Apple HomePod – An In-Depth Review 2023

HomePod is a speaker from Apple, one that can be controlled by Siri. It is also compatible with the AirPlay 2 standard, which allows it to stream music and podcasts from an iOS device.

It has a round-shaped, touch-sensitive glass top with a rainbow-colored circle that lights up when you say Siri’s name. You can tap it to advance, replay, or control volume.

Features

The new Apple HomePod for 2023 looks a lot like its predecessor, but with a few notable upgrades under the hood. It sports a faster S7 chip and temperature sensor, and it can also be controlled with Alexa-like features including Alexa Guard that lets it automatically notify you of smoke and carbon monoxide alerts.

Another big feature is support for spatial audio, which uses beamforming to separate out the sound of each channel. This allows the HomePod to produce a wider and deeper sound than you can get from most other speakers in this price range.

It also features system sensing, which monitors mechanical and electrical conditions to adjust tuning in real time. It will even adjust its tuning based on how it’s being used, so it can work well in different rooms of the house, for example.

There are also a few new smart home features, including a built-in temperature sensor and a humidity sensor that can be used to trigger smart-home automations. For example, you can set the HomePod to turn on fans at times of high indoor humidity and close blinds automatically depending on a specific condition in the room.

It’s also a Matter hub, which means it can work with devices that use the Matter standard. This is Apple’s alternative to the HomeKit platform and it allows for easier integration of smart home accessories. For instance, you can control any smart speaker that works through Matter using Siri commands on the HomePod.

Design

Apple’s original HomePod was a great-looking smart speaker that brought a new level of audio performance to the market. Featuring seven “horn-loaded” tweeters and a powerful 4in woofer, the HomePod delivered a rich soundstage with impressive clarity and control.

It also came with a number of features that made it stand out in the smart speaker market, including Siri support and the ability to integrate with Apple TV. While the first generation of HomePod stayed focused on audio, the second-generation model aims to be more functional as a home automation hub.

The newest HomePod looks a lot like the original in terms of design, though the HomePod is significantly smaller and lighter. It’s now available in white and midnight (a new color), which replaces Space Gray, and it’s still wrapped in a custom mesh designed by Apple that helps guide the sound for better acoustics.

A backlit touch surface up top glows from edge to edge, and the circular touchpad does a little dance when you interact with Siri. It’s also got some smarts, with system sensing measuring mechanical and electrical conditions for automatic tuning.

Another interesting feature is room sensing, which listens for sound reflections from surrounding surfaces and retunes the speaker accordingly to accommodate different spaces. It’s a similar concept to what the Sonos Roam does with automatic TruePlay tuning.

The HomePod comes with four microphones, which can pick up commands from your phone and respond to them loudly and clearly. You can give the HomePod commands to do things like turn on and off your lights, play your favorite music, and more. It can also hear smoke or carbon monoxide alarms and send notifications to your smartphone.

It’s also compatible with Siri Remote, which lets you tap and hold your iPhone to trigger the HomePod’s touch display. It’s not a feature that many users will likely be interested in, but it does provide one more option for those who want to use Siri with the HomePod.

While the new HomePod doesn’t seem to break any major visual strides from the outgoing model, it is still a great-looking product that is sure to fit into most homes. It’s also a great-sounding device that brings robust audio to the table at a price point that should be appealing for most consumers.

Streaming

The HomePod was Apple’s first smart speaker, and it’s still an incredible audio device with the most advanced computational audio available. It’s the best way to listen to music from Apple’s own music library, as well as from a large number of streaming services.

The new HomePod offers a few key improvements over the original, including improved room-sensing technology and a redesigned speaker array with five tweeters instead of seven. Combined with beamforming, this means it can optimise the sound it emits to match its surroundings. It also includes Dolby Atmos support, enabling it to play immersive virtual surround-sound.

It’s not just Dolby Atmos, though — it’s also able to use Siri commands and other voice commands from third-party apps. You can control services like Pandora and Deezer with Siri as well, which is a great addition to the speaker’s already impressive audio capabilities.

If you’re looking for a new smart speaker, the second-gen HomePod should be at the top of your list. It’s got plenty of smarts and good room-filling sound for the price, and it comes with a lot of features that aren’t found on Amazon Alexa speakers, such as a version of Alexa Guard that can alert you when smoke or carbon monoxide alarms are heard in the house.

With the HomePod, you can pair it with other Apple devices, such as an iPad or iPhone, to create a multiroom audio system that works with any other AirPlay-compatible audio device. The speaker also has its own Ultra Wideband radio, which allows it to connect with the rest of your home’s smart devices and make them all work together.

As for audio, the HomePod is capable of delivering stereo sound when two HomePods are paired together, thanks to the new speaker’s microphone array and beamforming capabilities. It can also detect the size of a room, its proximity to nearby surfaces and other obstacles, and uses that information to optimize audio output and beamforming accordingly.

The new HomePod can also act as a smart home hub for Apple’s HomeKit system, acting as a Thread border router for the management of Matter-enabled devices. It can even play as a Siri remote, although it’s not clear how many devices it can control at once.

Siri

Siri is a big part of what makes Apple’s HomePod different from the competition, but her capabilities are limited. She can’t do all that Alexa and Google Assistant do (setting multiple timers and recognizing more than one voice, for example), and she isn’t as capable of answering questions like “What’s the weather?” or reading out news headlines.

In terms of voice commands, you can ask her to do things on your behalf, including turning the lights on and off or waking up at a certain time. She can also make timers or alarms, and check the status of existing ones.

Music is another important aspect of HomePod’s abilities, and Siri can play songs from a range of sources. This includes iTunes Music purchases and iCloud Music Library, streaming services such as Spotify and TuneIn, as well as radio stations. It can even make music recommendations based on your tastes, helping you to discover new artists and genres.

You can also set HomePod to listen for smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, and it can send a notification to your iPhone when you activate one. It can also sense the temperature in a room and create automations that turn the heating off or open a window when it’s reached a certain level, for instance.

The speaker is also designed to be as discreet as possible, with the mic not being constantly on until it hears a voice command. When it’s engaged, a waveform appears on the top of the speaker to indicate that Siri is listening in. If you don’t want to be heard, you can press and hold the top of the speaker until you see a circle light up in an amorphous, colorful blob.

Like the first generation, HomePod’s sensors detect reflections off of walls and other surfaces to adjust the audio output to match the space. It also uses an accelerometer to detect when you move the speaker. This helps prevent it from leaving a ring mark on surfaces, which was one of the more annoying problems I had with the original HomePod.