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The Google Home Max might work as a TV sound bar with this update

The speaker reportedly had atrocious latency of over half a second -- meaning your audio and video would be out of sync.

Sean Hollister Senior Editor / Reviews
When his parents denied him a Super NES, he got mad. When they traded a prize Sega Genesis for a 2400 baud modem, he got even. Years of Internet shareware, eBay'd possessions and video game testing jobs after that, he joined Engadget. He helped found The Verge, and later served as Gizmodo's reviews editor. When he's not madly testing laptops, apps, virtual reality experiences, and whatever new gadget will supposedly change the world, he likes to kick back with some games, a good Nerf blaster, and a bottle of Tejava.
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Sean Hollister
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The Google Home Max.

 Chris Monroe/CNET 

Google will issue a much-needed firmware update this month for the Google Home Max , the company's largest smart speaker.

"Much-needed" if you're watching video on a phone or TV plugged into speaker's 3.5mm jack, that is. 

According to The Next Web, the Max wouldn't sync up audio properly with any video you might be watching, because of an inherent 550 millisecond delay in playing audio piped through the 3.5mm line-in audio jack.

That's a pretty atrocious delay -- over half a second -- but TNW reports that Google's firmware update will bring it down to a far more reasonable (actually quite speedy) 39 milliseconds.

Update, 3:33p.m. PT: Google has confirmed the story to CNET. "This performance improvement makes Max an even more frictionless experience for those plugging in their record player, smartphone or other audio source," says a Google rep.