If you bundle HBO Max with Disney+ and Hulu, you can save on your subscription — but your only tier options are Basic and Standard. (Rick Broida/Yahoo)
HBO Max is back! It was never really gone, of course, just abbreviated: In 2023, owner Warner Bros. Discovery made the — I'll just say it — idiotic decision to rename the service Max. Two years later, we're back to HBO Max. One tiny bit of order restored to the universe. But enough, already; I'm getting branding whiplash.
Of course, I'm old enough to remember when it was just HBO, the premium cable channel that was home to uncut, commercial-free movies and buzzworthy new TV series like Deadwood, Sex and the City and The Sopranos. As it evolved into the streaming service we know today, it brought us the likes of Barry, Game of Thrones and Succession.
However, while HBO Max is still the place to find some of the most talked-about shows — Hacks, The Pitt, The Last of Us, The White Lotus — frequent price increases, fewer big hits and frustrating removals of beloved content have left some subscribers feeling sour. So what's the current thinking about this once-prized streaming service? Is it still a must-see prestige-TV destination? Here's my HBO Max review.
Update, July 16, 2025: We modified aspects of our review to reflect the service's name change and various changes in programming.
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VERDICT: Stocked with innumerable buzz-worthy shows and a surprisingly deep bench of sports content, Max offers solid streaming value. But I'm still miffed about the branding decision.
VERDICT: Stocked with innumerable buzz-worthy shows and a surprisingly deep bench of sports content, HBO Max offers solid streaming value. We'll just pretend that whole "Max" thing never happened.
You can subscribe to HBO Max directly or via a wide range of third-party providers, including cable services like Cox and Xfinity and rival streaming services like Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and Hulu. The advantage to going that latter route: one less interface to learn and navigate. (Note, however, that some of these third-party sign-ups limit you to the Basic or Standard plan; Premium might not be available.)
Regardless of where you subscribe, HBO Max offers three plans, all of them available monthly or at a discounted annual rate:
Basic with Ads: $9.99 per month or $99.99 annually
Standard: $16.99 per month or $169.99 annually
Premium: $20.99 per month or $209.99 annually
If you choose an annual option, you save 16% (the equivalent of getting two months free) and protect yourself from any price hikes that may happen along the way. (Speaking of which, HBO Max raised its prices in 2023, 2024 and 2025.)
One more possibility: You can bundle HBO Max with Disney+ and Hulu (either with or without ads) and save on your monthly bill, but you won't have the option of getting HBO Max Premium; only Basic or Standard.
The Basic with Ads plan lives up to its name, limiting you to 1080p streaming on just two devices. You can't download anything for offline viewing and you don't get any live sports. (More on the latter below.) Jumping to Standard buys you not only sports, but the option to download content. However, you're limited to 30 downloads per month, which is probably more than ample for most users — but it still seems kind of stingy to put a cap on it. With Premium, you get 4K streaming on up to four devices, plus Dolby Atmos audio (on applicable content) and 100 downloads.
Here's my take: $9.99 per month feels pretty affordable given the breadth and quality of HBO Max's content library; the Basic plan should be fine if you're a single- or two-user household and don't mind commercial interruptions (which HBO Max says won't exceed six minutes per hour).
But I don't like having to pay more than double that just to get 4K and Atmos, which are certainly desirable for prestige HBO Max content like House of the Dragon and The Last of Us — the stuff you're going to want to watch on your big TV with surround audio.
What's more, the Standard and Premium plans effectively force you to pay for sports content you might not want. That's true of some other streaming services as well, but Warner Bros. Discovery had initially planned to offer sports as an add-on, meaning you could take it or leave it. I wish the company had stuck with that option to keep plan prices lower. (That said, you get a lot of sports here; see below.)
Before this review I'd just completed an Apple TV+ review, so it felt worthwhile to compare the two: Apple's service costs $9.99 for a library that's a fraction of the size, but you get ad-free 4K with up to six simultaneous streams. There are no extra charges for anything (except an optional Major League Soccer add-on). To be fair, HBO Max's main competitor is really Netflix, which has a cheaper basic plan ($7.99/month) but more expensive standard and premium plans ($17.99 and $24.99, respectively).
All this is to say that HBO Max's pricing is fairly competitive. But am I alone in cringing over the very existence of the ad-supported tier? A big part of HBO's attraction, back in the day, was freedom from commercials.
A lot. HBO Max has a massive content library, including not only the bulk of the HBO and Cinemax back catalogs but everything under the Discovery umbrella: The Discovery Channel, HGTV, Food Network, TLC and so on. You'll also find new stuff in the form of HBO Originals and Max Originals, plus various movies and TV series from other parts of the Warner empire. Friends, The West Wing, Rick and Morty, DC superhero movies — they're all here, along with oodles more. I especially love the Turner Classic Movies collection, though I don't understand why it's buried deep within the Movies section; it's not even shown in the main row with all the other collections.
I'm a particular fan of Conan O'Brien Must Go, an HBO Max Original that made me laugh harder than anything in recent memory. I already mentioned Deadwood, without question the best Old West drama ever made. And I won't shut up about The Newsroom, an Aaron Sorkin drama that was criminally canceled after only three seasons (but what's there is gold).
There's also news here: The CNN Max page includes not only a live CNN feed but also various CNN-produced shows and documentaries. Just one thing missing: a program guide so you can see what's coming up on the live feed.
Speaking of which, the service now offers five "live" simulcasts: streaming versions of HBO channels you'd typically access via cable: HBO, HBO 2, HBO Signature, HBO Comedy and HBO Zone. Why bother with these when virtually all the content shown on those channels is available on demand? It's primarily for folks who like a cable-style channel-surfing experience, a chance to watch whatever's "on now" instead of having to pick something.
Finally, we get to sports: HBO Max now streams a robust selection of games and events (over 1,700 in 2025, according to Warner Bros. Discovery), including baseball, basketball, hockey and NASCAR. But how much you get of each varies quite a bit. Baseball, for example, is limited to one weekly Tuesday night game for the season (plus National League playoffs), while you get a big chunk of the NBA and NHL seasons. But enjoy basketball while you can: That sport leaves HBO Max at the end of the 2025 season, after which games will be on ESPN, Peacock and Amazon Prime.
Needless to say, there's plenty to watch on HBO Max. Take note, however, that Warner Bros. Discovery continues to remove content following the HBO/Discovery+ merger in 2023 — the one that resulted in "HBO" getting dropped from "HBO Max." Early on, the newly rebranded service summarily deleted nearly 90 shows, including critical hits Westworld, Minx, Mrs. Fletcher and Raised by Wolves.
More recently, HBO Max pulled the plug on Sesame Street (though past episodes will remain till 2027) and the original Looney Tunes animated shorts. The blame here goes to (surprise, surprise) corporate bean-counters, who either license some of these gems to other services or distributors (which is why many of the best onetime HBO exclusives have recently popped up on Netflix) or — more nefariously — burn them as tax write-offs (which is why the Batgirl movie will apparently never see the light of day). It's just sad that Big Bird and Bugs Bunny have gotten caught in the crossfire.
Granted, many streaming services have revolving-door content, but a lot of this feels arbitrary. It's one thing to cancel a series, another to just vanish it altogether.
As I've done with countless other streaming services (see the full list at the bottom of this review), I tested two versions of the HBO Max TV app: Google and Roku. There are some differences between the two, starting with how you sign into your account: On Roku, you're forced to enter your username and password with an onscreen keyboard and your remote — slow going. In the Google app, you have two quicker, easier phone-based options: scan an onscreen QR code or just open the HBO Max app and "approve" the sign-in. I'm not sure why the Roku app doesn't have these choices; they'd certainly be welcome.
The main HBO Max interface is dark but familiar, with a side menu that leads you to various categories: Search, Home, Series, Movies and so on. I particularly like the What's New page, which reveals newly added movies, shows and episodes, and the Categories page, where you can browse by action, comedy, documentaries and various other groups.
On that page, you'll also find Brand Spotlight, where you can quickly jump to Max Originals, TCM, Adult Swim, Cartoon Network and lots of other stuff that, to be honest, you might not otherwise know could be found here. In addition, the Categories page contains a couple dozen "collections," ranging from Harry Potter movies to South Park to LGBTQ+ Voices.
My only source of menu confusion: The HBO page. Why does that exist? Are there selections not found on the Series and Movies pages? Or vice-versa? And given the distinction between HBO content and Max content (in the form of branded Originals), why isn't there a Max page? It's like the streamer is trying to keep both brands alive but separate. Either way, it's confusing.
I also wish the Home page would shrink everything a little so you could see more onscreen at once. As it stands, you basically get one visible row, whether it's Today's Picks, Top 10 Movies Today or the like. And as with so many streamers, the rows just go on and on in no discernible order.
The search function could use a little work as well, as it doesn't allow you to search by actor or director and currently lacks support for voice-powered search.
As noted above, if you're already subscribing to a service like Hulu or Prime Video, you can add HBO Max there and keep everything under the same user-interface roof. Even if that interface isn't perfect, there's something to be said for consistency.
That's probably a dumb question, because it's like asking, "Should you buy that candy bar?" If you want a tasty treat, sure, go ahead — but maybe it leaves you a little unsatisfied in the long run? Maybe you buy just the one and then wait a few months until you get another craving?
OK, metaphor exhausted. Choosing to subscribe to HBO Max is no different than choosing to subscribe to Apple TV+ or Paramount+ or Netflix: If it has stuff you want to watch and you can afford it, have at it. There are no red flags here, no glaring flaws that will interfere with your enjoyment.
That said, I previously considered an HBO subscription essential; now I "HBO Max-out" only a month or two at a time. After all the new episodes of Hacks and Conan O'Brien Must Go have dropped, I'll subscribe, binge them (and anything else that catches my interest), then hit pause again. At this particular moment, there's not enough happening on HBO Max to keep me subscribing full-time. But that's the beauty of modern streaming services: I don't have to.
Check out Yahoo's latest streaming advice, based on hands-on testing.
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