Google Home Max Review: Taking the Google Assistant to the Max

When it comes to smart speakers, they’re useful but tend to not sound the greatest. But with introduction of smart speakers like the Sonos One, HomePod and even the Google Home Max.

The Google Home Max marks the company’s first foray into the premium speaker market. It’s also the third product in their Google Home lineup.

I’ve been using the Google Home Max for a few weeks now and it’s easily one of the best sounding smart speakers out there.

Design & Hardware

The Google Home Max shares a similar design to the Google Home Mini with a fabric exterior. The top of the device is where you’ll find the volume slider which also doubles as a play/pause button.

The back of the Google Home Max, is where you’ll find the mute mic switch, a USB-C port and aux input. The USB-C can be used to charge your phone or USB-C to Ethernet adapter. The front of the Google Home Max is where you’ll find the LED lights.

The Google Home Max is fairly heavy. The device has two tweeters, two 4.5-inch subwoofers as well as Google Cast support and Bluetooth. The speaker can get fairly loud and has a good amount of bass with great highs and lows.

The Google Home Max also comes with something called Smart Sound which uses AI to automatically adapt the music you’re listening to on the speaker to make sure it sounds great no matter where it’s placed within your home.

You can also pair the Google Home Max with another one to use it as a Speaker Pair for stereo sound. Setting up two Google Home Max devices as a speaker pair is fairly easy, all you need to do is go to the Google Home app, then go to the device settings for one of your Google Home Max devices. You should see an option for Speaker Pair and then the app will take you through the setup process and then name your Speaker Pair. Now under your devices list in the Google Home app will show your Speaker Pair and separating the pair can be done with a press of a button.

The Google Home Max can also be used horizontally or vertically.

The Google Home Max comes in two colours, Chalk and Charcoal and costs $499 CAD. It’s available from the Google Store and Best Buy. That may seem like a lot but you are paying for a premium speaker.

Software

The Google Home Max has the Google Assistant built-in, so you can ask Google such as what’s the weather, play your morning playlist or control your smart home devices.

The Google Assistant works with a number of services such as Spotify, Philips Hue, Nest and more. You can either ask the Google Assistant to play your music or you can cast it from your phone.

To setup the Google Home Max, all you need is the Google Home app and from there, you’ll setup thing like connecting to Wi-Fi, logging into your Google account and train it to recognize your voice.

Final Thoughts

Overall, the Google Home Max is a great sounding smart speaker that offers better sound than standard Google Home or the Google Home Mini but also one of the more expensive smart speakers out there.

Pros

• Sounds great and can get fairly loud
• Can be used in a Speaker Pair
• Nice design
• Multiple ways to play music on the speaker (Google Cast, Bluetooth, voice, Aux input)

Cons

• Expensive
• Fairly heavy