Prizefight: Apple HomePod vs. Google Home Max
Prizefight: Apple HomePod vs. Google Home Max
7:26

Prizefight: Apple HomePod vs. Google Home Max

Smart Home
[MUSIC] What's up, prize-fighters? I'm Brian Tong, and the smart speaker space just got hotter. It's a prize-fight punch out between The Apple's Homepod and The Google Home Max. Let's get it on, round 1 is design. [MUSIC] Apple's Home Pod looks like a lot of things, it could be a roll of toilet paper or a cat scratching post, but in the setting of a living room it looks nice, like a real nice, and you can pretty much put it anywhere, it has this hard spongy outside but its screen at the top for the series rainbow swirl You'll rarely ever see it and its tap, tap, tappy touch controls for volume instead of elegantly moving around in a circle to turn it up or down is a miss. Now the Google Home Max is a beast in size that takes up more than twice the space of a Home Pod and it just screams at you saying I'm a big bad speaker. It also has a solid weight and a smooth rounded design. Its touch and swipe controls at the top are nicer to use. And I'm a fan of its visual queue through the speaker when you're talking to it. Both of these look great in person. But if I had to pick one, just on looks, I'm giving found one to Homepod. And your cats are probably gonna like that too. [SOUND] Next round is sound. [MUSIC] When I first played music from the home pad I was impressed, a full sound with beat bass and boom that you would never expect to come out of a speaker this size, it really feels most rooms and sounds great. Then I put it up to the Google home max And although the Home Max may not hit as low, its sound was more balanced with clear highs and details in vocal tracks that you can't get from the Home Pod, now at times the Home Pod sounded just a little muddier compared to the Google Home Max, the sound quality of a speaker you like Tends to really matter the genres of music you're listening to, but after putting them side by side. I lean towards the Google home max overall even I love my base heavy tracks. The other thing to consider is the home pod delivers full 360 degrees sound. And that sound quality state consistent, no matter where you stood. That's important if this is been place in the middle of a room. The Google Home Max sound quality changes once you move to the side or even behind it because it's only being push out from one direction if it's against the wall or you know what that will matter. If I'm on a kick pad dinner party, I'm probably picking HomePod, but if I'm using this to listen to a music on a daily basis I'm going Google Home Max. So you know what? This round is subjective, we're calling it a tie. Next up, round three is the voice assistant. [MUSIC] I don't need to tell you this but Siri isn't even remotely close to the level of the Google Assistant. Sure, they can both do things like weather or sports and general knowledge. Well, hold on. Hey, Siri, tell me more about Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee is a town in West Baton Rouge Pasish, Louisiana, United States. Hey, Google, tell me more about Bruce Lee. According to Wikipedia, Lee Jun-fan known professionally as Bruce Lee was a Hong Kong and American actor, film director, martial artist, martial arts instructor, philosopher and founder of the martial art Jeet Kune Do, one of the wushu or kungfu styles Now, Google Home supports multiple users and can identify individual voices and them manage their own calendar, lights, to do list and more. The home pod is limited to one person and one person only to make reminders notes and check in messages. Now, if you don't turn personal requests off Other people can access those Apps of yours as well. So you would think, both of these smart speakers can handle calendars. That's easy enough, right? Hey Google add my basketball game at 5 PM of February the 28th. All right basket ball game on the 28th of February at 5 PM. Do you wanna save this? Yes. Okay. It's on your calendar. Hey, Siri. Add my basketball game at 5 PM on February the 28th. [BLANK_AUDIO] I can't access your calendar here. Sorry about that. Nope. The google home is smarter because it has the brains of google inside it, it can string two commands together, it can dictate recipes and wait for you step by step, and even tune a freaking guitar. And we still haven't even touched on all the other things it can do, like support different streaming music services with your voice like spotifying Pandora, or through a content, onto a chrome cast connected to your TV The HomePod is really an Apple music speaker with a Siri that's not even as smart as the on in your iPhone. Google face a round three by a landslide next round is the smart home. [MUSIC] We're not trying to beat up on Apple here but they're trailing once again. Apple does support Smart devices with everything ranging from light bulbs from switches to thermostats. But it is not long enough and they're still missing key partners that have established themselves a long time ago. Got a Nest thermostat has been part of the Nest ecosystem for years. That's not supported. How about the Logitech Harmony-Hub that let you control your home theater, which between inputs and tell you to do things from watching TV of play my PS4. That's not supported either. Home kid is improving and has moved away from forcing partners to have a physical hardware chip for authentication to a software based system that broaden devices like LIFX or even more. Wemo is finally compatible with an additional $40 hub that taps to all your Wemo devices and home kit. But Apple's still behind big time. Round four goes to Google. The final round that decides it all is features. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] We know there's no Bluetooth streaming from non-iPhone to the HomePod. You can't even set it up without an iPhone running iOS 11. Apple's the honey badger of tech and they don't give a [BLEEP] The Google Home Max let's anyone stream to it over Bluetooth. If you're talking ports, the HomePod has no ports whatsoever, nada. The Home Max has a mic mute switch. A USB-C port and a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack. Where's the 3.5 millimeter jack on the Homepod? I'm actually more mad at myself for even asking the question. You can stream music services like Spotify and Pandora and more to the Homepod through Airplay on your phone, but the Google Home Max has native support directly from the speaker. The Home Max already supports using two speakers for stereo sound, and also supports multi room audio. On its launch we're still waiting for the same promises from the homepod and Apple's AirPlay2. In the final, and another brutal round, this one goes to the googs. The HomePod jumped out early. You can really call a round two a toss up but after that the Google went on a tear taking the next three rounds. The Google Home Max takes this battle and is your prize fight winner, Apple delivered with their promise of great sound but there's more to it than that for a smart speakers and [INAUDIBLE] they've got a whole lot of catching up to do. So what do you want from a smart speaker, ultimately the final decision always comes down to you. I'm Brian Tong thanks for watching, I will catch you guys next time for another Prizefight. [SOUND] [SOUND] [BLANK_AUDIO]

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