After seven months of waiting it's finally here the new Apple HomePod. Wait a minute. The new Apple home- wait a minute. The new Apple HomePod.
Wow! It comes in a box!
Build quality as one better expect from a friggin' 350 dollar speaker is...
Fantastic, and it's up to Apple's normal standards. The outside is this nice squishy, foamy base
Which looks modern,
But cozy at the same time.
The bottom of the speaker is covered in a nice rubber foot, which prevents it from moving around on a table. The top is covered
in this unfortunately not Gorilla Glass,
But what seems us plastic touch-sensitive top and the space gray model is already getting tons of fingerprints on it.
I bet the white model is much better in that regard. And around back you have a very nice-looking braided power cable
But! And this is a big problem, I already have with it. It's hardwired.
So you're not going to be able to remove this. You better hope you don't bend it, or break it apart you better
hope you don't have a dog chewing through the cable because if you do, that's it. There's also
No IO, which I'll talk about in a minute. That's a big problem
I have with home pod, and I will comment on the size. This thing is tiny! People realize how small it is,
I mean it is really, really, really small! Which is kind of cool, but does it sound any good?
Well, let's get it set up, and lets find out.
Okay, so I've turned it on, we've got this spinning little white LED. That's a good indicator, and let's see what happens
Still waiting
Still wait- Oh!
That's a nice little sound it glows on the top that looks cool, so I'm guessing that means
it's ready to set up, so let's pull out my phone here and
Yeah, there you go. It says HomePod, and I can press set up. I'm going to click my office. Office...
Yes, enable personal requests, so I can see my text messages, calendar, to-do lists, etc.Terms and conditions,
yes, I will give all of my organs to Apple, and
Transfer my account for Wi-Fi settings, all that other stuff automatically. I like that. And that's it! Ooh!
Isn't that fancy? Setting up!
Okay, that's enough. It sounds like a train station. It's still setting up. This is taking a while, probably a couple minutes
Oh!
We're done. Hi. I'm Siri. Hello welcome to HomePod. Thank you! You can't tell, but I'm waving! To get my attention,
Quinn: Okay. Siri: say "Hey Siri"
Hey, Siri
Let's try it! Say "hey, Susan, what can you do?" Hey, salami, I know you don't do a lot, but 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! All right, fine. You caught me,
I didn't just unbox this and set this up for the first time!
I've been using this all day. For hours, and I've already formulated some pretty strong opinions about it.
And I'll talk about the sound quality in a minute. Don't worry,
we'll get there
But, I want to talk about its biggest weak point in my mind, right now, day one. And that's Siri, which quite
simply is not up to stuff. Siri is not good.
I know people talk crap on Siri all the time, and Apple fans are like, "she's really not that bad"
No, she is. She sucks. Compared to Google Assistant, and even the Amazon Echo, Siri is pretty miserable.
Let me demonstrate that by using a following example: Alissa, how much does the Apple HomePod weigh?
Apple HomePod weighs 5.5 pounds. Hey, Selma, how much does the Apple HomePod weigh?
Apple.com should be able to help you with that.
Okay, Let's talk about the sound quality. It's like my ninth take so I'm very sweaty.
Some of the initial reviews of HomePod made me very suspicious because they talked about the sound quality like, "oh my gosh
This sounds incredible. Its reinvented the way I will listen to music. It feels like I'm at the orchestra!"
No, it doesn't. It sounds good. Very good, for a small speaker this size, and it gets very loud,
But it still sounds like a small speaker. And there are certain genres that this thing does a really good job with bass heavy stuff
is exceptional all these speakers are downward firing and so you've got this really nice bass-y feel that vibrates your table
And it does a really, really, really good job, so, anything that has a lot of bass, you know: R&B, rap, Hip-Hop is going to sound pretty remarkable on this speaker
And it gets very loud now the frequency response is very much of a v-shape
So you've got a lot of bass, and then you've also got a lot of treble so,
stuff that doesn't a lot going on: so vocal tracks,
Orchestra, Jazz, those also sound really, really excellent. Everything in the middle where you've got a full dynamic range,
like, the Rolling Stones did not sound good on HomePod,
and that's just because you're using every bit. The mids are very repressed so, guitars and a lot of instruments, and vocals
sound pushed down and washed out by the bass, and the high end, like, the cymbals, and the drums,
and it's a bit of a bummer so yeah, HomePod actually sounds pretty good,
I mean, that is, for a speaker this size,
but you can't escape physics. The simple reality is that a speaker with larger displacement is going to sound better, for example these Event 2020 studio monitors are fantastic speakers
You can get a pair of them and a Chromecast Audio for only about 50 dollars more than the HomePod, and they absolutely
clobber the HomePod, like it is not even close.
They sound way better!
But they're also huge. And HomePod, for it's size,
sounds pretty good! Now, does it sound 150 dollars better than the Sonos Play:1? Heck no! In fact, the Sonos Play:3
also clobbers this speaker, and it's still fifty dollars cheaper than the Apple HomePod. Now,
I would be willing to let that slide because it's built well, and it is so tiny and you've got the Apple tax
But then I think for a second, and I think, "No! Do you know what, no because it has so many other
Really, really, huge shortcomings" I mean
I can't mince words the reality is that Siri is now years behind other voice assistants, and,
for a product whose entire existence is based around voice interactivity, that's a problem! and Apple knows
It's a problem because they've been saying "oh you know,
we've been working on HomePod since 2011, and it was never intended to be a competitor to Google Home or to Amazon Echo
It's a different product."
But it's not because the people looking at HomePod are the people looking at Amazon Echo and Google Home,
and the simple fact of the matter is that while this device does have better sound quality,
More people will appreciate the far better assistance than they will the marginally better sound. The other problem is that this thing is so
constrained to services because you're so jam-packed into Apple's ecosystem. Now I get it,
This is bought by Apple people, that probably have Apple Music, but it's still an issue. Okay Apple
So, if HomePod is a Sonos competitor, let's compare the supported services
Apple Music, Pandora, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Play Music, SiriusXM, SoundCloud, Deezer, TuneIn, Napster, iHeartRadio NTS, 7 digital, AccuRadio
Bandcamp, Radio Disney. HomePod services: Apple Music.
Shut Up.
So that's it. Apple Music. You're locked in. A lot of people said, "oh, you can use Spotify"
but that's not really genuine because, yes. Technically, you could do Spotify or any other app on your iPhone using AirPlay,
but AirPlay is basically just glorified bluetooth.
You cannot use HomePod for voice control on Spotify other than: "Next track" "Previous track" "Play" "Pause."
That's not voice control. And the irony is, guess what is getting is getting support with Spotify?
Sonos. So, in less than a month, when the update comes out, You'll be able to say to your phone,
"Hey, (phone) play (song) on
Spotify, on the Sonos, and your Sonos will play Spotify, and you'll enable it by using Siri, which is just hilarious. Alright,
I've only got one more problem with the HomePod and that is, device longevity.
speaker cones,
generally speaking,
lasts for a very, very long time. Decades in fact.
They are a very reliable technology, including the amplifiers inside of said speakers so powered monitors, powered speakers,
they last forever, and consequently most powered speakers, including, ironically the
2006 Apple iPod hi-fi, have an analog or auxilary input
so they allow you to plug in different sources so that in 10, 20, 30 years when the iPod doesn't fit in the dock anymore,
there's new technology the speaker system still works. HomePod doesn't have that.
Literally, when Apple decides, "Okay. We're done supporting this home. Pod. This thing is a brick. It will not work it will do nothing
It's a problem in fact. It doesn t not bluetooth it does have bluetooth, but you cannot play Bluetooth audio
So there is no feasible way if Apple decides to kill the home pod or to kill
Hey, Siri, that for this thing to even work, and that is a real real issue in my mind
There's a long video now look
there's a certain type of person out there for who the home pot is perfect someone who is completely involved in the Apple world and
doesn't mind paying a premium and maybe lives in a small space where they need a good sounding speaker in a really tiny package and
For that type of person it's not a bad option
But for the rest of us who either have a little more or wanted more wide open
Services or want to be able to use their product. You know in five years when this thing gets discontinued
I think you should be careful and consider some of your other options
I know I will I'm quite a snazzy lab if you enjoyed this video
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There is a type of person out there (Siri interrupts)
Shut up!