Hey what's up it's Jerad with State of Tech and I have the HomePod here, we're going to
do a review of it and we're going to talk about it.
I just finished up a live stream where I talked about it on YouTube here.
I'm going to do a lot more of these live streams, I think it's great to be able to interact
and talk about these products together.
I think that is something that is missing from these review videos.
I could talk about this product until I'm blue in the face but a lot of you end up having
questions that are really interesting and though I love to answer them in the comment
section below.
So, if you have any questions about it, ask!
Being able to do that live and actually, "Let's try that," or "Let's figure that out," is
fantastic.
And it was really fun to be able to do that in the live stream and so I'm going to be
doing that from now on whenever I do these product reviews.
We're going to do a live stream first and then I'll film my video after that.
So make sure that you subscribe to the channel here.
Click on that subscribe button, click on that little bell that notifies you when we go live
because you don't want to miss out on those.
And right now I'm not doing them according to a schedule, so you'll want to make sure
that you're notified when we do those.
So I've got the Homepod, let me break down why I decided to purchase this.
I purchased it because it's an Apple speaker.
Apple has produced some pretty fantastic speakers over the years.
They had a speaker that they came out with that you could dock your phone in the top
of.
This was a number of years ago and it was fantastic.
I used it way past its prime when I couldn't even dock a phone into it anymore because
it was the wrong plug, they switched over to the lightning.
I had it for quite a while.
I finally got rid of it just because I wasn't using it anymore but I would take that thing
everywhere.
The audio quality was fantastic, it was loud, had a nice sleek design, and great battery
life.
Apple knows how to make speakers.
And even though lately we might not think about that because they keep making their
phones and tablets and laptops smaller and smaller and you can't really get fantastic
audio quality out of those devices.
Apple knows how to make some speakers and this is no different.
The best audio quality out of a small little device is going to come from a Homepod, especially
from a smart device.
Whether you're thinking a Google Home type of device or an Alexa type of device, this
is hands down the better of the audio experiences.
So, let's ask it to play something and hopefully, YouTube won't end up flagging my video over
it.
So I'm going to ask it to play Mozart and hopefully, it'll pick something in the public
domain and I won't get in trouble.
"Hey Siri, play some Mozart."
"Playlist Mozart now playing."
"Hey Siri turn the volume up 100%" "That's very loud, are you sure?
"Yes."
So, not bad.
I know it's really hard to get an idea, I've got my mic right here, but you're really going
to have to get your hands on one of these devices to understand and experience the audio
quality.
Obviously, you can ask this thing many other questions.
Siri isn't the best at this and one of the reasons that I have my other smart devices
here, my iPad and iPhone, is just to see if, because you can use one of these devices by
itself you can ask it that trigger phrase and it will start listening and answer your
question and do whatever.
So having all these devices here, it'll be interesting to see how well they play together.
Because technically I have the watch, the phone, the pod, the iPad all right here and
so how do they interact with each other is also of interest to me.
They don't really do a whole lot together.
If I want to send anything, any audio or whatever from my phone or my tablet, I have to use
AirPlay which is kind of a bummer that I can send anything to it.
I can't use this as a speaker.
Say I'm watching a YouTube video on my phone, I can't then tell it to use the Homepod as
the speaker.
I mean, I can AirPlay it to it and it will do that but that's the only way to do it,
I can't tell it to do it, which is kind of a bummer.
For example, maybe I was watching some longer YouTube video or a podcast using my Apple
TV and then I wanted to have it continue to play that in another room, that whole process
is broken, it doesn't work.
And one could say that maybe on another device like the Google Home, that might not work
that well either.
But at least with the Google Home, I can use other services such as Spotify or any other
app that they support which is quite a few of them.
Whereas the Homepod doesn't, Apple doesn't support anything other than Apple Music.
And then the playing of thing across multiple devices, that doesn't work too well either.
So the smart device aspects of this are not completely there.
I've also found that with Siri you really have to tell it a lot more in order to get
it to do what you want it to do.
For example, with my Google Home I can come in and greet it and it will give me information
back in return.
With this, if I say, "Hey Siri, good afternoon," "Good afternoon to you too."
Siri greets me back which is totally useless, like why did Apple decide that we want to
be a friend to Siri.
I want information back, so I have to be more specific, I have to ask Siri specific information
like, "Hey Siri, what's the temperature outside?"
"Burr, it's 48 degrees outside."
"Hey Siri, what's the weather like outside?"
"It's currently partly cloudy and 48 degrees in Modesto.
Expect rain starting in the afternoon, then cloudy skies tonight.
Temperatures are heading down from 48 degrees this afternoon to 42 tonight."
"Hey Siri, what's the recent news?"
"Here's the latest news from Fox News.
You can also tell me to switch to NPR, CNN, or the Washington Post."
**News broadcast** "Hey Siri, stop."
So, with news, if I wanted to listen to the news I could set up on Google Home a whole
list of news sources that I want it to just go through.
I haven't been able to figure out how to do that with the Homepod to where I could say
"Play the latest news," and it just plays through all the things.
Homepod wants me to start listening to NPR and CNN and all that stuff, which is fine.
And it did remember that I listened to Fox News last time, and so it will remember your
news source but it will always ask you every single time to switch to a different one.
It doesn't seem to ever get done doing that.
So, ever time that I want to listen to the news, it reminds me that I can also switch
it to another one which is fine but there isn't a way for me to say "Ok, I want to listen
to Fox News, I want to listen to NPR Technology," and even list all these out because I can
do that on a Google Home Max but I can't do that on a Homepod.
You know, with that said, there are limitations there.
Another thing that Siri just isn't really good at, and the Homepod doesn't make it any
better or any worse is conversational search.
For example, if I was to ask, "Hey Siri, who was the MVP of the 2018 Superbowl?"
"Sorry, I don't know the answer to that one" Well, that's one that it wasn't able to answer.
I know that it can answer, "Hey Siri, who won the Superbowl?"
"The NFL season is over.
The Eagles defeated the Patriots in the Superbowl by a score of 41-33 on February 4, 2018."
So that fine but asking it some things that are more conversational are a little bit tricky
so, for example, "Hey Siri, recommend a nearby restaurant."
"The highest rated option I see is El Poro Taco Truck, a Mexican Place on North Carpenter
Road in Modesto which averages five stars according to Yelp.
Would you like to hear the next one?"
"How about Chinese food?"
"One thing I see is Da Tang Express on Tully Road in Modesto which averages four stars
and is inexpensive.
It's open today from 11AM to 8:30PM.
Would you like to hear the next one?"
"No thanks."
That's actually not bad.
In the past, I've tried doing this with Siri, tried having a conversational search and it
didn't work too well.
So they're getting better at this.
I think that Apple knows the limitations of Siri, they have to, they have to know that
Siri is subpar to Google Search, or whatever they're calling Google Now or whatnot.
That whole conversational, Google Assistant was what I was looking for.
Anyways, that whole experience with Siri is not as good.
Simple things like that, like, let's see.
I'm failing at maybe some options of things to ask but the restaurant one was pretty good
in the sense that you would want to start a conversation by asking something specific
and then be able to ask it without having to ask the entire question over again.
So it's good to see that Homepod can actually do a little bit of that.
I haven't found it to be nearly as good as Google Assistant through Google Home or Google
Home Max.
Nonetheless, Siri seems to be getting a little bit better at that.
The speaker here, it has speakers going all the way around.
It has seven intergraded tweeters.
It has a subwoofer in the top.
It has microphones all the way around too.
So this device is really designed to be in the center of your room.
You can put it in the corner, you can put it up against a wall and it's automatically
going to detect that and get better at producing audio when it is backed into a corner.
But I think that this is designed to be out in the open.
That's why the plug here, that is non-removalbe, is a lot nicer of a plug, is the way that
it is, I think.
Because I wouldn't mind this sitting on a table in the middle of my room with a cable
coming from it that looked like this.
Whereas the cables that come off most other devices are unsightly or just not that attractive
and it just doesn't look that good.
I wouldn't want that in the middle of my room, I'd want to put that against a wall so that
the cable can go back behind the device.
The Homepod really looks good out in the open, and that's kind of how Apple designs everything.
I mean, even their iMacs, their Mac Pro, the trashcan looking computer that they designed
several years ago, that was designed to be on the top of your desk, not under your desk
like most computers were before.
Apple designs their stuff to be out in the open and to be seen and I do like that about
Apple's products because they're not cheap!
They're expensive, so you kind of want to have that on display, you want people to be
able to see it and kind of see the stuff that you've got.
Apple does a great job a design that.
There really isn't a whole lot else for me to say about this device other than the fact
that my personal experiences are better with the Google devices, though the audio quality
is a little bit better on this device than with the Google devices and definitely a lot
better than the audio quality than the Alexa devices but it really comes down to what you're
going to use it for.
Now, I listen to music sometimes on these devices but not very loud because at home
I have a wife and kids around, there's a lot of other noise going on and stuff like that
around, so I'm not just going to be able to blast music all the time.
At my office, I've got neighbors and we're trying to do work here so I can't really blast
the audio either but we do like to listen to music sometimes at a reasonable audio level
and the Homepod definitely sounds great but so does the Google Home and Google Home Max
at decent audio levels.
So it really comes down to what overall experience is best for me and considering that I like
to use my Android device from time to time, I also like to use other audio streaming apps.
I'm definitely going to have to side with something other than this.
For those of you that want the best Apple experience that are all-in on the Apple ecosystem.
You listen to your music on Apple Music, you use Siri a little bit but don't mind the Siri
shortcomings, this is definitely a great device.
I mean, it's a well worth purchase, I think that for those of you who are all-in on that
Apple experience or Apple ecosystem.
So, with that said, that's going to end my review.
I know that many of you may have questions, you can ask them in the comment section below
and I'll do my best to answer those.
If you missed out on the live stream, make sure to subscribe to our channel, click on
that little bell because we'll be doing some live streams with future products before we
do our reviews.
I'll also make sure to tweet out that we're going to be going live soon and stuff so you
can follow State of Tech on Twitter, which is @StateOfTech.
We'll do our best to kind of put it out there that we're going to be live streaming before
we actually live stream so that we can all take part in looking at this product together.
I think it's a great way to learn and experience these products is together rather than just
in some random review video that some dude like me decided to make.
So thanks again for checking out this video.
I hope you liked it.
Click that thumbs up button and I hope to see you back here in the next one.
Take care.