Apple Homepod Mini
£99
For a speaker this small and this inexpensive, the Homepod Mini’s audio performance is startling. It embarrasses its direct competition with the sophistication and maturity of its sound. It gets to the core of your music, ensuring everything it plays is engaging and interesting.
It’s also affordable enough to be bought in quantity, laden with smart skills and has an uncanny ability to introduce you to new music you’ll love. All of which makes it a deeply impressive proposition indeed.
The Mini really is small. At just 8.4cm tall and 9.8cm wide, it’s roughly half the size of the similarly priced Amazon Echo, and even smaller than the Echo Dot. Classy and alluring touches such as the lights in the top glass panel make the wraparound lightstrip of the Amazon Echo look as sophisticated as a set of traffic lights.
Within the Homepod Mini’s spherical, mesh-covered frame, chosen as much for its acoustic properties as for its stylishness, is a single, Apple-designed full-range driver that fires sound downwards and out of the 360-degree waveguide around the bottom. The driver is held by a suspension system to reduce distortion, and is flanked by two passive radiators designed to help create a bigger, weightier sound.
There are four microphones built into the chassis: three that specifically listen out for the ‘Hey Siri’ command and a fourth that uses echo location to ensure you can be heard over background noise or loud music. The brain of the Homepod is the S5 chip, which Apple claims analyses and optimises the performance over 180 times per second, based on the position of the speaker and what’s being played.
Musically, the Mini comfortably outperforms its size and price; it’s clean and remains composed at all volumes. It’s more solid and authoritative than a speaker this small has any right to be, and its bass is seamlessly integrated into the overall presentation. There’s excellent overall tonal balance and consistency, with no frequencies over-exaggerated. Like the original Homepod, the Mini has an innate ability to get to the core of a track, delivering it as faithfully as its stature allows. That’s a rare ability, particularly for a smart speaker at this price. All this and the ability to control compatible devices in your house, too. A clear winner here.