Apple Homepod Sounds Great But Is Shortsighted

Apple Homepod Sounds Great But Is Shortsighted

- Sascha Segan, Tim Gideon

The Apple HomePod is a high-quality smart speaker for your Apple Music account and iTunes library, with some Siri voice assistant features that help especially with smart home usage. The hardware is excellent, but right now, Apple doesn’t have the broad vision for voice-assisted living that the Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant platforms show.

Looking at voice platforms as the next world of computing, the HomePod seems very lonely. Alexa and Google Assistant are systems, and they become more powerful as they spread through your house. Your living room Google Home Max is complemented by your kitchen Home Mini, which you use to broadcast, “It’s dinnertime,” to the kids’ rooms. Your bedside Amazon Echo Spot wakes you up to music, and then you tell the Echo Dot in the foyer to turn off the lights when you head out on your commute.

The HomePod is priced, sized, and skilled to be a living room music speaker for other Apple devices. In that context, the HomePod comes off as more like the Apple Watch or the Apple TV: not a new, core product category but an accessory to enhance your iPhone ownership and make sure you keep paying that Apple Music subscription fee. Since other voice-assisted speakers can’t play Apple Music, the HomePod is the obvious choice for iPhone owners and Apple Music subscribers who don’t want to pay an extra tithe to Amazon, Google, or Spotify.

From an audio standpoint, the HomePod delivers a rich, balanced sound signature that highlights the mids and highs. It doesn’t distort at top volumes, and its bass depth is impressive for its size. The HomePod’s sound can fill a room, but it doesn’t get quite as loud or deliver quite as much deep-bass response as the slightly pricier Google Home Max.