- All right, so this is Google Home Max.
Perhaps you've seen the seven minutes
I just spent talking about it.
Hope so. If not, go watch it.
I'll wait right here.
(fast fowarding)
All right, you're back. Good.
Again, I tell ya, there's a lot to like
in the Google Home Max, but..
Yeah, I left you with a little bit of a teaser.
How does the Google Home Max
stand up to something like Sonos,
which has been the king of wireless music
for a long time now?
And that's a really good question because Google Home Max
is right there in the price range of Sonos.
The Play 5 is $100 more expensive.
Play 3 is $150 cheaper.
Now, I'm actually gonna focus on the Play 5 here
just because I think they're more equal
in terms of sound quality.
So let's do this.
It's the Sonos Play 5 versus the Google Home Max.
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First things first, what is Sonos?
Think of it like this.
It's a system of speakers that make it super easy
to just stream music wirelessly all throughout a space,
whether it's your home or your office.
I've seen people use these outside at food trucks.
So the speakers start at $149
for the smallest of 'em, the Play 1,
and they go all the way up to $700 each
for a soundbar or the Playbase, which work with your TV,
and the subwoofer to get with 'em.
Now look, Sonos is not cheap,
but it's also very easy to use.
So you control it with an app on your phone
or on your desktop, by the way.
Android, IOS, Windows, Mac, whatever, doesn't matter.
It all works and it all works really well.
And the idea is it ties in all of your music services,
almost anything you can think of, under one roof.
A Spotify, Google Play Music, Apple Music, Amazon Music,
Deezer, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts,
even has its podcast app in there.
Everything in one place.
Now, the one major that Sonos has been missing
has been any sort of assistance support.
Now that changed a little bit this year.
You can now control everything Sonos with Amazon Alexa.
And the new Sonos 1 speaker,
it's a variant of the Play 1 but newer,
has microphones built in
and you can use it as an Alexa device.
And they announced that Google Assistant support
is coming some time in 2018,
just don't have any idea which part of it.
So let's go back to the Google Home Max.
I'm gonna put it up against the Play 5, I think.
They're more comparable in size,
just overall space and how much it takes up,
and also in sound.
They're both about as loud and quality is more comparable.
And I tell ya, it's really close here.
Neither Google nor Sonos
give you the total wattage of their systems.
For whatever reason, they wanna keep that a secret,
but overall I think the mass volume is pretty much the same.
I think Sonos handles quieter music a little bit better,
but both get plenty loud for home use
and both sound really good with all kinds of music.
Acoustic rock, rap, classical, whatever you're listening to.
They both do a really good job of it.
Now look, it's not a night and day difference,
but when you're listening side by side, you can tell.
So Sonos wins that round but not by a lot.
Oh, and by the way,
both, the Google Home Max and the Sonos Play 5,
can be used horizontally or vertically
and both of them have a 3.5 millimeter jack
if you wanna line in from some other source.
Google's big about showing you record players
and that means that you can, yes,
throw Chromecast Audio onto the back of this thing
and use your Sonos as a Chromecast target.
I don't do it all the time, but I've done it on occasion.
Now the Google Home Max, of course,
is a native Chromecast target built in.
Also on the back, Sonos has a proper ethernet port.
With the Google Home Max you'll have to use a USBC adapter.
Yay.
The point is really that both of these
have pluses and minuses,
Sonos just edges out in sound just a little bit.
But I tell ya, it's not actually the sound quality
that starts to tilt the needle for me one way or the other
because both of these speakers are really good,
and I'm a huge fan of anything Chromecast.
It's probably one of the best things
Google's come up with in years.
Now, it's just that Sonos is a full system
and Google Home Max is just another speaker
in the Google Home line.
Sonos makes it super easy to group speakers
and change up the pairings on the fly.
With Google Home, you have to go into the Google Home app
and have a different set of pairings
for every permutation of speaker that you want.
It's not fun and you have to stop the music to do it.
Sonos absolutely wins that one, too.
Now let's talk home theaters.
That's something that Sonos is actually meant to do.
They've got the Playbar.
It's expensive. $700.
They've got the Playbase,
which is meant to go under a TV stand if you want.
And then they have the sub that'll go with both of 'em
or you can actually use Play 1s
or Play 3s or Play 5s as rear speakers.
Very cool.
Yes, people are trying to use the Google Home Max
as a home entertainment speaker.
It's just not meant for that.
If you don't believe me,
go back and watch the announcement event
that Google did back in October.
Nary a mention of plugging this thing into a TV,
any marketing materials you've seen with it,
the Google Store homepage, nothing.
It's all about music. Can't stress that enough.
It's unfortunate a little bit, maybe,
if you wanted to use it with the home theater.
It's just not meant for it, right?
The point is use the right tool for the right job.
Google Home Max just is not meant to do home theater audio.
It's not to say that Google Home Max
doesn't actually win out in a few other places.
The automatic tuning.
That's a really big deal
and it's something most Sonos speakers don't have
because they don't have microphones built into them.
Sonos missed the boat on that.
In fact, they have a trueplay thing
where you wave your phone around the room
to measure the sound and it adjusts the speaker
and all that, but it's iPhone only, no Android.
And in fact, it doesn't even work on the iPhone X yet.
Yeah, I'm still sayin' iPhone X.
And yeah, Google Assistant is a big deal.
Don't downplay that, right?
You can answer all the questions,
you can control all the things, even make phone calls.
The only Sonos speaker that does that right now
is the Sonos 1, but as far as full ecosystems go,
Sonos has it, Google Home just doesn't.
So let's wrap it up.
Look, both of these speakers sound really good.
Sonos wins in my years, but not by a lot.
The automatic tuning of Google Home Max, love it.
Super simple.
I love having Google Assistant built in.
But the Play 5 just sounds a little better overall.
And you know what? It should.
It costs 25% more at $500.
But, for me, the biggest difference has been in the apps
and the experience of just playing music in the first place.
I don't use my voice to do it that often
so I'm usually in my phone or on a computer to do it.
And the Sonos app experience just beats it, right?
You've got all your music services,
podcasts, everything in one place,
it makes changing speaker groups on the fly so easy to do,
and it's just something that Sonos, frankly, is better at.
That doesn't mean that Google Home Max isn't good.
It is, it's a good Google Home experience.
It's the best Google Home speaker experience
we've had so far,
but Sonos has been doing this for a long time
and it's gotten really good at it.
And that especially matters
if you want home theater support.
So, for me, yeah, Sonos wins.
So that's it for this one.
Look, I get it.
Audio's gonna bring out a whole lot of opinions.
Maybe you think I'm wrong. Maybe I am wrong.
Go in the comments and let me know,
and I'll tell you why you're right or why you're wrong.
One of us is gonna be wrong.
Let's go hash it out.
And then go get your friends,
tell them to come watch this video,
and they can tell me why (stumbling on words)
one of us is gonna be wrong.
Subscribe to the channel while you're at it.
Got lots more comin' up.
Thanks again.
See ya.
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