Apple’s HomePod: Paying $350 for a speaker that says “no” this much is tough

What is this thing?

That, in essence, is the question most onlookers have asked about Apple’s HomePod speaker since its unveiling last summer. The natural inclination is to compare it to smart speakers like the Amazon Echo or Google Home. It’s a speaker with a talking assistant in it, the thinking goes. Apple just wants a piece of that growing pie.

But that doesn’t sit right. Sure, Siri, the assistant at the heart of the speaker, can answer questions, set alarms, and turn off connected light bulbs. But the HomePod costs $350, roughly three times as much as the base Echo and Home devices, it sounds miles better than both, and Apple isn’t nearly as concerned with assisting you through every part of your day and controlling everything in your home. The HomePod is decidedly more “speaker” than “smart.”

You could then think of it as Apple’s first strike on Sonos, the popular maker of connected speakers. That’s a closer analogue but still not totally on the nose. The whole pitch with Sonos is that its speakers are hubs for every music service you care about. They’re also best utilized as a family. The HomePod, meanwhile, is a solitary device for a solitary service. It may become more like Sonos, but Apple has a tendency to keep things for itself, so it’s hard to say to what extent.

Instead, in its current state, the HomePod is something much simpler: a neat accessory for Apple Music subscribers. Just as the AirPods are fun and flashy headphones for Apple diehards to listen to music on the go—albeit ones that still work for those who don’t live in Apple’s world—the HomePod is a pleasant way for them to listen to that music at home. That’s it. It sounds good, and for most of the 36 million people paying for Apple’s music service every month, it’ll stream music and podcasts with little friction.

It just doesn’t do much more than that, particularly for people who aren’t hitched to Apple’s wagon. The HomePod is not revolutionary; it’s just a fine little speaker for a niche that becomes very clearly defined as you use it. That’s OK. Apple doesn’t have to disrupt the paradigm, or whatever, with every product it releases. Aiming low isn’t the worst—it’s just not the best, either.

Handsome hardware

The HomePod is a handsome little cylinder. It doesn’t strike me as fashionable the way MacBooks and iPhones do, and it gives no outward indication that it is even made by Apple. But I’d argue that’s a good thing: the utilitarian look helps it blend in with whatever decor it’s near. It’ll sit on a living room table or kitchen counter without calling attention to itself. It’s decidedly not ugly.

For what it’s worth, the soft mesh fabric surrounding the speaker is pleasing to the touch. Same goes for the thick, fabric-coated cable extending from the back. A circular touchscreen sits on top of the device, but it’s much simpler in scope than the display on Amazon’s Echo Show. There’s a little light pattern that moves whenever you interact with Siri, a couple of capacitive volume buttons whenever music is playing, and a blank space between those buttons that lets you play, pause, and skip tracks. That’s about it.

The whole thing is small, at 5.6×5.6×6.8 inches. It’s squatter than a Google Home Max but a pinch fatter than the Sonos One. It weighs 5.5lbs, which is again a bit more than the One. There’s some heft to it. It doesn’t feel like a toy.

It is worth noting that the silicone base at the bottom of the HomePod could damage your furniture, though. After complaints from several users, Apple has acknowledged that the speaker may leave white ring marks on wood surfaces. So, don’t put it there. I did not have any problems resting the device on a marble countertop, and the HomePod isn’t the only device in the world that could do this, but it’s an odd oversight all the same. The company says the rings can heal on their own but doesn’t guarantee it, so you may be forced to clean them up yourself.

Inside the HomePod, Apple has packed a ring of seven tweeters, each of which are individually amplified, along with a four-inch upward-firing woofer to help with bass response. There are seven microphones built in as well, six of which are used to help Siri hear you while the other helps the woofer better control bass. As a point of comparison, the Sonos One has a six-microphone array, two amplifiers, one tweeter, and one mid-woofer. So there’s a bit more going on here.

Above everything in the HomePod is Apple’s A8 chip, which is better known as the processor that powered the iPhone 6. This is used to make Siri go, for one, but it also allows Apple to deploy its brand of digital signal processing (DSP). In simple terms, the HomePod uses the A8 and those microphones to measure the room in which it’s located and the audio it’s playing. Then it adjusts that audio on the fly to avoid distortion and keep a relatively balanced sound profile.

DSP is not a new thing for wireless speakers, but, in effect, the HomePod is trying to dynamically take a track and paint it back in a way that’s tailored to the acoustics of your room. This can be good and bad (and we’ll get into that), but it does make it a bit difficult to definitively talk about the HomePod’s sound.

One mild complaint I have about the device is that it’s not weather-resistant, but the DSP party tricks suggest the HomePod is really meant for the indoors.

All locked down

This is what you’ll see whenever you activate Siri on the HomePod. It’s the same little light swirl you’d see on an iPhone.

Credit: Jeff Dunn

What’s easier to condemn is the HomePod’s intense inflexibility. You can use Siri to directly start up something from Apple Music and other Apple sources or use AirPlay to beam audio from another device. That’s it. There’s nothing in the way of wired audio input or Bluetooth streaming support. If you wanted to make use of the HomePod’s strong sound with another A/V device, no dice. There’s no Ethernet port, either.

All of this makes the speaker more or less useless for Android users, too. While there are third-party AirPlay apps in the Google Play Store, none of them is totally reliable. The HomePod’s close-mindedness is particularly disappointing for those who pay for the Android version of Apple Music.

Apple will eventually allow you to pair two HomePods for stereo sound and use them as part of a multi-room audio setup, but not until it releases the AirPlay 2 protocol at an unspecified date some time this year. That should be great, but it’ll cost a truckload, and Sonos has already said its existing multi-room speakers will support AirPlay 2 as well.

As for physical hardware, the cable behind the HomePod isn’t user-replaceable. It technically can be removed, but Apple says it’s not meant to be. If it gets damaged, you’ll need to pay another $29 to replace it. (If the speaker as a whole needs fixing and you don’t sign up for Apple’s two-year warranty program, it’ll set you back $279.)

I understand how having a clean, controlled experience is Apple’s thing. I’d even argue the HomePod isn’t a mass-market device so much as another way for Apple to extract more money out of its most ardent fans in a world where smartphone growth is slowing. Plus, the HomePod’s soundstage isn’t wide enough for it to work great with a TV anyway.

But Apple is ostensibly trying to sell this thing, in part, to people who care about audio quality, and those are the exact same people who care about having this sort of openness. Paying $350 for a speaker that says “no” this much is tough. It sucks when Sonos does it, and it’s a bummer here, regardless of how smoothly the HomePod integrates with Apple’s own stuff. You absolutely have to be in the HomePod’s limited target audience, and planning to stay there, for this to make sense.

Simple setup, but only for iPhones

Where the HomePod is the good kind of simple is in setup. After plugging it in, you just hold your iPhone near the device and watch a little card pop up to initiate the process. It’s virtually identical to the graphic that appears whenever you pair a set of AirPods to an iOS device. The HomePod will then prompt you to install Apple’s Home app if you haven’t already, see if you want to sign up for Apple Music, ask to sync your phone’s messaging and account data, have you define in which room the speaker is being placed, and get you on your way.

I did encounter a hiccup where one card refused to load, but that seemed to be because I didn’t have Apple Music installed on my device beforehand. Without that, the whole process would have taken about a minute. I could then send texts and access my Podcasts list right away. I’m guessing most people who want the HomePod will have Apple Music installed already.

The only problem is that you need an iOS device to set the speaker up. More specifically, you need an iPhone 5s or later, iPad Air or later, iPad mini 2 or later, or an iPod touch set to the latest iOS update. All of this will only work over Wi-Fi, too. Again, it’s very clear that the HomePod is an Apple device for Apple people, but not having any alternative for the Mac is weird.

Strong sound, as promised

Here’s the short take on the HomePod’s sound: pretty good, rich and full for its size, better than the Sonos One but probably not $150 better, a galaxy ahead of the Echo.

Now, a few notes: judging the audio quality of a speaker like the HomePod is inherently subjective. There are a lot of factors that can disrupt how you and I perceive sound—the speaker’s volume, the surface on which it’s placed, its proximity to walls and other solid objects, and so on. There’s an argument to be made that trying to find a speaker’s objective output is fruitless since the acoustics of any two rooms are likely to be different. That seems especially apt here given the HomePod’s affinity for DSP. It’s usually best to trust your ears.

What I can give is a general description of the HomePod’s sound after several hours of listening to a range of music as well as a direct comparison with a rival speaker (the Sonos One). I’d like to think that my opinion is decent: I’ve listened to roughly 200-250 headphones and written a number of audio tech reviews over the past two and a half years. I know that I’m biased toward a warmer sound with a slight bass boost over a totally flat signature, for instance.

I tested the HomePod in a centralized, mostly open location in my apartment. When I compared it to the Sonos One, I made sure the two played in the exact same spot, that I sat in the same locations myself, that a little time passed between each test to lessen natural bias, and that the speakers played as close to the same volume as possible. I tuned the Sonos with its “TruePlay” feature; the HomePod, as noted above, calibrates similarly on its own. For the HomePod, I streamed Apple Music directly via Siri. For the One, I used Sonos’ usual private Wi-Fi network. That last bit means things weren’t totally 1:1, but it’s how most people will listen to these things.

The HomePod is very similar in size to the Sonos One but feels a bit heftier.

Credit: Jeff Dunn

With that said, the HomePod’s sound is clean and mostly balanced, with a satisfying but not overwhelming sense of fullness. If I was pretentious, I’d say it’s defined by the good body it gives tracks, which is particularly impressive for a speaker of its size. Vocals, especially male vocals, are almost always smooth and present. There’s bass, and it’s relatively tight—not nearly as honky or paper-thin as it is on most speakers this small. Sibilance is rare. Apple’s DSP has a religious devotion to avoiding distortion, and it’s successful.

To my ears, it doesn’t have the totally flat sound audiophiles tend to crave, but it’s not crazy aggressive in any one area, either. (A Reddit review made waves for saying otherwise, but was later disputed.) It doesn’t have the “kill you with bass” mentality of older Beats devices. It’s also more than loud enough to wreck my studio apartment, even if it’s not the noisiest small speaker around.

Some song tests

Still, while the HomePod is almost never harsh or bloated, I found it to lack a little edge and clarity in the treble. The crashing high-hats in Phantogram’s “Turn It Off,” for instance, avoid the hissing “ess” sound of lesser speakers with too much sizzle. But they’re also not as transparent as they could be. What’s there is good, but the high-end feels as if it could extend farther. Instead, it usually sits in the background, helping to keep vocals and other midrange sounds from being boomy but still somewhat veiled. The HomePod usually gives that area around the low-mids and upper-bass the most emphasis.

Compared to the Sonos One, the HomePod’s sound is consistently bigger and deeper. The bass drum slams on a hip-hop track like Watch the Throne’s “Paris” feel appropriately large on the HomePod, relatively speaking, without going overboard and taking over the whole production. Everything has a bit more huskiness to it but still feels smoother than it does on the One.

That said, the Sonos has an airier sound by comparison, so some may prefer it for sparser music. On Father John Misty’s “Bored in the USA,” a piano-driven ballad, it lends the vocals and keys greater crispness and clarity. At the same time, the Sonos can feel thin next to the mightier HomePod, whose bassier profile gives the song more weight.

It seems hard to call this kind of minimalist design ugly.

Credit: Jeff Dunn

What the HomePod and Sonos One have in common is that neither can defy physics. The HomePod is still a small speaker, and that means it just doesn’t have the space to generate the trunk-rattling bass and wide soundstage of brawnier alternatives. The sub-bass rumble on Jamie xx’s “Gosh,” an electronic track, just doesn’t dig as deep as it could on a more robust setup. It gives you something—but no knockout blow.

Likewise, it can’t rein in all the fine details of a more complex track like Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker.” Instead of a sprawling, enveloping production, it feels a bit boxed-in. This’ll be better when it supports stereo pairing. Then again, that’s something the Sonos One can already do.

To be clear, for its size, and even for its price, the HomePod is above average at all of this. Apple, the company that’s forcing everyone to buy Bluetooth headphones and sells $160 earbuds that sound only marginally better than the pair you get for free with your phone, has made a home speaker with commendable audio quality. Just don’t expect it to do things it shouldn’t be expected to do.

A note for the niche

I could also see audio enthusiasts having a problem with Apple’s DSP. Namely, the fact that you can’t turn it off. It’s possible to adjust the EQ on iTunes if you AirPlay from a PC, but you’re more or less stuck with whatever processing Apple thinks it should lay into a track. My guess is this will drive tinkerers nuts.

Because the DSP is so obsessed with (and good at) stamping out distortion, it can also affect how the HomePod sounds at high volumes, where things are otherwise likely to go haywire. Typically this means a thinner bass response, so to get the most nuanced low-end possible, you’ll want to keep the speaker a little bit beneath the maximum.

Similarly, while the HomePod is technically compatible with a number of audio formats (MP3, AAC, HE-AAC, FLAC, AIFF, WAV, and Apple Lossless), all of those file types will be filtered through and adjusted by the HomePod’s constant processing. The good news is that, again, that DSP produces an impressive, crowd-pleasing sound. But it’s Apple’s way or the highway.

All those mics were put to good use

If you think about Siri’s place in the HomePod on Apple’s terms, it’s not a disaster. If anything, it’s pleasant.

A big piece of that is that the HomePod’s mic array is far and away the most impressive I’ve used on a smart speaker to date. With the Sonos One, Echo, and Google Home, I often find myself shouting, pausing, and speaking deliberately to ensure my requests are heard. The HomePod, meanwhile, lets me speak something at least close to natural.

Neither of these speakers is what you’d call “busy.”

Credit: Jeff Dunn

Siri will still mishear a request every now and then—my favorite being when it confused a Mac DeMarco song for a Faith Hill one—but here it has the uncanny ability to pick your voice out from within a cloud of noise. I spoke fast, slow, and softly enough to have my voice overtaken by a wall of noise, and Siri was still able to answer quickly and accurately most times. Don’t expect it to hear you perfectly through thick walls without raising your voice, but it has a much better chance of recognizing you than its peers. It’s the new standard in this regard.

Siri is fine for simple stuff…

The rest is, well, Siri. If you’ve owned an iPhone recently, you already know what it is and isn’t capable of. Apple has wisely tried to frame Siri’s role on the HomePod as focusing on the things people actually do with voice assistants—that is, simple tasks that any assistant can do. If past studies are any indication, it’s not necessarily wrong to take this approach.

When it comes to those simple things, Siri is fine. It’s perfectly competent at recognizing music and podcasts in Apple’s library, pausing, rewinding, and restarting tracks, adjusting volume, starting up playlists I’ve created and those curated by Apple Music, favoriting songs I say I like, identifying current and previously played songs, telling you the current volume, and so on. It doesn’t seem able to skip to a specific track on a given album, but that’s not a huge drag.

I’ve seen reviews noting how Siri gives wacky recommendations when you ask it to “play something I like,” but I haven’t had any problems there. One time it started up a band I very much like, another it introduced me to a track I’d never heard of but wound up enjoying. It’s not a mindreader, though; you have to engage with Apple Music to give it a sense of your taste.

Beyond its abilities with Apple Music, Siri is mostly adequate with the basics. It can set an alarm, tell you the weather with sufficient detail, and recommend a nearby sushi restaurant. It can’t give general area traffic reports, but it can tell you what to expect if you provide a specific destination. It can give flash news briefings from NPR, The Washington Post, Fox News, and the like. It can reliably send texts.

Anecdotally, Siri isn’t as consistent answering general knowledge questions as Google or Alexa, but, relatively speaking, it’s not so dumb as to be annoying. It’s more competent as a voice controller for Apple’s HomeKit platform. If you have a HomeKit-compatible smart home device set up through your iPhone, you can have Siri control it through the HomePod. I used this to turn off a few smart lights and didn’t have any trouble. HomeKit at large is still a bit clunky to manage, but that goes for most smart home platforms at this point.

…but still Siri

There are still a few nagging issues here. Siri’s inability to set multiple timers simultaneously is an obvious one; the A8 chip can handle that. Its inability to add songs to your “Loved” list on Apple Music when you’re streaming over AirPlay is frustrating. It can’t access your calendar via the HomePod, either—that’s basic functionality for Alexa and Google.

The only Apple logo you’ll see on the HomePod is tucked away on its bottom, among the silicone material used to keep the speaker upright.

Credit: Jeff Dunn

Worst of all is its total lack of multi-user support. Currently, the HomePod syncs with one iCloud account at a time but doesn’t discern multiple voices. That means anyone else in my apartment could send iMessages in my name without me knowing. It could also result in a family member unknowingly messing with your Apple Music library, though there is a “Listening History” setting hidden in the Home app that lets you stop music played on the HomePod from influencing Apple Music’s album suggestions. Still, this is bad. Google and Amazon already have multi-user solutions on speakers that cost far less and aren’t explicitly made for enjoying music.

You could say “Amazon and Google already do this better” for many things here, but that’s common knowledge, so I won’t belabor the point. The main thing is third-party app support: Alexa and Google Assistant have a ton, while Siri has very little. You can’t call an Uber, order dinner, check most to-do list or note taking apps that aren’t made by Apple (Evernote aside), shop online, or do most of the many things Siri’s peers are capable of here. You can’t make calls, either—an ability both Alexa and Google gained last year.

And again, you can’t control any non-Apple music service with voice commands. That makes life harder for millions of Spotify users from the jump.

That said, you do get a modicum of basic controls for third-party services when you stream them over AirPlay. If you use an iPhone, you can still have Siri restart, skip, and identify a track without much fuss. But that’s about it, and it won’t do anything but change volume when AirPlaying, say, Google Play Music from a Mac. This just isn’t the way the HomePod is meant to be used; having Siri thumb through Apple Music is both faster and more comprehensive.

Assorted hiccups

There are a few software issues that don’t involve Siri, too. For one, AirPlay has latency problems. There’s a consistent two- to three-second delay between when you manually select a track to stream over AirPlay and when it actually starts on the HomePod. If you let the songs pass without touching anything, this’ll go away, but any time you go to change something, there’ll be a wait. This isn’t the end of the world, but hopefully AirPlay 2 will tidy it up.

Secondly, Apple has a neat trick that lets you say “hey Siri” to wake the HomePod without activating the assistant on separate Apple devices near you. This worked for me without issue about 80 percent of the time. That’s good, but still too imperfect for comfort. I had at least three occasions where I asked Siri to play a song only for it to respond and play music on the HomePod and my iPhone at the same time. I wound up turning off the “listen for hey Siri” option on my phone to make things more bearable, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you do the same.

It’s also worth noting that there’s no dedicated HomePod app. If you want to control playback and adjust volume without talking aloud, the idea is to use iTunes or Apple Music. On iOS, you can also 3D Touch the music playback widget in the Control Center (jargon!) and choose to control the HomePod from there. You can also manage alarms and other HomePod items by 3D Touching the speaker’s icon in the Home app, which is a weirdly hidden spot for those settings.

On the Mac, iTunes gave me no issues. But I did have a few instances where my iPhone would disconnect from the HomePod once it went to sleep, leaving the speaker to play one song while the Apple Music app displayed controls for another. This happened whenever I started one song from AirPlay and then asked for another through voice commands. I could go back into the phone and set things right again, but doing that repeatedly can be a pain. Sonos’ standalone app has plenty of issues, but it makes for a more unified and immediately apparent experience than what you get here. Again, the HomePod very clearly wants you to use Siri first.

Finally, a word on privacy: the HomePod doesn’t have a hardware button to mute its mics a la the Sonos One, but you can say “Hey Siri, stop listening” to get the same effect. You then tap the HomePod’s touchscreen to activate the assistant again. Apple says it will only send information to its servers after the HomePod hears “hey Siri” and that it will be encrypted and sent with a random identifier.

There’s not much I can definitely say about how much you should trust the HomePod. At this point, you either accept the potential privacy loss because the convenience of having a smart speaker is too great, or you’re still skeptical of welcoming a giant tech company into your home. Personally, I’m more inclined to trust Apple, if only because its business is predicated on selling hardware at high margins. Amazon and Google, meanwhile, are financially incentivized to gather as much data on their customers as possible. But that’s nothing more than a gut feeling, and both Alexa and the Google Assistant are smarter than Siri.

One for the diehards

Lots of cynical people will look at the HomePod and think it’s just another way for Apple to push people further into its own self-contained world. There’s some truth to that.

But ecosystem lock-in has long been Apple’s M.O. The AirPods nudge you toward the iPhone with its faster pairing tricks; the iPhone nudges you away from Android by tethering all your friends to iMessage. The HomePod is just a little more forceful about it. Really, this isn’t the end of the world. Apple isn’t the biggest tech company in the world because everyone’s stupid or sheeple or trapped. People keep buying its products because they like them.

The HomePod is small enough to fit in one hand, but it’s a bit heavier than it looks.

Credit: Jeff Dunn

Is the HomePod missing a mountain of features that would better suit it for a mass audience? Yep! Those who want a smart speaker and aren’t an Apple diehard should buy a pair of Sonos Ones. Playing them in stereo will eliminate the HomePod’s audio advantage for no extra cost. You’ll have to deal with less responsive microphones, but you’ll get a more advanced assistant, plus access to a much wider family of whole-home speakers, should you ever want to go down that route. You’ll also gain AirPlay 2 support later in the year.

But does that mean nobody should buy the HomePod? No. If you’re an iPhone user who loves Apple Music and wants a way to enjoy that subscription at home, the HomePod is charming, simple, and nice-sounding enough to be worth a look. Many of its issues can be fixed with future software updates, too. I suspect this will be many people’s first home speaker; if so, it should be a good gateway to that world. They’ll just enter from a walled garden of their choice.