Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Apple HomePod Review: The Dumbest Smart Speaker?”.
Hey, what is up guys, mkbhd here and in this box, is one of the least anticipated new apple products. In a long time it was announced back in june of 2017, and it’s been a couple months. It got delayed now it’s february of the next year 2018 and it’s finally shipping and it’s in our hands. It’S the homepod and now that it’s here, let’s see what it’s all about: [ Applause ]. So this is apple’s entry into the sort of a newish smart speaker market, it’s pretty late, obviously, but this is what they’ve come up with it’s a 350 dollar tissue box sized mesh cylinder that actually has some really excellent hardware. So setting it up is pretty simple: it has that w1 chip inside, so you just get your iphone somewhere near it, and it shows up on your screen. You name what room it’s in and then you set it up in about a minute like the airpods did.
So that’s definitely the apple advantage for easy, pairing and setup of an accessory. The weird thing is, it didn’t add it to my imac or other computers. As a speaker, i kind of wish, i could have tried to use the homepod as a speaker for my imac, but you can’t oh well classic apple, but the hardware is clean and super apolly, especially this white one. It’S just this fabric bulb that sits in your living room or on a table or wherever you decide to put it little screen up in the circle at the top, and all that has is your volume controls and a little siri indicator that lights up when you’re, Using it, the cable as you’ve probably seen is built-in it’s technically removable with like a lot of effort, so it’s pretty clear apple doesn’t want you doing that, that’s more for like a technician working on it after the fact, but most other speakers have removable cables.
So that’s kind of interesting. This one is a high quality sleeved cable though so i’m not mad, and if you ever pick up and hold a home pod because of the 3d fabric, it’s kind of squishy just a little. I don’t know why. You’D ever pick up a speaker, but that’s true the one weird thing, though, with this hardware is it kind of has this seam on it? It’S not easy to see, but you can kind of make it out it’s on a different place on my two different home pods. So i honestly have no idea why it’s there, you would think they would always put that seam on the back by the cord. Instead of on the side, maybe i’m just being picky, i don’t know i’ve seen some tear downs but i’m sure jrrig.
Everything will have an answer for us soon enough on why that seam is there, but once it’s set up there’s a lot of talk about the things homepod can do versus what it can’t do. It’S supposed to be a smart speaker, and i say it’s supposed to be – and i put it in air quotes because there’s a lot of things that when you compare it to google home or amazon alexa, it just doesn’t do but the things it does do it Does really well and really quickly, so the inside of the homepod is a little different. It’S seven tweeters all facing out from the middle and one woofer at the top firing upwards. So in theory, it’s creating this sort of a 360 degree sound that you can hear the same from any direction around the homepod and then it also does this bit of analysis using six built-in microphones to figure out how close it is to things around like a Wall or an open space, it analyzes that space and then it adjusts the levels to sound best from every angle, no matter where you are so it’s kind of like this smart, sound analysis, mostly to not overwhelm you with bass, but the homepod isn’t overly bass heavy.
In the first place, it’s super balanced, it does great instrument. Separation and honestly, it overall sounds excellent, especially for the size. It’S only a little bigger than a normal google home, which i think a lot of people forget about it’s really small, but it gets really loud. I’Ve listened to a lot of different music on these different smart speakers lately, and this is in fact the best sounding one. Some people have debated about it versus google home max the whole max gets louder for sure at 100 volume it’s almost too loud, but it also distorts a lot at that volume and the bass is overwhelming, so you pretty much have to go outside to enjoy it.
That loud homepod does not get as loud, but at 100 volume it sounds really really good and again, it’s unique being that sort of a circular 360 degree sound. Most people put a speaker, that’s pretty directional near a wall or a corner anyway, but you kind of get an extra bit of confidence. If you can put this on a table or anywhere in a room and it’ll sound, just as good, hey, siri play alta sure.
Here’S a personalized station of valta, so the array of microphones listening for your voice is excellent. It can hear you pretty much all the time from across the room when music is playing loud. It’S been great at that, but again what it comes down to is what homepod can do and what homepod can’t do it can play music through apple music. So you can ask siri to play a song or a playlist or play the radio and if you’re, an apple music subscriber it’s hooked up to your iphone and it’ll work.
But let’s say you’re one of the 70 million people who uses spotify and not apple music. Yes, technically it can work kinda. You can airplay from spotify to a homepod, but then your voice controls don’t work as well. You can’t ask for a certain song or a certain playlist.
You can go forward and backwards in your track list, but that’s about it. It’S not ideal, but from there homepod can do pretty much anything siri does. So, if you want to ask it questions like who is this person? How tall is this person, some weather, trivia, some spelling, your classic things like that it can handle that you can also set reminders.
So if you ask it to take out the garbage at three o’clock, it’ll do that it’ll set a reminder and your reminders app on your iphone, hey siri who’s. James harden james harden currently plays shooting guard for the rockets. Hey siri.
How tall is he james harden? Is six feet: five inches tall, hey siri, what’s the weather in honolulu tomorrow the forecast is calling for thunderstorms in honolulu hawaii. Tomorrow the high will be 78 degrees and the low will be 66.. It can also read your last text message out loud or send a text um and we’ll get to that in a second, but it also can turn on and off home kit enabled lights. It can connect to evernote, that’s about it, but here’s what it can’t do.
So, for all the great microphones that are in home pod, i can hear my voice from across the room. It can’t distinguish my voice from your voice, so if you have a home pod and you’ve been watching this video i’ve probably triggered yours multiple times, because it thinks we’re all one voice. So that means anyone who’s in the room with you and your homepod can ask it to read your texts out loud or send a text message for you, because it thinks it’s you. So if you’re not into that, you definitely want to uncheck the show personal info tab either during the setup or after the setup.
You can change it, but that’s just a weird quirk about homepod. You would think with mike’s, so good and with apple’s software so good. It should be able to tell our voices apart. Homepod also cannot ever connect to anything, that’s not an iphone.
It can’t be used as a bluetooth, speaker and there’s no audio jack, so you can’t plug anything in to use its audio quality for anything other than an iphone. You also cannot set spotify as your default music player anytime. You ask it to play something via your voice.
It will have to be apple music. You cannot connect two of them together as a stereo pair. Yet that’s apparently i’ve heard coming in a software update, but as of right now you can connect two google home maxes.
Together, as a stereo pair doesn’t happen with homepod, yet you can’t order products online. You can’t order food online. You can’t call an uber or a lift with it. You can’t have it read calendar events or set any calendar events.
You can’t set multiple timers at the same time, only one at a time which seems like something you would do in a kitchen with a smart speaker. You can’t have it make phone calls by your voice. Again, that’s something you have to set up on your phone and then airplay to the homepod. You can’t look up a recipe you can’t use find my phone.
The list goes on and on there’s so many things that homepod, when you compare it to other smart speakers. Just doesn’t do so. In conclusion, homepod is a weird product. It’S 349 bucks right now, which means you can compare it to other smart speakers like google, home or amazon alexa or some other dedicated speaker systems like sonos.
It sounds better than any other bluetooth speaker. It sounds better than the other smart speakers and honestly, it sounds better than a lot of the dedicated sound systems like a sonos. The audio engineering that went into this thing, the clarity, the instrument separation, the bass response, the 360 degree sound, is next level. The engineers should be proud of this, but in terms of smartness, smartness, siri versus alexa or google home, not even close, so you’ve probably heard this conclusion before, but if you’re in the apple ecosystem, meaning you use an iphone, you use siri a lot and you’re an Apple music, subscriber then this is the best sounding smart speaker that you can get, but in most cases honestly you’re going to be better off buying a much smarter speaker that can do way more.
That sounds almost as good. It really feels like getting a homepod right now and using it a lot just magnifies everything, that’s wrong with siri and all siri’s shortcomings, so the engineering team that made it sound so good. They should totally make a separate 350 apple speaker with a headphone jack that anyone can connect to and that would do well in its own competitive world. But for now, if you’re in the market for a smart speaker, i’d, say shop around watch some other reviews.
This isn’t the first choice until then, thanks for watching talk to you guys, the next one peace .