The Google Home Max is too loud and too expensive - and you should absolutely buy it

The design of the Home Max isn't revolutionary.

The speaker can sit either vertically or horizontally and is not wireless. It uses the same soft fabric on the speaker as the Home Mini, and while I tested the white and gray version, the Home Max also comes in black.

At first I was a little disappointed that the Home Max doesn't look all that different from most speakers. It doesn't have a futuristic design and it doesn't look particularly modern.

But I eventually came to see that as an advantage. The speaker is sleek and unobtrusive, and looks just as good sitting on my desk as it would in a living room or kitchen. It blends into its surroundings rather than becoming the centerpiece.

While you can control the Home Max hands-free, there are subtle, built-in buttons, too.

Tapping on the thin gray line on the top of the speaker lets you play and pause the music, while swiping toward the left or right next to it turns the volume up or down.

These manual controls on the speaker came in handy a few times, like one instance where the Assistant didn't quite understand what I needed.

While lying in bed one night, I asked the Assistant to set an alarm for the next morning. But when I asked it to turn the alarm volume up, it blasted music at full volume, forcing me to jump out of bed and run across the room to manually shut it off.

I'm sure my neighbors didn't love the loud music at 11 p.m., but at least I could shut the whole thing off without having to yell at it over the music (although, to be honest, a remote would have been great in that situation).

I'm not exactly an audiophile, so I can only judge the Home Max from the perspective of a regular consumer.

Over the course of a few weeks, I gauged how I felt after listening to my favorite music, and how it sounded compared to how I usually listen, which is either using my Apple TV, an Echo Dot, or my phone's speakers.

In the end, it wasn't even a competition.

The Home Max sounds fantastic, even when you take away the insane volume, which I'll get to in a minute. The sound is crisp and clear, and the bass is unexpectedly strong without being too intense.

I often don't bother listening to music at home without headphones because it sounds terrible on all my other options. But with the Home Max, I found myself looking forward to coming home and asking Google to put something on.

There's only one downside: I'm an Apple Music user, which is not an option for the Home Max. You can only use Google Play Music, YouTube Music, Spotify, or Pandora, so if you're a diehard Apple Music or Tidal fan, you'll have to make the switch.

Before I tested the Home Max, all I kept hearing about was how loud it was, but I still didn't realize what I was in for.

It is deafening.

The few times I accidentally cranked the volume, I was worried I'd given myself permanent hearing loss. It practically shook my whole apartment, and if a helicopter landed on the roof of the building, I think the Home Max would still be able to drown it out.

But the beautiful part about the Home Max is that it's not blasting out sound indiscriminately. The insanely high volume capability is balanced by how directional the sound is. Even when I had the volume up a bit too loud, I rarely bothered my roommates — if you're standing behind it, it's significantly muted. Sit directly in front of it, though, and you'll get the full force of the sound. This is great for playing music at a party, but I could also imagine getting two Home Maxes and creating surround sound.

I was shocked by how much the Home Max weighed when I took it out of the box, and that remains my only complaint about the device.

Not only is it heavy at 11.7 pounds, but it's tall and wide. I live in a New York City apartment — which is cramped by definition — and I struggled to find a place to put it. Compared to the standard Google Home, the Max feels, well, massive.

Absolutely.

After living with the Google Home Max for over two weeks, I never want to let it go. I'm hooked on the Google Assistant and I'm hooked on having high-quality sound.

Yes, it's a bit too big, but I will rearrange my apartment to make room for it.

Sure, it's too loud, but I'm willing to annoy my neighbors and roommates for the ability to listen to my music at club-level volumes.

The Home Max is life-changing, and absolutely worth its eye-popping $400 price tag. My advice is to buy one, park yourself in front of it, turn on your favorite song, and ask Google to turn the volume way up.

Sure, no one really needs the Google Home Max. But everyone should want one.