welcome everyone i'm ricky from tech talk and in today's video we're going to
be unboxing and taking our first look at apple's homepod
and ask is it still worth it after two years since launch and i can't believe
it has been two years so Apple claims this is the new sound of the home so
let's find out together so on the front here we've got homepod
and it shows an image of the homepod itself it comes in two colors
we've got the space gray option or it does come in a white so
two different options you can have on the side we do have an apple sticker
that is also dark in color that might be linking to
the color that we actually have for the home pod
and again it's just the same all the way around we have a little tab there that
we can pull and take off so i'm just going to pull
that off there you get satisfying sound
as this is two years old you might already know but on top is a panel that
you can touch and touch sensitive and you control
different things in different ways and actual different amounts of taps
which we'll talk about on the bottom of this as well i just
want to show you before we actually get it unboxed
is some information so you can find further information but i'm going to go
through that anyway so turn it back around i'm just going to
hold it and all you do is you lift up the lid
lifting up the lid there apple as always know how to sort of do an
unboxing correctly and they show you your product on the
top here so we can just lift that out it does have a bit of weight to it
underneath is going to be our cable and connection
so just sit this to the side i just don't want to damage the plug there so
underneath you will receive some paperwork
and it says designed by apple in california
so let's just see we've got homepod this is going to be a quick tip sort of guide
it just unfolds it shows you information there about
instant pairing which should be good warranty information safety information
and a large apple sticker shame it's not a space gray option
though but that's all your paperwork there if you do need
to ask anything feel free to drop a comment down below i'll be more than
happy to help so let's put the lid back on so taking a
look at our homepod is fairly weighted as well it has a nice
weight to it and as you know you can pair these up if you want to
and they compare and work together connected is our uk three pin
plug here with a long cord actually which is really nice to see
just a couple little tabs here to take this off so a couple of things to notice
about your power connection so we have the uk three pin plug here
as we do live in the uk there's just a little bit of plastic we need to take
off here which just comes off you'll notice as
well it's a braided cable which is really nice it's two meters in length
which is really good to see so it's nice and long which means
it can be plugged in nice and easily yes you can remove the cable but they
recommend that you don't as you can see it has a rubberized
bottom with an apple logo as you may have seen previous videos and
other news articles that said it left a ring
so maybe just put this on a coaster or something just protect your desk
or protect a wooden object you may put it on that is potentially really
expensive but this for me is more expensive than my
desk so turning back around as you can see it's sort of a just a
round speaker and there's so much more about it than that
so let's plug it in first of all and actually get it paired up with my iphone
it looks quite simple and quite easy to do
so on top we just got a little bit of a tab that we take off and that reveals
the touch sensitive screen here on top that just removes
you've got an indicator circling around there at the top
so just bring in my iphone here and as you can see
we've got ready to set up so we're going to hit setup so then it will ask you
where it's based and there's loads of different choices i'm just gonna choose
office at the bottom so it's now asking us about personal
requests and this means where the homepod will start to understand your
voice and that of other family members so i'm
gonna allow then we're going to use this iphone
we're going to go to agree then we've got all different options here so we've
got location we've got siri our music and then also analytics and
understanding so that's fine so it's asking us to
hover over this dots
so my question is as well after two years of launch
is this still worth it i know apple will soon update
their new one and i'll be getting their new one as well to see with this model
and i finally got this one as it reduced in cost a little bit
throughout retail options here in the uk so is it still
worth it for me from what i've heard the power and the performance inside this is
really good but the smartphone and the smart
connectivity of it is not the best this may update with
latest stuff i'm siri welcome to homepod you can't tell but
i'm waving to get my attention say hey siri let's
try it say hey siri what can you do
hey siri what can you do i can do lots of things
like turn on the lights give you a news update
and tell you about the weather now you try so here we go we've got some
what siri can do here with our homepod so you can ask
different things which is great so i'm gonna hit done hey siri
what's the weather today it's currently clear and 70 degrees in prince's reese
temperatures are heading down from 73 degrees to 57 tonight
hey siri tell me a joke kid joke alert how many tickles does it take
to make an octopus laugh 10. ten okay that's really bad but of course the
homepod is all about sound so let's play some sounds now and
these are copyright free sounds that i found on youtube
so sit back and enjoy some sound and obviously it's not going to be the best
because you're not here in person but i will put the microphone really close
but also we're going to give some details about the homepod as well
do
do so let's give a little bit more
information about the homepod there first listening to it is unbelievable
the power that's behind it is so amazing that's thanks to the
technology built inside from apple and yes i really do want to see what
it's like compared to other speakers and also check out the smart
functionality of it as well because potentially that might be where
it's slipping behind with siri where we take the looks at google
assistant on the google home devices and then amazon alexa on the echo
devices apple potentially maybe really need to
invest in siri and really update it hopefully in the new ios updates that
might happen that might come to this home pod or
eventually potentially a new homepod but homepod is
a breakthrough speaker that adapts to its location and delivers high
fidelity audio wherever it's playing and that's very
true so it will try and figure out the room and the position
it's in and obviously you compare them together for sort of a dual stereo
speaker option you can pair it up with your apple
products so iphone the ipad it also works with apple tv looking
forward to testing that out but that might be a bit strange just
coming through one speaker together with apple music and siri
really creates its own and comes together
so as you may know with apple music you're gonna have to buy a subscription
but if all of your family and the home sort of dig in together i think here in
the uk it's 14.99 so it's not too bad for six members or
it's 9.99 for one membership so maybe if you have a family it's great
to just share that with each other you can come in and play on your homepod
and sort of really experience that importance of its full
value with apple music it can learn and grow
and understand your whole family you'll get to realize different people with
their different voices as long as it's set up like i showed you
on the smartphone it can control your smart home with
apple home kit supplied as well so it will appear in my
apple home kit products and it will link with
other apple homekits devices which i think is really good
again that smart time is really growing at the moment
people are investing in it a lot because we spend a lot of time in the home
currently during current situation that's ongoing in the world
but obviously we want our smart devices to be smart
we want our smart homes to be incredibly smart
but this can also do different tasks you can ask it the weather you can ask jokes
you can set timers you can do countdowns you can
ask for different information you can ask for recipes
you can ask for some lyrics you can ask for so much
but again we will be comparing this with the amazon alexa
and also google assistant to really put it through its paces and see which is
best you get a major sound as i've just
really experienced it and obviously because of copyright
i can't show you the songs i've listened to otherwise i'll get copyright strike
but the performance is unbelievable you first put it on the bass is fantastic
you really experience the sound and obviously they'll get better over time
but it's major sound with minor scale as a
purposely designed speaker creates rich nuanced sound
that sort of defies the size it really does you're so shocked
yes it is a bit weighty but wow the performance
is outstanding just because you're not expecting it so talking a bit about
specs like i said it comes in space gray color here which is more black
or it comes in a white option its size is 17
centimeters high so it can fit in most areas
and you can put this on shelves or different locations around the house
it's 14 centimeters wide and it weighs 2.5 kilos so the weight is quite heavy
but that's really helping its base level and it really sounds fantastic
moving into the audio technology side it has a high level woofer with custom
amplifier array of seven horn loaded tweeters each with its own
custom amplifier it offers six microphone array
for far field siri reaction which is really good you could be right across
one area ask a question and you can get that
question delivered to you and by all means you're going to hear
the response internal low frequency calibration microphone for atomic based
correction so it will try to auto correct itself
direct and ambient audio beam forming so this means where it's clever enough
to learn its surroundings and it will beam the audio towards you
the listener which is really nice to see stereo pair capable so if you
have two of these together you can make them a stereo so that'll
really help with the apple tv and i'm actually looking forward to just
even testing it out with one speaker to see what it offers
so you can connect multiple devices to your home pod which include as you saw
the iphone the ipad the ipod touch apple tv or even
your mac as well so it'd be really good to edit my video
of this on my mac through the homepod and listen back it
offers a multiple range of different audio formats the link will be in
description so you can actually see what options are
available to you so as you can see on top here with the
touch display you've got the minus or the plus
you can tap or hold one of these to increase or decrease the volume which is
really good you can touch and hold for siri this is
where you get this little light here and series ready there to help you if you
want to so you double tap on here to skip a song
and you triple tap to go back so you can go backward or
forward i'm just doing it either side it doesn't matter where you do it i'm just
so used to tapping a different side and also
accessibility there's different ways to talk about
accessibility on here which i think is a really good thing and we're going to
have a deeper look into the accessibility of the homepod
linked up with the iphone in a future video because i want to really delve in
and understand the accessible options for apple and
their products in greater detail because i haven't done that too much so please
watch out for a video on that it also offers 802.11 ac wi-fi
with minnow direct guest access so someone comes around and you want to
give them guest access you can do it offers the latest
bluetooth 5.0 it has a multi-room speaker support with
airplay so if you've got multiple ones of these around the house
you can sort of say to zero play songs throughout the house which would be
fantastic or you can set that up via your phone
like i said you might want to get the apple music subscription for
the full music functionality you don't have to you can actually play music from
your phone that's not a problem so anything you do have to ask please
feel free to drop a comment down below i'll be more than happy to help but i
hope you've enjoyed looking at the homepod here and we are going to
ask the big question is it worth buying for me for the music
and the power you get from the speaker yes during the summer time put it
outside everyone's going to hear your music it's
going to sound great rich depth and sound really bass heavy but
some people really like that some people don't
obviously it depends on the music you listen to the smart functionality i
think could be better and i think we will see an improvement over time with
siri i think apple really needs to focus on
siri and its smart home ecosystem compared to google and amazon
because with their services the google assistant and the amazon alexa
there's vast improvement there's so much basic functionality you can do on them
devices you can't do yet with siri and
definitely we'll be making a video comparing all three
but again let me know what you think down below it's always great to hear
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very soon from me ricky and the homepod i will see
you in my next video thanks always watching bye for now
you