Google Home Max review: the best-sounding smart speaker yet, but it's too expensive for mass appeal at $399
Review Sections — Review — Prices — CNET - Audio - Speakers - Google Home Max — The Google Home Max is not the first smart speaker to aim for better audio quality …
Context & Ripple Effects
CNET's verdict lands five days after the Home Max went on sale for $399, and it splits the difference cleanly: best sound in the category, but a price that keeps it out of the mainstream. The related coverage frames this as the peak of the premium-smart-speaker experiment — weeks later Apple would enter the same bracket with the HomePod at $349, also praised for sound and dinged for ecosystem lock-in.
What came after is the real story: Google never shipped another speaker at this tier. The line moved downmarket to the Nest Audio in 2020, and by the time Google returned with a new speaker in 2026 it was a $100 device — the first in six years — reviewed as an Assistant vehicle with underwhelming music playback.
First-order effects
- Buyers choosing between the Home Max and Apple's HomePod are picking between two $349-$399 speakers whose reviews agree on the trade: excellent audio, constrained appeal — Google's via price, Apple's via Apple Music-only voice control.
Second-order effects
- Google's own roadmap responds to the pricing problem: the Nest Audio review two years later trades bass and volume for an attractive price, effectively conceding that the Max's $399 formula found no mass market.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, premium smart speakers stay a niche while the category's center of gravity sits at $100 and below — Google's six-year gap before the $100 Home Speaker suggests the company now treats the speaker as a cheap on-ramp for its assistant rather than an audio product.
The trend: The smart-speaker market is consolidating around low-priced assistant delivery, with the premium-audio tier both Google and Apple tried in 2017-18 proving unsustainable at scale.