(soft instrumental music)
- [Siri] It's currently clear and 78 degrees in Los Angeles.
Temperatures are heading down
from 78 degrees this afternoon to 57 tonight.
- Lights on
- [Siri] Lights on.
(upbeat instrumental music)
- Here guys, Jonathan here, and this is HomePod.
So, I've got a chance to spend the last of couple days
with this, a lot of thoughts, a lot of impressions.
The first of which being,
it is way smaller than you might think.
Out of the box, there's not a whole lot goin' on.
You get the HomePod itself, a quick start guide,
and a singular Apple sticker.
I will say though, sometimes it's the attention to detail,
the small things that really make a difference.
The fabric on the power cord matches the HomePod,
and that's kinda cool.
Now setting up the HomePod
is one of the nicer parts of the experience.
If you've ever used AirPod, it's kinda similar to that,
where you stick your phone out,
a little HomePod icon pops up, you connect,
you're never diving through any menus,
you let it do its thing,
and shortly thereafter you are good to go.
(upbeat instrumental music)
Also, first impressions, the Siri animation
towards the top of the HomePod, which you will see
throughout this video, is really well done.
I think it rounds out the entire experience.
Now when that Siri animation isn't engaged,
you can use the top of HomePod for touch controls.
Single tap to play a song, or single tap to pause a song.
Double tap to go next song, triple tap to go previous song.
Press and hold will activate Siri, and then you do,
of course, have your volume up and volume down.
So from there I'm gonna jump into sound quality,
and I know some people aren't gonna wanna hear this,
but the HomePod sounds really freaking good.
(upbeat instrumental music)
Now, I'm not gonna say it's this life changing,
breathtaking, magical experience,
but when you see the size of HomePod
and then you hear the sound that comes out of it.
To me what stands out is, not only the amount of low end,
but the quality of low end that comes out of HomePod.
When you hear how much bass comes out of a speaker
this size, that by itself is really surprising,
but what's more impressive is no matter how loud
you turn this up, and believe me, it gets really loud.
It still doesn't break up or distort.
Now design-wise, HomePod as a speaker is kind of unique.
For starters, the woofer, which is responsible for that
low end, you would think would be placed towards the bottom,
but with the HomePod, it is actually placed towards the top.
Then from there, the tweeters, which normally you would
think would be placed towards the top,
those are on the bottom.
You have a total of six microphones surrounding HomePod
And lastly, Apple's A8 chip,
which is doing the processing,
it's listening to the environment, adapting to realtime,
and while things may seem a little unorthodox,
whatever they're doin' seems to be working.
Now HomePod was geared to work first
and foremost with Apple Music and it does really well.
To give you an idea of how loud this thing is--
(soft instrumental music) (voice silenced)
Play Porter Robinson.
- [Siri] Alright, let's hear it, Porter Robinson.
♪ Is anyone there ♪
("Sad Machine" by Porter Robinson)
(voice and music silenced)
- Turn the volume to 75%.
(music gets much louder)
(voice and music silenced)
Turn the volume to 100%
(music gets louder)
(voice and music silenced)
Turn the volume to 10%.
Still, was kinda a good example of
how well the microphones work within a HomePod.
One, the music was really loud, and two,
I'm actually talkin' away from HomePod facin' this way
and it still picked up my voice really well.
Now initially I was under the impression that if you
use Spotify, you're kinda out of luck with HomePod.
That it was really only geared for Apple Music,
but not only can you AirPlay from Spotify,
which I'll do now.
You can actually use the voice controls
to change everything.
So-- (voice silenced)
Next track.
(soft instrumental music)
So you can see, well, you definitely want to use
Apple Music to get the most out of HomePod.
If you do use Spotify, there's a lot you can do with it.
Next, one of the biggest reasons
you might be interested in HomePod is HomeKit.
So far, testing out HomePod with HomeKit
has worked extremely well.
Behind me, I have a couple of Philips Hue lights,
and then a non-Philips light bulb right there.
And what I love about it is the ability
to control things individually or altogether.
Now beyond that was kinda cool is the ability
to group things together and create scenes.
So imagine, you walk into your kitchen, you say,
Hey Siri, good morning.
It turns on your lights, opens your blinds,
starts your coffee.
That is all possible.
So to give an example of what a scene looks like,
I've paired these two Philips lights with this
non-smart lamp here that's goin' through a smart outlet.
And I've created the scene called, put out the fire.
(soft music) (voice silenced)
Put out the fire.
- [Siri] Put out the fire.
You got it.
- Conversely, if I wanted those lights back on.
(voice silenced)
Turn on the lights.
- [Siri] All set.
(voice silenced)
- Turn on that cool lamp.
- [Siri] Done.
- For now, you can note how quick the changes are.
(voice silenced)
Turn the lights blue.
- [Siri] All set.
- Now one down side with HomePod, is that if you're lookin'
to buy a pair of these to combine them into stereo mode,
that will not work at large.
That will come later this year with AirPlay 2.
It is a free update, but it's still a little disappointing
that it didn't happen at launch, because that was honestly
one of the most enticing features of HomePod.
Now it's also worth mentioning that if you
don't have AirPlay 2, you don't have multi-room control.
So, if you wanted to have different HomePods
in different rooms throughout your house, you gotta wait
until AirPlay 2 comes out for them to talk to each other.
When it does come out and HomePods can talk to each other,
you can play the same song throughout your house,
or have independent control and play something in your
kitchen that is completely different from your living room.
But again, if that's something that you were looking
forward to, that is not available here at launch.
Also, I did see some initial fear that Siri
was going to be extremely limited with HomePod launch,
but from what I can tell, you can send text,
you can make calls, create reminders, create notes.
So as far as that goes, the really big drawback, again,
is the lack of AirPlay 2, which enables stereo mode.
Aside from that,
those are my initial impressions on HomePods.
It's got a surprisingly great sound, it's loud,
there's a ton of low end, it works great with HomeKit.
There are definitely some really,
really important features that are missing at Pod launch.
But overall, if you pick one up, I think you will dig this.
Now if you wanna see this compared against Google Home next,
let me know by smashing that like button.
This is Jonathan, and I will catch you guys later.
(soft instrumental music)