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It seemed most at home with pop tracks such as In My Feelings by Drake or Anywhere by Rita Ora. Jazz tracks such as Moanin’ by Art Blakey sounded warm and punchy, and it even did a fairly good job with Holst’s Jupiter performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Rap tracks such as Dr Dre’s Still DRE, Forgot About Dre or The Next Episode sounded really aggressive and great. If you like big booming bass, you will love the Home Max, but I found the bass a bit loose in some tracks, missing some subtlety – turning the bass down in the equaliser helped a little. The Home Max sounds punchy, producing music with lots of attack in the mids and deep bass. Apple’s HomePod has a similar system built in, but Sonos’s Play:5 and others require an iPhone or iPad to tune the speakers each time you move them. It has an intelligent audio tweaking system called Smart Sound, which uses the mics and AI to adjust the music as you play to a account for location, noise sources, track and even the time of day.

It doesn’t really have a sweet spot, however, sounding pretty uniform no matter where you sit in front of it. It’s front-facing two 4.5in woofers and two tweeters produce fairly direct sound, making the Home Max a speaker to put at the end of a room rather than in the middle of it like Apple’s HomePod or the cheaper Amazon Echo. The Home Max certainly produces a big, aggressive sound and is loud enough as a single unit to fill even large rooms. The little rubber mat stops the Home Max from vibrating on hard surfaces at high volumes. Google has also continually added to Assistants smart home device control, which now rivals Amazon’s Alexa in most categories.īut it is Assistant’s ability to control a wider range of music services, including Spotify, Google Play Music, YouTube Music and Deezer – combined with the best voice recognition – which has made it the one to beat.

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Since the original Home launched in May 2017, Assistant has become smarter answering more and more questions, and is impressively able to not only recognise the words you’re saying but also what you’re trying to say – when you butcher a question, Assistant will still be able to work out what you want, more often than not.Īssistant also has the ability to recognise individual voices using Google’s Voice Match – a feature still not available for Amazon’s Alexa in the UK – so when you ask for an update on your calendar or music from your library you get your stuff, rather than stuff belonging to someone else who lives in your house. Google Assistant is the same on the Home Max as it is on any other Google Home smart speaker. The top of the Google Home Max has a touch-sensitive strip that acts as a pause-play button and a volume slider. It took about five minutes to get the speaker out of the box and playing music. Just plug it in, open the Google Home app on your smartphone or tablet, tap the button to set up a new device and follow the instructions.
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Setting up the Home Max is super easy, but requires an Android or iOS device.
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There’s also Bluetooth for streaming your music directly from a phone, tablet or computer if you need to.

When the mute switch is flicked the dots light up red until you turn the mics back on.Īn analogue 3.5mm line-in socket and USB-C port round out the back, alongside the figure-of-eight power cable. When horizontal the hidden touch strip on top acts as a pause-play button and a volume slider, both of which work well.Ī mute switch on the back allows you to turn off the microphones if you would like a little privacy from Google Assistant’s listening out for its wake words, which are either “Hey Google” or the older “Okay, Google”. It can be stood up vertically or placed horizontally with a little rubber foot that attaches to the bottom magnetically. White dots in the centre of the fabric front show when the Home Max is actively listening to you, when it’s working on a query or speaking to you, or shows the volume level when you adjust it. It is about the size of a large bookcase speaker, but weighs over 5kg.

In white and grey it’s simple fabric front and rounded corners make the Home Max look a bit bland up next to a Sonos Play:5 or an Apple HomePod, but it might be easier to blend in with soft home furnishings. The Home Max is relatively large box speaker, by smart speaker standards, with a white or black smooth plastic body and grey or charcoal coloured fabric front. The Home Max joins the original Google Home (left) and the smaller Home Mini (right).
