What is going on, everyone?
I am Mike and welcome back to Tech 24/7 TV.
I am so excited that you are back with me today because we
will unbox another new accessory.
This is Apple's HomePod Mini.
Ninety-nine dollars, and really, it is your entryway
into the Apple ecosystem and a great way to control your home
and all your home automation accessories.
Let's get with the unboxing.
Now, before we get into the review, my name is Mike.
This is Tech 24/7 TV.
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content like this, or drop me a comment down below if you
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This is the HomePod Mini, Apple's ninety-nine
dollars smart speaker, and it comes in black and white.
The HomePod Mini is powered by the S5 system on a
chip (SoC) processor, which is the same processor that you
see in the Apple Watch series six, just highly
tuned for the small three-point
three-inch speaker.
Now, this three-point three- inch speaker delivers
impressive sound, and I would say, especially for its
size when you look at it.
You can use a speaker as a way to play music from your phone,
being connected to your Apple TV, to your computer.
And we're going to give you the best experience in such
a small package.
I have two full-size HomePods currently in my house, and I
have in a couple of different bedrooms.
These I plan to disperse around my house in various areas.
Let's get to the unboxing.
This, to me, is probably one of the best accessories
of the season.
This will allow you to go ahead and place Siri in any
room that you have any location in your house to get; I would
say access or be that entryway into your smart home system,
including all of Apple's services.
As we take this out of the box, we see here that this
has a braided cable that is USB C on the end, and there is the
20-watt wall brick that this comes with.
This would normally cost you twenty dollars.
It is included inside the box.
Now, if you're looking for something a little bit more,
I'd say low profile.
Stick around.
I got something for you coming up next month or two.
Now, what I'm going to do here is I'm going to play one of my
favorite songs from an artist that is not
copyright protected.
Thank you, YouTube.
Now, all of you right now is that plane is from
the honeypot, and I am going directly into my microphone to
show you a different angle here.
To Trent.
Try someone else here.
Wow, that was awesome.
That sounds great, and, amazingly, it sounds so
great for being so small.
Apple gives you the 20-watt charger in the box for this,
but the problem is that depending on where you're going
to put this, this might be too big for the space that's behind
your dresser, your bed, your desk, whatever the
case is.
So I would suggest passing on this, and I would
suggest getting something that's a little bit
more low profile.
Whoa, I almost dropped it there.
This is the ANKER 30 watt GAN gallium nitrate charger,
which is super thin, low profile.
The plug is here.
All right.
The pins fold back in.
It's just it's an easy one because you have a
lot more space.
Think about it this way.
When you're plugging this in versus this,
it's quite the difference.
I mean, it's like an inch and a half.
So this is what I would suggest using if you need more space
between your dresser or your furniture and the wall charger.
This is probably one of the best gifts that you can give
someone because it really opens the door to 1) anything to get
related so you can control all of your accessories just by
giving the verbal command.
Hey, Schlomo, go ahead and do this.
Go and do that and get you on your way.
Now, I would say if you're looking for this for yourself,
I bought two at the holiday time and 99 bucks I think is
really a no brainer because I put one in my living room,
I put one of my wife's office, I can use the
intercom to people.
And now, with a new handoff feature, it works great
where I can walk up to it directionally with my iPhone
and transfer the audio that's playing on my iPhone to the
HomePod Mini while giving me a physical acknowledgment that
the content has been transferred over.
So at the end of the day, you have to ask yourself two
questions: who is the HomePod mini for, and is it
worth the ninety-nine dollars?
First, if you value privacy, the HomePod mini is certainly
for you because any of that usage, information,
interaction information between the HomePod
mini and yourself, or other people in your family is
anonymized and not associated with specific individuals.
Plus, there's not that implied trade-off of "I am giving you
my information and how I'm using this product so you can
sell me better products and services from other companies."
That relationship does not exist with Apple today.
If you value integration with other services, whether it's
Apple Music, Apple News, maybe you have an Apple
TV; again, this is the most integrated with those types of
services because it's first- party it's made by Apple.
Additionally, if you can get all of those services pulled
into your HomePod mini.
So when you ask for your update, Siri can read
your messages, she can help you send an email, use reminders,
all of those things.
So it's effortless integration that drives cohesiveness
between your iPhone and those products.
And finally, there's the layer of home integration where you
can use Siri as your front end controller for any of
your HomeKit accessories.
And for me, I have like 30 lights in my house.
I have speakers; I have cameras.
This allows me to interact with all of those items without
necessarily needing different applications present because
Siri is that front end and sits above all of the different home
automation accessories that I have here.
The second part of that question is, is it worth
ninety-nine dollars?
I don't know about you, but I think it ninety-nine dollars
when I have something that will be small, lightweight,
looks good.
And there's not that implied trade-off of my personal
information for using their product.
This is going to be better than the Google assistant,
the Amazon Alexa.
So at the end of the day,
Ninety-nine dollars for all those features and the room-
filling audio and the HomeKit controller are certainly worth
99 dollars to me, but I love to know what you have to
say about this.
Let me know down the comments below.
If you have a HomePod mini or if you're thinking about
picking one up,
I am Mike; this is a tech 24/7 TV hit like
hit subscribe.
And I'll talk to the next one, folks.