Apple Homepod

Apple may have arrived late to the wireless speaker party, but it has been the life and soul since it arrived. Despite some limitations, the Apple Homepod is the best-sounding smart speaker available. When combined with Siri’s reinvention as your personal Dj/musical guru, it makes for an entertaining all-in-one system, especially if you’re already deep in the Apple ecosystem.

The Homepod looks classy, though a bit smaller and heavier than you might imagine. It is subtly styled, particularly in the Space Grey finish of our review sample, and designed to blend into its surroundings. Siri appears as a shifting ball of colour on the glossy top panel.

What lies beneath?

But the really impressive stuff is hidden beneath that acoustically transparent mesh. Apple has placed the tweeters at the bottom and the woofer at the top – the opposite arrangement to that found in most traditional speakers.

There are seven tweeters in total, evenly spaced around the base of the unit, and they fire sound outwards and upwards, so they don't bounce off the surface below. The woofer is close to the top and fires upwards, reflecting mid and bass frequencies off the bottom of that glossy panel so they are distributed equally around the device.

Embedded in the underside of the top panel is Apple’s A8 chip that first appeared inside the iphone 6 in 2014. That might sound old, but for a wireless speaker it’s quite the powerhouse. All that processing power is used for Siri, of course – but it also analyses the speaker’s surroundings and the music being played to ensure you always hear the Homepod at its best.

Wherever you place the speaker, it is constantly analysing the music you play and dynamically tuning the sound, from bass to treble, to deliver the track as the Homepod thinks it’s intended.

Play Join The Dots by Roots Manuva and Charli 2na and you can revel in bass that’s superbly deep for a little speaker. It is tuneful, energetic and punchy, with an expressive bottom end – essential to getting the most out of the deep brass and deep vocal on the track.

At the other end of the frequency range, the expertly judged treble delivers the snap and detail of the high hat without ever sounding bright or aggressive. The Homepod does a good job of projecting the vocals and horns.

At the most congested points, it becomes just a little muddled and some rivals, such as the Audio Pro Addon C5A, offer a little more clarity in their organisation. But for scale, authority, drive and excitement, the Apple speaker is just superb.

Even at low volumes, the core excitement is retained, with more bass weight and punch than most rivals can muster. It is capable of going loud, and remains composed, clear and unflustered even at maximum volume.

Apple’s promise of 360-degree sound is also pretty accurate. With the Homepod standing in free space, the sound is consistent and every part of the room gets more or less the same excellent audio quality. Even when it is placed close to a back wall, the sound is consistent, as the reflection of ambient effects on the surface behind creates a slightly bigger, more spacious and more three-dimensional presentation.

However, if you’re an Android fan, the Homepod isn't for you. It doesn't have Bluetooth, and you can’t even set one up without an IOS device. But if you are an Apple user, setting up the Homepod is a delight. Hold your iphone or ipad close to the top panel and it will appear on your screen. Select the room you’re using it in and the Homepod is good to go.

Siri is surprisingly good here. Apple has clearly tailored Siri for music over the last year or so, and in tandem with Apple Music, it makes for rewarding interactions in a musical context.

Airplay 2 has brought with it the ability to combine two Homepods in a stereo pair, and the performance is better than expected. Of course, you get a far wider soundstage, with traditional left and right separation, but there’s also excellent panning across the front and impressive focus for the elements that require it, such as vocals.

Bouncing sounds

But what’s most impressive is how two paired Homepods use their processing smarts to bounce the more ambient sounds off the wall behind, and the extra spaciousness this lends to the music.

It is a big atmospheric performance and two Homepods working in concert also sound predictably weighty and solid. The only slight flaw is that the sound isn’t projected into the room quite as effectively as with some rivals or, in fact, a pair of traditional hi-fi speakers.

The update to Airplay 2 has brought support for multi-room. This works as expected – add each Homepod (or other speakers) to a specific room and, via Siri commands, you can play the same music everywhere or different tracks in different rooms.

The Homepod isn't perfect, but the addition of multi-room support and, to a lesser extent, stereo pairing has closed two of the biggest gaps in its feature set. You still need to be an Apple user to even consider the Homepod, and Apple Music needs to be your default streaming service to get the best from it. But if that is you, the Homepod could be the smart speaker you’ve been waiting for.

"THE HOMEPOD IS CONSTANTLY ANALYSING MUSIC AND DYNAMICALLY TUNING THE SOUND TO DELIVER THE TRACK AS INTENDED"