What is going on everyone? It's Mike and welcome to tech 24/7 TV.
Now maybe you like me and you already own a Google Nest Hub or maybe even
a Google mini or you know you could be brand new into the smart display
market and you're thinking about buying Google's latest large-screen smart home display,
the Google Nest Max, but you're really not quite sure if you want to fork
over the two hundred thirty dollars or not.
Well you are in the right place because I've been using the 10-inch smart display
for the past month and in today's video I'm going to review it as well
as tell you who should and should not buy it.
Let's get started
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Priced at two hundred thirty dollars the Nest Hub Max is the follow up
to last year's wildly successful Google Home Hub features a crispy 10-inch
Smart Display that's probably the best digital photo frame on the market today.
There's a 6.5-megapixel camera complemented with a wide field of view that's
used for interacting with the Nest Hub Max.
It has a set of highly accurate far-field microphones that are used to
easily detect the assistant catch phrase which I'm not going to say in
this video because otherwise if you have one you might be mad. And it
is deeply integrated in almost all facets of the Google ecosystem allowing for rich,
content specific information for multiple members of your family now interacting
with the Nest Hub Max is really the same way as it was in the previous generation.
You can still use your voice to interact with the assistant,
to request news and weather, play videos and music on YouTube and perform
single measurement conversions that you see people doing at parties.
Now new this year inside the Nest Hub Max is going to be Face Match.
This is going to be able to use the internal camera and on device machine learning
to identify if the account owner is making the request and automatically
serve personalized content like directions to work or calendar information
based on who's being authenticated.
Now this can be really helpful in multi-user households like I'm sure that
you're part of. Now it's worth noting that voice match and face match are
both opt-in meaning that they're not required to use the product. In addition
to being able to use voice match without actually activating face match.
I've been using both the Google Home Hub and the Google Home mini since
it was released about a year ago and I was excited check out the Nest Hub Max
when it was announced earlier this year.
That's because I wasn't really thrilled with some performance coming out
the Nest Home Hub and I wanted a richer fuller sound that usually comes
from a bigger speaker. Now it seems like the Nest Hub Max really is going
to overcompensate for the weakness of the previous generation and now all
music even song with a fairly neutral acoustic profile sound really bass heavy.
Granted this is really easy to correct by adjusting the bass in the settings
but I should not have to do this and when you consider that this is being
used in a family environment meaning that I listen to different songs from
what my life listens to, we would each need to fiddle with the settings.
The 6.5-megapixel camera has three primary functions on the Nest Hub Max. First,
it's going to be part of Google's authentication mechanism which
is to be part voice match and face matches I talked about earlier.
Second it's use for video calling using Google duo.
And third the Nest Hub Max functions as a video camera. The second area
where the nest Max could shine is video calling but there are a few limitations
that really kind of dampen the experience. As of October 2019, Google's Duo is
the only video calling technology that's available meaning that you can't
use any other cross-platform services like Skype Facebook or WhatsApp.
In my experience most people outside of tech enthusiast aren't even aware what Google Duo is,
let alone do they have it on their phone.
Now third, video calling to be limited to portrait mode which makes sense
given the screen orientation of the Nest Hub. Max. I think the Nest Hub Max
would be perfect for a couple different type of people. First,
you're brand new to smart displays and you want to incorporate
a good speaker giving you a full room sound into your house. Second you
already live inside the Nest ecosystem and you want to expand it to add
another camera to your system while adding a smart display at a reasonable price.
Now there are going to be two exceptions that recommendation: if you are
deeply integrated into the Apple home and HomeKit ecosystem, you'll need
to be okay with not having your new camera from the Nest Hub Max integrated
into the iOS Home app.
Second, if you are an iOS-only family, it might be challenging getting
friends and family members to use Google Duo for your one-off video calls.
Now in either of those scenarios. If you were looking to upgrade your first
generation Google Home hub or even a Google Home mini because the larger display,
personally speaking I would wait out upgrading until that price comes down a little bit.
If you only want the big screen and have no use for the Nest camera,
the additional three inches of the Nest Hub Max have Macs in compared to the
Google Home hub works out to be $30 dollars per inch not necessarily worth
it at that price.
Now that's gonna wrap it up for me today folks. Let me know if you've any
questions or comments about the Nest Hub Max in the comments below.
I am Mike and this is tech 24/7 TV.
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