This year, the competition in smart speakers has reached an entirely new level, with quality, feature-packed systems doing more than ever before in their quest to sit at the heart of your smart home setup.
And, simply put, this was reflected in the incredibly strong and varied contenders that made it into the T3 Awards 2020 Best Smart Speaker shortlist.
This year that shortlist included the Amazon Echo Show 8, Google Nest Hub Mini, Sonos One, Google Nest Hub Max, B&O Beosound Balance and Amazon Echo Studio. Naturally, many of these smart speakers currently reside in T3's best smart speakers buying guide.
Each one of these smart speakers and hubs deliver a truly first-class user experience and, in many of their cases, superb value for money as well. Capable of playing music and movies, controlling smart lights and thermostats, and helping you live a better and easier life with their AI assistant chops, these products really do spark joy.
In the end, though, our judges felt that there could only be one overall winner.
And that winner of the T3 Awards 2020 Best Smart Speaker Award goes to the truly excellent Google Nest Hub Max.
In our review, we said that the Max was "Google's best smart home device yet" and that it was "ready to sit a the centre of your digital life". We reserved praise especially for its big and bright screen, face recognition tech and superb Google Assistant AI. Its audio quality was also pointed out as a highlight.
We proceeded to give the Google Nest Hub Max a maximum score of 5 stars on review, and we are equally pleased to announce that it has won T3's prestigious Best Smart Speaker Award for 2020.
For even more winners be sure to check out the T3 Awards 2020 hub page, which is stuffed full of this year's top tech, gadgets and products.