At their second Made by Google event, Rishi Chandra, Vice President of Product Management and General Manager of Home Products has announced the Google Home Max, a surprise new Google Home product in addition to the now official Google Home Mini.
The Google Home Max is a bigger, more powerful version of Home offering a Google Assistant powered smart speaker in a premium rectangular form factor that includes dual 4.5″ woofers to provide sound up to 20x louder than Google Home. Google Home Max will sit in either horizontal or vertical orientation, with a magnetic base that can help to align the device.
The sound from Google Home Max is tuned by AI to adapt to your environment with something called ‘Smart Sound’ based on your Home speaker location, also taking into account the time of day. Home Max will integrate seamlessly with your Chromecast enabled, and Google Home speakers already in your home for a complete sound experience. You can even stereo pair another Max for a wider soundstage. Google says you can even get ‘left and right channel separation, for a truly amazing home audio experience’.
While the 3.5mm jack is disappearing on phones, Google has also included an auxillary jack to connect devices, as well as offering connections through Google Cast and Bluetooh as well.
Google will be including 12 months of YouTube Red as a bonus for people purchasing Home Max, but you’d expect that when you hear the price.
Google Home Max will be priced at $399USD and available in Chalk and Charcoal colour options when it ships in December in the US with the intent to roll out availability to other countries soon after.
Developing…
I am not usually one to whinge about the Australia tax but with prices like these its going to be a hard sell. Cheapest pixel is 650 usd which at 1.27 exchange rate is $824 not $1079 and it gets worse with the most expensive XL at $949USD which is $1205 at current exchange but they are charging $1579. These markups indicate that we could see the Google Home Max for ~$670AUD You can get a SONOS Play5 which will support assistant from early next year (as well as alexa) I know this product is not aimed as an entry… Read more »