- So when I stopped and think about it,
I've had a lot of things named Max come through here.
There's this huge phone that nobody bought
called the HTC One Max,
or there's the Google Home Max,
a $300 smart speaker that's pretty darn big
and still sounds pretty darn good.
My dog, his name is Max.
And now there's the Google Nest Hub Max.
It's not a great name but I tell you what,
it's a really, really good smart display.
So with that, let's just get right to it
and go take a look.
(upbeat jazz music)
So here it is, the Google Nest Hub Max.
That name is still really bad 30 seconds later.
And if it looks a little bit to ya like a bigger version
of the Google Nest Hub,
whelp that's because that's exactly what it is.
- [Male Voice] Welcome to your Google Nest Hub Max,
with the Google Assistant.
- [Google Assistant] Hi, how can I help?
- [Phil] It's got a 10-inch display,
it's got a couple of far-field microphones,
it's got an ambient light sensor,
and a 6.5-megapixel camera,
smart speakers, and a woofer.
And of course, yeah, it's got all the smart assistant stuff
that Google can cram into it.
And how much does all that cost ya? $229.
Well we've seen this sort of thing before right?
First in the Lenovo Smart Display,
then in the Google Nest Hub and a couple other devices
that nobody's bought.
But for the most part, they all do exactly the same things,
they play music and video,
Google Assistant can answer questions and show you things,
you can get the news, you can play games,
you can watch live TV with YouTubeTV,
you can see recipes and flip through all the pictures
and Google Photos that you've ever taken anywhere.
You can make video calls with Google Duo,
you can listen to podcasts, you can check the weather.
The point is you can do all the same stuff on the Max
as you can with all those other smart displays
that we've used.
So, what makes the Max the one to get?
All right, well the first thing I realized is just
how much better the overall design is.
It's still got a 10-inch display,
but the footprint is a lot smaller than Lenovo's 10-inch
Smart Display.
And that's a big deal when it comes to a place where
space is really in a premium, like the kitchen counter,
and my kitchen isn't huge at all
so this was absolutely noticeable at first.
Plus, the Max just has a much better design,
and in this case symmetry matters a lot.
And all right, there's some things in the Max
that I don't like.
There's this little gap in the front of it there,
you can really see it on this macro shot.
I kinda worry about what's gonna find its way in there,
crumbs and stuff.
But, all in all, this is just obviously
a much better designed product.
The second, for me at least, is the audio quality.
Neither the Max or the Lenovo Smart Display sound better
than the Sonos One that I also keep in the kitchen
'cause I'm just weird like that.
But the Max definitely has more bass than the Lenovo,
even if the overall sound is still kinda muddy.
All right, maybe you won't absolutely notice unless you've
got the Lenovo one side by side with the Max here,
but trust me the Max is absolutely better.
Here, we'll listen to a little bit.
("As We Believed")
There's nothing really grossly different
in terms of just daily use, all right.
If the Max is say, faster in any ways,
you can't really tell it by daily use, all right.
I use it the exact same way I use the Lenovo Smart Display.
Well, that doesn't mean that we just stop here, all right.
Yeah, there's still some things to talk about.
Now here's one really small thing,
but it's one I absolutely appreciate
having this in the kitchen.
Check out these little clips in the power cord,
they're there when you take it out of the box
but you obviously don't have to unwind it all the way
and have just extra cord laying all over the place.
Love that, nice little detail.
Now you'll set up the Max the exact same way as you do
any other device like this,
right there in the Google Home app.
There's only one new thing here really,
and that's Face Match
and you're given the option to turn it on.
Let me repeat that:
you decide to turn on Face Match,
Google doesn't do it automatically, you have to choose.
It doesn't just start scanning faces 'cause you walk by.
Anyway, what do you want to do with Face Match?
Well the Max can use your voice and now your face to say,
"Hey look there's Phil walking by.
"I'm gonna show Phil his information,
"his calendar listings, his reminders.
"I'm not gonna show him his wife's stuff 'cause
"why would he want to see that?"
She does way cooler things than I do.
Now Google wants to remind us
that this is not a security thing, okay?
It's a convenience thing.
They're not trying to keep other people
out of your information that might be shown here,
they're just trying to show you your own stuff.
And, ya know, you can always just not use it
if you don't want to.
So that brings up one more little thing here.
Now first is that the 6.5-megapixel camera
can follow your face around if you're moving while you're
doing Google Duo video calls,
which I never actually do but whatever.
Now it can follow my face.
The other thing is that the Max's camera doesn't have
a physical shutter that goes on top of it,
so you can be sure that it can't see you.
Yeah, there's a switch on the back
to turn off the microphone and camera,
but I'm on record as saying that the right way to do this
is with a physical shade that comes down
over the camera lens.
If you're gonna put a camera on a device like this,
this is the way to do it,
with a physical shutter so you can make sure
nobody can see you.
And it's pretty obvious it can't see anymore.
Every smart home device needs to have this,
and that means that Google is absolutely doing it
the wrong way here.
Unless, of course, you use your own method, right?
Just stick something over the camera
if you don't want to use it.
I've got these cool little leather covers that I got off of
Kickstarter at some point, use them on my laptops too.
Very easy.
So, that's it for the Google Nest Hub Max.
It's a bad name, but it's a great device.
Now it's definitely gonna replace the clunkier
Lenovo one that I've had in the kitchen for the past year
or so.
It's worked great, this one just works better.
Unless there's a huge difference in price,
and I've seen the Lenovo one for on sale for like $150,
this is the one I would get at this point.
I would get the Max.
It sounds better, it takes up less space,
and it really just looks better.
And you know what, I guess that means that it is better.
If you got any more questions on the Google Nest Hub Max,
I just took three takes to say that properly,
the name's really bad,
go ahead and hit me up down below in the comments,
find me on the socials,
be sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven't already.
That's it, see you next time.
(upbeat music)