Apple scores a sound home advantage
Is the HomePod a rival to Google Home or Amazon Echo? We put it to the test
AS SOON as Apple revealed its plans to release a smart speaker last year, there were a lot of people uttering the word “finally”. “Finally,” they said, “Apple is releasing a competitor to Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home”.
Having used the HomePod in my home for a week, I’m in no doubt the people saying that were wrong – HomePod is not in competition with either of those devices.
It lives in a different world, and I can’t believe anyone would be torn between buying a HomePod and an Echo.
Apple is very clear about HomePod – it is, first and foremost, a small speaker for big sound.
It is so obviously aimed at those wanting to listen to high quality audio in the home without headphones, it feels almost as if its smart home capabilities are a bonus – an add-on that you may or may not use.
Essentially, the HomePod works in three different areas.
Music – it’s for listening to music, but only music from Apple. You can’t listen to any other streaming services directly. You can listen to Apple-hosted Podcasts, and Apple’s radio stations, including Beats 1. And that’s it. You can stream from another device via Bluetooth (we all know how annoying that is...).
Siri – you interact with HomePod almost exclusively via voice, although there are limited touch controls on the top of the device (you may turn it up and down and play or pause.) Siri can do a lot of the things it can do on your iPhone – set reminders, take notes, tell you the weather and the latest sports scores. It can also read you the news.
Home control – you can control any HomeKit compatible devices via Siri with your voice. That means lights, plug sockets, heating, blinds... that kind of thing. That limits the range of compatible devices, and there are nowhere near as many smart home devices on the market that work with Siri as work with Amazon’s Alexa or the Google Assistant.
At £319 it is not the cheapest speaker on the market, yet nor is it the most expensive. For the real audiophiles, that price is actually quite low for a good speaker.
And it does sound wonderful – I heard it side-by-side with a couple of competitors (a Sonos One and a Harman Kardon speaker, as well as an Amazon Echo), and there was no competition.
The audio from the HomePod is precise and deep, with astounding separation – you really can hear every instrument and voice without distortion. It would be a real level up for most people.
The quality is, obviously, mostly down to the hardware. There are no fewer than seven tweeters inside, each with its own amplifier, and a high-excursion woofer (it can shift a lot of air).
There is also an Apple-built A8 chip inside (the same as the one you’d find in an iPhone 6), which allows it to do all kinds of computational adjustments to the sound – like monitoring for distortion, and cancelling echo.
The device can also map its surroundings via the nine built-in mics (which also make it good at hearing you wherever you are in the room) and will adjust its output accordingly.
It goes without saying that it looks cool, too. And set-up couldn’t be easier, either – just turn it on and hold your iPhone or iPad close, touch a couple of buttons and you’re done.
There are a couple of promised features missing at launch – the ability to play the same audio on all HomePods in your home at once, and the ability to have two HomePods in the same room acting as a stereo pair. These both require the AirPlay 2 software which won’t be out until “later this year”.
There are, obviously, lots of other things you might think of as “missing”. Like the inability to play anything other than Apple content on it, unless you stream it from another device.
And then there’s the lack of an audio input jack (which isn’t the slightest surprise given Apple’s distaste for cables).
I think it’s also weird that you can’t pair the HomePod with more than one iCloud account – it’d be nice if it recognised who was talking to it, and used the appropriate account.
All these things may be coming, or they may not. As it stands now, is the HomePod worth its asking price? Unequivocally I’d say yes, it is. If you want a high-quality streaming speaker that plugs into Apple’s eco-system. There is no alternative that comes close.
See apple.com/uk/homepod for more details