With great versatile hardware, powerful sound and the full resources of Google's AI and Assistant software, the Google Home Max is more than just a better version of the original Google Home. This is an excellent quality, relatively compact speaker system that will likely be able to handle all your music, and can also act as a voice-activated hub for all your smart home needs.

When the original Home launched, being able to play music was just one of its talents. It did a reasonable job of it, but it wasn't designed for serious listening. Since then, there have been a number of solutions to get a combined premium speaker and smart home device into your living room, (including Apple's HomePod, a great speaker hamstrung by limited software). But the Max, arriving in Australia on August 9, blows them away in one hefty but elegant $549 package.

The Max has a natural-sounding signature with solid but not overwhelming bass, clear highs and absorbing mids. Party animals might be initially disappointed by the lack of bone-rattling bass, but that's by design so the vocals and clear instrumentation always shines through. On certain tracks the Max will let you know it's got more than enough woofer to go around — and if you have to you can adjust a simple equalizer in the Home app to make it more prominent — but on the whole the sound rich and balanced.

This thing goes louder than any other smart speaker I've heard too. It's to the point where the phrase "Hey Google, turn it up all the way" should prompt the response "Okay, hold on to something". It's louder than you'll ever need in your lounge room, but impressively the speaker takes it gracefully in its stride with no obvious loss of clarity. The bass stays restrained and in its proper proportions.

Even at 50 per cent volume — which, I'm sure, is still louder than my neighbours would prefer I blast '90s nu metal at 5pm — you can tell there's a lot of power driving this speaker. But its got smarts too.