You gotta hand it to Walmart. Not only did the retailer decide to hold its own massive sale to take advantage of the buying frenzy inspired by Amazon’s Prime Day, but it also made a point of highlighting products that it knew Amazon would not be featuring. Case in point: Walmart’s got the Google Home Max smart speaker  on sale for $249, down from its usual $399 price. Since Amazon is famous for promoting its own Echo and Fire TV devices on Prime Day, Walmart is the place to go if you’re looking for anyone else’s smart speaker or streaming devices.

The Google Home Max is one of the best-sounding smart speakers you can buy, but it’ has also always been one of the most expensive. Even Apple’s HomePod, which started out at $350, is now down to $299. That’s what makes this a great deal — the Google Home Max is now $50 less than the HomePod. Chief among the Google Home Max’s strengths is just how loud it can get. Typical smart speakers like the Amazon Echo or the Google Home can provide adequate sound for listening to music, but it’s not a very hi-fi experience. Their small enclosures and correspondingly small drivers are ideally suited to be tucked away in the corner of a kitchen or bedroom, and sound quality suffers as a result.

Buy Now

Not so with the Google Home Max. It’s a monster, capable of filling a room with tunes — or a whole party if you need it to. If you like your music with copious amounts of bass, you’ll love the Google Home Max. It tends to favor the low end, which might not be the right balance for flights of operatic fancy, but for rap, hip-hop, EDM, and even acting like a big speaker for your phone and tablet-based movies, it’s a terrific signature.

The Google Home Max has strong support for streaming music services — unless you use Apple Music or Tidal: You can play Spotify, Google Play Music, YouTube Music, Pandora, TuneIn, and iHeart Radio, or simply stream the music you’ve got stored on your local device over Bluetooth. And of course, you’ve got the Google Assistant built-in, which not only gives you access to a world of voice commands but also lets you connect with other Chromecast speakers and streaming sticks, like the Chromecast Ultra, for remote control and multi-room audio.

Make sure you check out all of the other awesome audio deals for Prime Day 2019.

Follow @dealsDT