The 4 Best Google Nest Smart Speakers of 2025

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The 10-inch touchscreen on the Google Nest Hub Max allows you to do a lot more than just listen to podcasts and music. It has an HD screen that can stream video content, display photos and content from the web, and pull feeds from smart security cameras. However, the real hook is that this is the only Google Nest smart display with a camera, which can make video calls and even act as a security camera (more on that below). Users can also customize the display to show personalized information based on who is looking at it.

The camera is good for calls and security. The Nest Hub Max is the only Google Nest smart display that includes a camera. The 6.5-megapixel camera is good enough for video calls, but it only works with Google Meet (Google Nest ended Zoom support in 2023), and it doesn’t work with links or codes. Still, the camera has a wide, 127-degree field of view and can pan and zoom to follow you around the room.

The Hub Max can be configured to act as a motion-triggered security camera, so you’ll get notified in the Google Home app should the dog (or anyone else on the ban list) hop on the couch when you’re away. It’s a nice feature, though it certainly doesn’t rival the usefulness of a dedicated security camera.

If you don’t like the idea of a camera always watching, you can turn it off by swiping from the bottom of the screen and touching Camera. There’s a manual switch that disconnects both the camera and the microphone, however there’s no physical cover as you’ll find on some smart displays.

It’s a good kitchen companion. Even though Google Nest removed several of its awesome cooking features, you can still call up recipes, Google searches, photos, and video on the Nest Hub Max. The larger screen makes recipes, emails, and other text easier to read, and the 1280×800 resolution is clear and bright enough to watch videos, including ones from subscription services you may have, like Disney+, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+, Sling, and YouTube. It also displays beautiful photos (although not quite as well as our digital photo frame picks) from Google Photos, as well as Getty Images, Google Arts, and NASA.

The biggest weakness of the Nest Hub Max is its sound quality. It’s more than double the price of the Nest Audio yet lacks bass power. It’s fine enough for casual listening, but it won’t impress audiophiles or lovers of bass-heavy tracks.

It recognizes who’s using it. The Nest Hub Max has a feature called Face Match, which allows you to tailor the screen experience to specific users. To use Face Match, you also need to set up Voice Match. Once you have both enabled, the camera on the screen will recognize specific users and tweak the screen to include personalized greetings, as well as relevant calendar events and messages. For instance, mine would have a banner that says, “Good morning, Rachel,” with a list of the day’s entries from my Google calendar.

The Nest Hub Max also has an Ambient EQ setting, which adjusts both the brightness and the color tone of the screen to match the mood of the room and will switch to a dark, simple clock face when the room goes dark.