Gadgetory

(upbeat music) - This is the Google Nest Hub Max. It is a smart home display that also uses Google Assistant, shows your photos. Actually, if you're familiar with the old Google Home Hub, it's the same thing, just with a bigger ten inch screen and a camera for doing video calls. The Google Nest Hub Max has a ten inch display, and it's an HD display which means it's probably not ultra high resolution, but it's HD. More importantly though, is that it has this magical color temperature matching thing that they did with the original Google Home Hub. So, photos look like actual photos, instead of just a TV screen sitting on your counter. (soft relaxation music) So you look at the front of the device, you'll see there's a couple of microphones. It only needs two. And then there's the color temperature sensor which does the magical color temperature thing. And then of course, there is the camera. If you're wondering, there is a physical switch on the back. - [Device] The mic and camera are off. - Which disconnects the camera and the microphone physically even though you don't see a little shutter on the front. It's a six point five megapixel camera, but you shouldn't care about the megapixel count The important thing is that it's there for duo video chats. It has a 127 degree field of view, which is super wide, so it'll pick up the whole room and even though this thing is angled up, it should pick up little children down near the counter. It does another neat trick where it will follow you if you want it to, so it'll try and keep faces in frame and zoom in on them just a little bit, so it looks like a nicer video chat. All of that's kinda table stakes for a smart speaker. We've seen all of that stuff before, even ones that have a display. What's new here? I mean they've got a couple of front-firing tweeters and a 'woofer, but I wanna go back to that camera, because that is why this is a Google Nest product, not just another Google product, 'cause it does a bunch of Nest-like things. One, it can become a best security camera. So you can, from your phone, open up the Nest app and turn this thing into a Nest security camera. So, that's cool. But the Google Nests sort of tie up the rebranding the whole division into Google Nest now. Means that this does a few things that Google thinks is really forward looking towards what ambient computing in your home is gonna look like. And one of those things is this camera can recognize your face. You set it up in the phone and then it stores your facial recognition data locally, on the device, so it doesn't have to go up to the cloud. And then, when you walk in the room it sees you, shows a little icon showing your head, and then it's able to give you your personal information instead of just general, random Google information. Oh, there's one more thing the camera lets you do. It lets you play and pause videos with a gesture. You just kinda hold your hand up and it'll pause. And then you can hold your hand up again and it will start playing again. (soft relaxing music) So the Google Nest Hub Max costs $229 and it's coming out in July. And if you're curious, the little guy is also getting a rename. It's gonna become the Google Nest Hub. But the rest of the Google Hub products aren't getting renamed. This is a new division, new tie-up inside the company, and so they're gonna release more products under the new branding as time goes on. Anyway, we are excited to try this thing out. It comes in both charcoal and white, even though the bezel is always white because it looks like a photo frame, and honestly, photos look great on it. Hey, thank you so much for watching. Would you buy a Google Nest Hub Max? Let me know in the comments. And also, Google I/O is happening and we have a ton of Google I/O content coming, so keep it locked to The Verge.