Apple's HomePod is back after a few years of absence, and frankly, it hasn't really changed much.
The original HomePod, which launched in 2018, was discontinued early in 2021, leaving an empty void in the lives of people who wanted an Apple speaker that can produce a bigger sound than the HomePod mini. It was an ambitious product for its time, with an array of 7 tweeters, 6 microphones, and Apple tech wizardry which allowed it to adapt its sound for every room. It also had an ambitiously high price to match at $349, which probably contributed to its quick demise.
Things have changed since then. On the one hand, smart speakers are so ubiquitous that you can now buy a decent-sounding speaker at Ikea for $99; on the other, you can easily spend $2,000 decking out your house with an array of Sonos or Bose smart speakers.
Same old design, but it still looks great
With the new HomePod, Apple seemingly decided to walk the middle of that road. The new HomePod is 0.2 inches shorter, a little cheaper at $299, and a little less powerful, with 5 tweeters and 4 microphones (the subwoofer is still here and it still has the same 4-inch diameter). It's powered by Apple's new S7 chip, and it now comes with humidity, temperature, and sound recognition sensors.
You wouldn't notice the changes just by looking at it from afar. The new HomePod still looks pretty much the same, the only major design difference being the new, Midnight color (replacing the Space Grey which wasn't all that different). I don't mind the unchanged design, because HomePod is still beautiful. The mesh fabric body is soft to the touch and pleasing to the eye, especially when you get close enough to notice the latticed weaving pattern. The eye of Siri that pops up on top when you invoke it is bigger than on the first generation, and is still really cool to look at, especially in a dark room. But the most important thing about the design, to me, is that the HomePod will fit well into any home.
The new sensors (which, surprisingly, have also been built into the HomePod mini all this time, but Apple only decided to enable them now, two years after launch) are a nice addition, but not groundbreaking. They make the HomePod a little more viable as a hub for your smart home, enabling you to quickly check the temperature in various rooms in your house (if you have more than one HomePod), and informing you when, say, a carbon monoxide alarm has gone off.
Apple's warm embrace
The best thing about the HomePod, if you own a lot of Apple gadgets, is just how great they all work with one another. Setting up one HomePod was incredibly easy; I plugged it in, scanned it with my iPhone, and I was all set. Adding another was even easier, with Apple immediately asking whether you want them to reproduce stereo sound (you can only do that with two identical HomePods; you cannot have stereo playback with a HomePod and a HomePod mini). I used eARC on my LG television set to get the HomePod to act as speakers for my TV, with the help of Apple TV 4K, and it worked seamlessly. I even started using Apple's Home app, which I rarely did before, to overview and control all aspects of my smart home setup, and found it to be quite capable.
Thanks to its built-in mics, the HomePod is great at catching your voice commands, even if you shout them over several other Apple gadgets which are also listening for input. Siri is still the same old Siri, often surprisingly smart, sometimes frustratingly unable to understand what you want (and no, you can't get any other voice assistant to work on the HomePod).
Most of my frustrations with Siri are due to Apple's lack of integration with third-party services such as Spotify. I'd ask her to play a song, and she'd refuse, simply because Spotify has that particular song and Apple Music doesn't. Sure, I can beam a Spotify song to the HomePod via AirPlay, but it takes that extra second that you often just don't want to spend. Full integration for Tidal and Amazon Music is similarly absent, though Apple supports some third-party services, namely Deezer and Pandora.
Even when confined to the warm, cozy world of Apple's ecosystem, you'll occasionally experience bugs. Sometimes, playback would pause for no discernible reason (fortunately, it quickly resumed again). Unlike the Home app on my iPhone, that same app on my MacBook Pro never displayed the two HomePods in my living room. Overall, though, the integration between all the moving parts of my system, especially those bearing the Apple logo, is great.
If I could change one major thing about the HomePod, I'd make it battery-powered. It'd be nice if I were able to just plug it out and carry it to the terrace, or to another room, or even on a trip. It is fairly heavy at 5.16 pounds, but it's not so unwieldy that it couldn't be a portable product; Sonos' portable Move speaker, for example, is larger and heavier (an obvious caveat to this is that the HomePod would also be larger and heavier if it included a battery). Perhaps Apple could include a battery-powered version in the future.
Sound that fills up the room
The sound coming out of the HomePod (or two HomePods) is surprisingly big. Thanks to the way the HomePod is designed, with five tweeters firing sound in all directions, and Apple's computational audio magic, it produces an airy, loud sound, and it sounds good no matter where you stand in the room.
As if trying to prove that a small speaker can reproduce deep bass, the sound signature coming out of the HomePod is incredibly bass-heavy. This may be desirable at a party, but for home listening, the bass was too loud and distracting. Hidden in the HomePod settings in the Home app is the option to "Reduce Bass," but I feel it does too much reducing. An equalizer of some sort, or at least a few more presets, would be a good thing to add (Apple Music does offer a number of presets in the settings, but they don't work on the HomePod).
Partially thanks to that booming bass, the HomePod has a slightly muffled sound in the treble and mid-range. I compared it to my $149 Audio Pro T3 speaker, which produces an incredibly bright and detailed sound for its size, and when I switched from the T3 to the HomePod, it sounded like the vocals took a step back. To be fair, the T3 gets lost when forced to reproduce anything with more than two instruments, whereas the HomePod has a more balanced sound, and sounds better when you're not sitting directly in front of it.
I've had the luxury of connecting two HomePod speakers to get a stereo sound. Unsurprisingly, everything got exponentially better; the sound stage became decent in size, both horizontally and vertically, the sound got a lot louder, drums and percussion were rich and detailed, and bass was precise and surprisingly deep. The vocals and acoustic guitars still weren't as clear as I would've liked. Again, if Apple would just give me an equalizer, I think I could get the HomePod to sound even better with some fine-tuning.
Sonically, the HomePod is at home when you play modern pop; The Weeknd, Billie Eilish and Rosalia all sounded great. It wasn't too content with the crunchy rock sounds of The Arctic Monkeys and The Mars Volta, offering a slightly thin sound, but it still did a decent job. Intimate, acoustic performances such as Fink's Wheels Turn Beneath My Feet will give you an amazing sense of space, as if you were there in the auditorium, but the vocals will sadly always stay a little too subdued.
The HomePod is good, but consider the HomePod mini
The new HomePod is one of those product upgrades that's typical of Apple: Not groundbreaking, but offering just enough novelty to nudge you towards a purchase. The reduced starting price helps, too. This goes for people who want a HomePod but don't have one. That is: If you own the original HomePod (or two), you probably don't need to upgrade.
If you're starting from scratch, the competition is tough. If you look hard enough, you'll find better-sounding speakers, and you'll find cheaper ones too. You'll probably find a speaker that's better suited to your musical taste. But you definitely won't find a speaker that sounds this good will playing so nice with all the other Apple gadgets. Oddly, perhaps the HomePod's biggest competitor is Apple's HomePod mini; you can buy three for the price of one HomePod, and it comes with a near-identical set of features.
