Google Home can do a lot of things for us, but in no place does it excel quite like music.
Today, Google expanded the Google Home collection with both the Google Home Mini and the Google Home Max. The Mini aims to put Google Assistant in every room of your house, but Google Home Max is meant for music lovers who want to fill their rooms or their whole home with rich, beautiful sound. So, what makes the Google Home Max better for your home than the recently Alexa-upgraded Sonos speakers or Apple's upcoming HomePod?
Google Home Max is the largest of the Google Home devices, and there's quite a bit under the cloth speaker cover. Two 4.5-inch woofers and 0.7-inch tweeters will fill even the biggest rooms in your home with sound, but it's not enough to blast louder if doesn't acclimate to your acoustic space.
Smart Sound is Google's answer, a feature that calibrates the soundstage based on your room's dimensions and the kind of audio you're listening to. Smart Sound senses the room it's in and uses machine learning to keep your music sounding as good as it can. If Smart Sound sounds like Sonos's Trueplay, that's because they are similar. The difference is that Google Home Max will do it without having to dig into apps and tune it yourself.
Google Home Max, like all Google Homes, will feature Google Cast capability in order to stream a variety of music services, from Spotify to YouTube Music and Google Play Music, but this big beautiful speaker can also play music via Bluetooth and an auxiliary port, so you can plug in your old iPod or that fancy turntable and get the Home Max's beautifully smart sound combined with your hi-fi vinyl.
Google Home Max is 20 times more powerful than the original Google Home, and you can place it vertically or horizontally anywhere in your home, and reposition as needed. Because the base for the Home Max is magnetic, you don't have to worry about rubber feet sticking out when you rotate your Home Max the other direction. Google Home Max can link up with any other Google Cast speaker in your home and, of course, can be paired with each other, should you want two Google Home Max in your living room in order to rattle the rafters as you rock out.
The Google Home Max is coming this December at $399, which prices it around Sonos' Play3 and Play5 speakers, as well as Apple's HomePod, which will be hitting store shelves around that time. Google is hoping that by leveraging the Google Assistant's AI prowess, machine learning advancements, and the ease of a well-established Google Cast system will give it an edge this holiday shopping season.
Google's even throwing in a 12-month subscription to YouTube Red/YouTube Music/Google Play Music to get your jams flowing while you're starting out with the product. Considering Google Home's voice commands are currently the best way to control music in your home, it's not hard to imagine users buying in this winter.
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