First test Apple Homepod
The smart speaker for true music-lovers?
Remember the ipod Hi-fi? Of course you don’t. Apple’s last speaker, discontinued just a year after launching, has been erased from history. Given Steve Jobs once embarrassingly claimed he’d throw out his audiophile-level stereo system in favour of this wretched plastic boombox, that’s not much of a surprise.
So why has Apple come back to the idea a decade later? Because everyone else is at it. Since Amazon’s Echo came along a couple of years ago, speakers with a built-in voice assistant have taken off in a major way – so much so that shouting at a cylinder for the weather forecast now counts as totally normal behaviour. Well, unless that cylinder is a Pringles can.
Siri’s own play for smart home domination has been stuck inside the iphone for what feels like an eternity… and so, enter the Apple Homepod. Just like an Echo, it claims to play your music on request, responds to a whole host of commands and hooks up your connected kit, from lightbulbs to security cams. But unlike an Echo, it’s not so keen on playing with others.
The Homepod is allergic to Spotify and choosy about the smart home devices it’ll talk to, and you won’t even be able to pair two of them up for multiroom sound until later this year. Oh, and then there’s Siri itself – you know, the same voice assistant that once called a random phone number when we asked it what time the football was on.
But the Homepod has one thing going for it that the ipod Hi-fi could never lay claim to: it sounds properly brilliant. Better than every other smart speaker we’ve heard so far, in fact. Is that enough for it to earn a spot in your kitchen where the Echo once stood? You’ll have to turn the page to find out.
1 Material rille
The Homepod is a 7in-tall cylinder with a mesh fabric finish that’ll blend in nicely with any Ikea-bought decor. The result is a speaker that’s eminently more strokable than an Echo, with basic touch controls on top.
2 Thank you for the music
Apple’s device stands right at the front in the great choir of voicecontrolled speakers thanks to its in-built AI sound engineer. It constantly analyses both the music playing and your room, and tweaks the sound in real time.
3 Dancin on my own
While Sonos, Google and Amazon speakers support stereo pairing and multiroom music, these features aren’t coming to the Homepod until “later this year”. So it’s best thought of as a solo Apple Music speaker.
4 Ghetto streams
The biggest weakness of the Homepod is that its voice controls and Siri skills only work with Apple Music. While you can stream the likes of Spotify and Tunein Radio over Airplay, it’s an unnecessarily clunky process.
5 Let’s et quizzical
Apple claims the Homepod’s Siri is a Nathan Barley-inspired ‘musicologist’, and although it usually gets the basics right it couldn’t handle “Which band is Jamie xx in?”. Come on, Siri – we handed that one to you on a plate.
Tech specs
Connectivity Wi-fi, Bluetooth Audio sources Apple Music, itunes, icloud Music Library, Beats 1, Podcasts, Airplay File formats AAC, MP3, Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV, FLAC Compatible devices iphone 5s or later, ipad Pro, ipad (5th generation), ipad Air or later, ipad mini 2 or later Dimensions 172x142x142mm, 2.5kg