Voice assistants are here to stay. First, it was Amazon that blew us away at CES 2017 with an impressive range of Alexa-enabled devices. Google quickly followed suit and matched Amazon, stealing the show at CES 2018. But where’s Apple? The iPhone-maker was arguably first to the game with the launch of Siri back in 2011, but Amazon and Google are now well ahead in the home assistant market — with a great range of products, third-party support, and compatibility with various Internet of Things devices.
It’s clear Apple isn’t focused on innovating, but refining. It may not be the first to debut a new feature or product, but it almost always does it best. Can the HomePod, Apple’s new smart speaker, live up to that expectation? We spent an hour with the speaker, and here are our first impressions.
BLENDS IN, BRILLIANT SOUND
It’s easy to miss the HomePod because it makes no effort at standing out. That doesn’t mean it’s ugly — it looks beautiful. It’s pod-shaped, and about 6.8-inches high; that puts it around the same size as the Sonos One, but it’s markedly smaller than the massive Google Home Max speaker. We’re partial to the space gray model over the white, because what doesn’t look sleeker in black?
The HomePod is wrapped with mesh fabric, which reminds us of Google’s latest approach to hardware. It means the speaker doesn’t look techy, allowing it to easily blend into your home. It’s packed with seven folded-horn tweeters around the base, each with custom amplifiers to help spread the sound throughout a room evenly. A woofer sits at the top, with 20mm of surface to deliver deep bass. In the middle sits a six-microphone array, which is not only used to pick up your voice from across a room, but also to detect frequencies deflecting off objects in the room. This, paired with the A8 processor (the same chip in the iPhone 6), helps it sense the space of a room, and gives the speaker the ability to adjust its sound to make it consistently high-quality in any space.
You can adjust sound level via two buttons on top of the speaker, and you can also press and hold the middle to activate Siri (or say “Hey Siri). When Siri is listening, there’s a display of beautiful colors that make the HomePod look futuristic.
So how does it sound? After all, Apple is positioning the HomePod as a speaker first, with smarts second. We listened to songs from various genres ranging from Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You,” Ariana Grande’s “Side to side,” “Let it go” from the movie Frozen, Tom Petty’s “I won’t back down,” and the Eagles’ “Hotel California.” The HomePod sounds great, and easily fills the room even with the volume at only 65 percent.
Audio quality is beautifully warm, yet the bass is not overpowering, even though it was still quite rich. If you close your eyes, it’s easy to feel like you’re at a live performance. We could pick out the vocals and instruments clearly. The speaker allows each instrument to shine through; you can hear precise guitar plucks. No, it doesn’t have that crisp sound you’d hear from very expensive high-end speakers, but then again, the HomePod doesn’t cost $10,000 and is pushing brilliant sound quality out of a single, small enclosure.
What’s more impressive is how consistent the HomePod sounds wherever you are in the room. Yes, the further away you are, the quieter it is, but not by much. It almost felt like the music was following our movement, and it consistently sounded great.
Overall, the HomePod sounded vibrant, rich, and balanced. And this was reaffirmed when we heard the speaker play music against the Sonos One, Google Home Max, and the latest Amazon Echo. The HomePod sounded the best and was the most consistent. Every song sounded great, whereas on the other speakers, only some of the songs sounded solid. We thought the Sonos One was second best, with the Max third, and the Echo fourth. We’ll have to do more listening to figure out which one really is the best.
Apple said the HomePod can pick up your command even when it’s blasting music — without you having to shout across a room. It did a fairly good job of picking up commands here, but it did occasionally need a second try. That’s the same experience we’ve had with the other smart speakers, though.
We also got a taste of multi-room playback, where you will be able to play stereo music on more than one HomePod. Music easily filled a loud room, and it sounds brilliant. This feature is not included at launch, nor is the ability to pair two HomePods in stereo – both of these options will be included in a free software update later this year, along with AirPlay 2.
Granted, we are judging the sound quality from a controlled demo. We will have to listen to it again in our own space when we get our hands on a review unit, but we don’t think our perception will change too much, if at all.
SIRI SMARTS
You may be disappointed to hear that you cannot use voice commands to play music on any other streaming service other than Apple Music. Siri is what powers the HomePod, and while the assistant’s new voice sounds much more human and has a handful of great features, it falls short of the current competition.
Let’s start with setup. It’s dead simple — simply hold an iPhone, iPad, or iPod with the latest version of iOS near the HomePod, and you’ll get a prompt to set up the speaker. You can set the HomePod to a room, and then choose if you want to receive personal notifications, and activate Siri.
These personal notifications are tied to a single iCloud account, so while anyone in your home can use Siri on the HomePod to play music and ask questions, only the primary account holder can send and receive messages. If your phone is not on the same Wi-Fi network, the HomePod will not share messages, which is a nice way of preventing snooping when you’re not home. It’s a little disappointing to see zero multi-user support, but we hope it’s a feature that’s in the works. Both the Google Assistant and Alexa can identify who is speaking and easily switch accounts.
The HomePod will utilize all the data from your iCloud account, so it’s not learning about you from scratch, and all of its settings can be accessed through the Home app you may already use to control HomeKit-enabled devices. You will not need to do any additional set up with your HomeKit devices — they will already work with the HomePod. You can even set “scenes” that kick off multiple devices. For example, in our demo, saying “good morning” started off a coffee maker, opened the blinds, and turned on the lights.
To play music using voice commands with Siri, you must use Apple Music (you’ll be offered a free trial if it detects you don’t have it.) You can technically play music with any other streaming service, including Spotify, but you’ll have to use AirPlay via your phone. Using Apple Music also means you can ask Siri for details about the song, use it to play different variations, genres, and more. Hopefully we’ll see voice command support expand to third-party services, but don’t hold your breath.
Siri can handle general queries such as the weather, play the news or podcasts, answer questions about upcoming events — like who’s playing in the Superbowl — and more. Siri’s responses were fast and seamless, and you don’t need to wait for the HomePod to light up to start a command. The assistant is smart enough to know when you’re calling for it when your phone is in your hand, and the HomePod will not answer.
There are some things we noticed it can’t do yet, like read you step-by-step instructions of recipes; and it can’t place calls, though you can turn it into a speaker for calls from your iPhone.
FOCUS ON PRIVACY
What is unique about the HomePod is Apple’s spotlight on privacy. Siri is listening locally, and then any requests you make are encrypted before it reaches Apple. This data is also anonymized — through the same differential privacy method used on the iPhone — so the requests are not tied to an iCloud account. This is a strong advantage Apple holds over competitors like Amazon and Google if you’re worried about your privacy.
PRICE AND AVAILABILITY
The HomePod is available for pre-order on January 26, and will set you back $350. It’s expensive, but it’s cheaper than the Google Home Max and some other non-smart speakers. It’s disappointing to see there’s no cheaper option available, like the Echo Dot or the Google Home Mini, but it’s all tied to Apple focusing on perfect sound more than anything else. You’re out of luck for now if you want a cheap Siri speaker to control HomeKit devices, and you’ll have to be patient for other features commonly found with competing speakers, like multi-room listening and stereo pairing. Other AirPlay 2 features, like Apple TV compatibility will come down the road.
The HomePod officially goes on sale and arrives in stores on February 9.
