Whereas the Home and Home Mini are compact and blend in with your home decor, the Home Max is a big honking speaker. It's nearly twice the size of a HomePod and about as large as a Sonos Play:5.

The fabric on the front of the Home Max is a look I really like from Google. Similar to the new Amazon Echo, it's a more refined, less industrial look, and it blends in easily with typical home decor.

But the Google Home Max isn't a speaker I can rate solely based on the sound quality because it does so much more than just play music. It's a smart-home speaker with Google Assistant inside.

Google’s Home Max smart speaker went on sale in December 2017 with a $399 price tag. Its main competitors were Apple’s $300 HomePod and the high-end Sonos Play:5.While Apple is still selling ...

Turn on your Google Home Max and TV, and adjust the audio settings as needed. If you can't find a dedicated auxiliary port on your TV, buy an aux cord-to-optical cable.

With the Google Home Max, the Assistant kind of plays the background. Yes, ... Control your smart home accessories. Ask for fact-based answers. Get the weather. Set timers.

As Google’s largest smart speaker, we would expect it to be fairly heavy - but at 11.6 pounds (5.3kg), we think the Google Home Max 2 should probably seek to shift some of these extra pounds to ...

Notably, Google Home Max is the only speaker that's affected. Other smart speakers in the Google or Nest family, such as the ...

Both Google Home models run Google Assistant and come with support for a variety of apps and smart home services, allowing users to turn on lights or music with voice commands.