Critics Love HomePod's Sound but Rap Its Smarts

Critics have begun weighing in on Apple's HomePod smart speaker, and they're loving the device's sound but don't have much affection for its smarts.

The HomePod's sound outclassed top-shelf competitor SonosOne, according to Matthew Panzarino, writing for TechCr unch.

"The HomePod was the 'best' sounding. It's nuanced and subtle with great separation and clarity across all kinds of music," he wrote.

"The One, for instance, had decent mid range but an overly bright high-end with just the out of the box calibration," Panzarino continued. "At maximum volume, the One became shrill and painful where the HomePod maintained balance."

Pumped out through a woofer with custom amplifier and seven tweeters, the audio also impressed Brian X. Chen, who reviewed the HomePod for The New York Times.

"The result is a speaker with a deep bass and rich treble that is loud enough to fill a large room with superb sound," he wrote. "HomePod makes the Amazon Echo and Google's Home sound muffled and tinny in comparison."

'Embarrassingly Inadequat e'

However, Chen was less complimentary about the performance of Apple's digital assistant, Siri, on the HomePod.

"Siri on HomePod is embarrassingly inadequate, even though that is the primary way you interact with it," he wrote.

"Siri is sorely lacking in capabilities compared with Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant," Chen continued. "Siri doesn't even work as well on HomePod as it does on the iPhone."

For example, Siri on the HomePod can't be trained to recognize different speakers.

"Unlike 'Hey, Siri' on your phone, the HomePod responds to everyone," wrote Megan Wollerton for Cnet.

"That makes it easier for the whole family to use," she explained, "but hurts its customizability across multiple users, since it can't recognize a specific voice to allow pur chases."

Speaker Blindness Not recognizing speakers may not sound like a big deal, but it can be if you're the kind of person who blindly rushes through setup pr ompt s.

"If you just click yes during all the setup prompts, literally anyone can ask the HomePod to send or read your text messages," wrote Nilay Patel for The Verge.

"Seriously, it'll just read your texts to anyone if your phone is anywhere on the same WiFi network, which usually reaches far beyond the same room as the HomePod," he pointed out.

While Siri can't distinguish speakers, it is good at recognizing speech, even distorted speech, according to Nicole Nguyen, who reviewed the HomePod for BuzzFeed.

"Siri could hear me while I was wearing my retainers ("Hayy Sheeree, remind me teh bring mah headphonez toomerow"), brushing my teeth, or cooking with the overhead vent turned on," she wrote.

Failing to Keep Up With the Alexas

Though disappointing, Siri's so-so performance as a smart speaker digital assistant was expected.

"Siri has not kept pace with Alexa and Google Assistant in capabilities," Tirias Research Principal Analyst Kevin Krewell told TechNewsWorld.

Apple has never taken Siri seriously, noted Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, treating it more as a feature than a platform.

"Amazon, Google and even Microsoft take AI far more seriously and are putting millions into their related efforts," he told TechNewsWorld. "Apple is starting behind, and their lack of focus on this capability suggests they'll fall farther back and not catch up."

Despite its shortcomings, Siri has an advantage over its rivals in the smart home context because it supports more languages than they do, said Jonathan Collins, a research director at ABI Resear ch .

"As the smart home voice-control market continues to grow, this will be a key benefit its rivals will have to match," he told TechNewsWorld.

Apple Music Exclusivity Another sore point with critics was the lack of support for services outside the Apple ecosyst em .

"The HomePod also doesn't really know that Pandora exists or Tidal or Google Play Music or SiriusXM or TuneIn Radio or SoundCloud or any of a thousand other music services that you might use throughout the course of listening to music in your lifetime," wrote The Verge's Pat el .

"It's an incredibly frustrating limitation," he continued. "Amazon owns Amazon Music, but lets you set Spotify as the default on the Echo. Google runs Google Play Music and YouTube, but lets you set Spotify as the default on the Google Home."

Apple hasn't been courting third-party apps as aggressively as Amazon and Google, said Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Resear ch.

"Today, HomePod is being sold into the base of Apple Music subscribers," he told TechNewsWorld. "It's a decent market to sell into -- it has 40 million subscribers -- but it's limited compared to Echo's and Google's addressable mar ket ."