ISSUE 68 • ANDROID ADVISOR 77to pause your tunes, or raising your palm again to
restart the music.
Communication and Chromecast
Thanks to its support for Google Duo video calls, the
Nest Hub Max excels as a way to keep in touch with
friends and family, with the camera lens capable of
following you around the room. You can also place
audio calls to any Home Mini or Nest Mini speakers
in your house (“Hey Google, call the living-room
speaker”), or broadcast an announcement to all
your Google speakers (“Time for dinner!”).
When you’re not summoning family members
to the dinner table, you can watch videos from any
Chromecast-enabled app. While I was getting lunch
ready on a recent Sunday, for example, I cast the
Oakland Raiders/Green Bay Packers game to the
Nest Hub Max via the NFL Sunday Ticket app. While
Amazon’s Echo Show devices do offer Alexa skills for
various cable, TV, and audio services, the Nest Hub
Max’s Chromecast capabilities offer far more flexibility
in terms of what I can watch or hear on the display.
Google Nest Hub Max
or Amazon Echo Show?
If your life revolves around Gmail, Google Calendar,
and other Google services, you’ll love Google
Assistant’s ability to tee up the day and dole out
relevant content, while Nest users will appreciate
controlling their devices and monitoring their homes
via Assistant and the Nest Hub Max’s jumbo display.
That said, smart home mavens might be better off