalization assistant capabilities right at present. On pinnacle of that, nosotros know so footling about the speaker it's hard to say whether or non you should wait for it.

Yes, you can admittedly get an Amazon Repeat Dot and connect it to i of those other wireless speakers, or even make a whole-habitation system out of speakers wearing Echo Dot hats. But there's a lot to be said for simplicity and elegant design.

Conclusions

The Google Home Max is the best smart sound feel you're going to go right now. While new smart domicile brands and third-party skills however come to Alexa first, Amazon doesn't accept an integrated solution that satisfies people who desire a truthful bookshelf speaker, or a stereo pair that can fill a big room. Yes, you lot tin can wire together standard speakers with smaller smart speakers, but that'south a piffling kludgey and the microphones may take trouble recognizing your vox when music is playing at superlative book.

The audio quality on Google's home banana speakers has ever prepare them a piffling flake autonomously from Amazon's. The Google Home sounds a bit better than Echo, and there'due south nix with Alexa that sounds like the Google Habitation Max. While we nonetheless recommend an array of Alexa devices for people primarily interested in depression-cost smart assistants and smart home control, cull Max, and the Google ecosystem, if big audio is your priority.

Google Home Max Specs

Channels	Stereo
Bluetooth	Yep
Wi-Fi	Yes
Multi-Room	Yeah
Physical Connections	3.5mm, USB-C
Portable	No
Water-Resistant	No
Speakerphone	Yes
Voice Assistant	Google Banana