HomePod Real World Review: Is it Worth $350

Now that the initial hype and excitement about HomePod is behind us and we’re over the “OMG it’s shiny and new” phase, we can take a serious and real world look at Apple’s entry into the smart speaker market. The first wave of reviews, after a week or even just a weekend of use, were all pretty much the same: HomePod sounds great and Siri sucks. After spending two weeks using and abusing my HomePod, I’m ready to tell you how it works in the real world and if it’s worth getting one for yourself.

HomePod Explained

Apple announced HomePod nearly a year ago at its 2017 Worldwide Developer Conference as the company’s first smart speaker with Siri voice control. It was originally planned to ship in December, but that got pushed out to February 9th, 2018, and some promised features aren’t available yet.

HomePod looks like a single bookshelf speaker, but if you take a hacksaw to one you’ll find a seven speaker array, six beam forming microphones, and a high excursion woofer.

Apple’s HomePod smart speaker

Here’s what that means: The seven speakers are evenly spaced in a ring so they can push sound out all the way around HomePod’s body. The six microphones are also evenly spaced around the body so they can focus on your voice from any direction, and analyze the room’s acoustics.

When you set your HomePod on a table or shelf in a room it “listens” to the sound as it plays songs. It takes about a single track for it to create a sound map of the room based on where it’s sitting and adjust to best fill the space. If you move your HomePod somewhere else in the room it’ll recalibrate for its new position.

Apple said you can put HomePod anywhere in a room, then later on quietly clarified that saying the speaker needs at least 6-inches all the way around to effectively build its acoustic map, and shouldn’t be placed on soft surfaces like carpeted floors. Based on my limited understanding, that’s so HomePod has the space it needs to bounce sound off surfaces and get useful information back. Turns out even Apple can’t break the laws of physics.

Dave Hamilton and I both encountered an interesting problem with an easy fix: objects near your HomePod can have a very real affect on where it pushes sound. In Dave’s case, it was a large salt shaker, and in mine it was the end of my TV’s sound bar.

HomePod echolocation (loosely speaking) interpreted the objects as a wall and redirected sound away from them. For Dave, that meant most of his HomePod’s sound was directed out the side farthest from him, and for me it meant the left side of my living room was effectively an acoustic dead spot.

Dave moved the salt shaker and I put a stack of books under my HomePod, and after giving our speakers a little shake to trick the built-in accelerometer into thinking we moved them, they recalibrated and the sound balance was much better.

HomePod Audio Quality

Here’s the deal: Audio quality is absolutely subjective, regardless of how much you pay for speakers or headphones, and what features they include. It doesn’t matter if you’re into KEF, Bowers & Wilkins, JBL, Beats, or some no-name cheap mono speaker you picked up for a few dollars. If you like it, that’s good enough. Anyone that tells you otherwise, or shames you for what you like, needs to shut up and mind their own damn business.

Should you care about the acoustic waveform tests audio pros did after HomePod came out? Sure, if that’s your thing. I’m not into reading sound graphs while listening to music, and I don’t need audiophiles giving me validation for the kind of sound profile I prefer. I’m guessing most people are in the same boat, so let’s talk about listening to music on HomePod makes me feel.

I like how HomePod sounds. I like it a lot. In fact, after two weeks it’s my go-to streaming music device. Before HomePod my Amazon Echo with external speakers was my primary streaming music setup, and while I still like that, I find myself calling out to Siri instead of Alexa when I want to hear some tunes.

HomePod, Echo, and Home size comparison

I like HomePod’s clarity, how I hear much more of the subtle nuances in songs compared to my Echo setup, and how it fills my living room with a stereo-like sound even though it isn’t a stereo speaker system.

I like how Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon wraps around me, how Dave Brubeck’s Take Five practically sounds like a live concert in my home, and how I’m suddenly listening to The Beatles a lot more than I usually do. I also like how classical music sounds clean and crisp, and it’s like I’m sitting with the band when listening to bluegrass.

Even though HomePod is versatile enough to make me smile when listening to pretty much anything, the bass in ambient music is so overpowering that I won’t even consider streaming it. Occasionally other songs have overpower lows, too, but not so much that I catch myself saying, “Siri, stop” just to make it go away. That’s reserved exclusively for ambient music.

Sometimes highs feel a little too brash for me, and mids could be a little clearer in some tracks, as well. Still, it’s clear Apple designed HomePod to handle a wide range of musical styles in hope of making this the home speaker of choice for as many people as possible.

You can use your HomePod as a speaker with your Apple TV thanks to AirPlay, but that was a little disappointing to me. HomePod sounds good with TV shows and movies, but doesn’t have enough clarity for dialog. You have to turn the volume up almost to 100% and voices still don’t punch through the way they should. I’ll be sticking with my sound bar and its dedicated center channel for my Apple TV.

As Dave Hamilton pointed out, HomePod early adopters are beta testing for Apple. That means we should see improvements through software updates as Apple collects more data about how we’re using the speaker.

Next up: HomePod, Siri, and more

HomePod and Siri

Siri is Apple’s voice control assistant that first appeared several years ago on the iPhone. Now it’s available on iPad, Apple Watch, and the Mac, too. HomePod is the first stationary Siri device, and people have been flipping out over the past couple weeks over its voice limitations compared to Apple’s other products as well as pretty much every other product ever devised in all of human history. People are practically foaming at the mouth and crying tears of blood over how they feel about Siri.

Most every review I’ve read that bags on Siri on HomePod is criticizing the feature based on what they want it to be, not what Apple said it is. Apple says Siri on HomePod supports Apple Music and Music on iCloud, creating Reminders, responding to iMessage chats, controlling HomeKit devices, and some queries that require internet access. It does all of those things as advertised, and the failures I experienced were no different than those I deal with on Amazon’s Alexa platform or Google Assistant.

Occasionally Siri failed to do anything when I issued a command or query that is supported, and I’ve had a couple instances where my iPhone or Apple Watch high jacked a voice command I intended for HomePod. I also had once instance where I said “Hey Siri, play jazz,” and both my HomePod and iPhone started playing music.

Siri also blew it when I asked it to play “Also sprach Zarathustra,” telling me it couldn’t find the song. Asking for “that song from 2001 a Space Odyssey,” however, worked just fine. In comparison, Alexa on my Amazon Echo did find and play the song, although it was the live version from an Elvis Presley concert.

Based on my experience, Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are all very rudimentary with unique strengths and weaknesses. I can find plenty to complain about in all three and I’m impatiently waiting for the day when I can say anything to the air and get an appropriate response from a voice assistant. I’m pretty sure that day is still a long way off.

There’s a lot Apple can do to improve Siri on HomePod, and I’ll be surprised if there isn’t a team already hard at work. Here’s what I’d like to see on that feature check list:

• Voice-recognized multi-user support. Right now HomePod links to a single iCloud account, which seems odd considering it’s a device for your home. Unless you live alone, there’s a good chance more than one person is interacting with HomePod, and Siri should be able to respond appropriately based on voices.


• Calendar support. Not being able to say, “Hey Siri, what’s my schedule” is surprisingly limiting. Maybe this is a feature tied to multi-user voice recognition.


• Handoff support. Instead of telling me a voice command isn’t supported on HomePod, hand off the task to something that is—like my iPhone, which is also nearby.


• Multiple timer support. My HomePod, just like my Amazon Echo, is in earshot of the kitchen. I can set up as many timers as I like, complete with unique names, on my Echo. HomePod should be able to do the same.

One thing Apple got right with Siri on HomePod is its ability to hear you speak. In fact, HomePod picks up your voice so well it’s almost creepy. I played music at full volume and Siri responded when I spoke at a normal conversation level—I couldn’t even hear my own voice. Siri responds when I’m down the hall in another room, and picked up my voice when I turned on every fan and white noise-capable device in my place.

I can say Siri performs on HomePod exactly as advertised, but I wouldn’t consider that high praise. Siri has so much potential and I’d like to see Apple turn that into so much more than the have today.

HomePod’s Mixed Bag

Apple did an amazing job of making HomePod easy to set up: just take it out of the box, plug it in, and hold your iPhone close. After a couple taps your HomePod is set up and ready to use. There’s a little fold-out sheet in the box explaining the process, and it’s almost as simple as setting up AirPods.

You manage HomePod settings in the Home app, which I guess makes sense considering it’s also a HomeKit remote access bridge, just like Apple TV. That said, you don’t control your Apple TV from the Home app.

While HomePod works fine today, it’s missing a couple promised features. First, it doesn’t work in pairs yet. Two units should be able to work together to create a more stereo-like sound in a room. Second, multi-room streaming isn’t available.

A stack of books may be just what you need to get the best sound from your HomePod

Both features are coming as software updates, and hopefully sooner than later. Multi-room streaming is part of AirPlay 2, which was pulled from iOS 11.3 beta 3. That’s the key element for the missing features. iOS 11.3 is scheduled for a Spring release, so there’s still a chance AirPlay 2 will show up in betas and not get pushed out to an even later iOS update.

HomePod doesn’t handle account changes gracefully, which I learned the hard way. The credit card number I use for my iTunes account was stolen so my bank issued me a new card. I forgot to update the card before my Apple Music subscription tried to process, so I couldn’t stream music.

When I updated my card number, Apple Music started working again everywhere except my HomePod. I had to go into the Home app on my iPhone to get the HomePod settings to update before it would start streaming music again. That’s a pretty clumsy system considering every other Apple device I own was able to see the account change without any extra action.

Should You Buy HomePod?

HomePod costs US$349, so is it worth buying? I can’t give you a definitive yes or no answer, but I can arm you with what you need to know to make an informed choice.

If you subscribe to Apple Music, or plan to, HomePod is great because it uses Apple Music and iCloud Music Library for streaming. Siri integrates well and typically serves up what you want to hear.

If you’re big into Spotify, however, HomePod may not be the best choice because right now you have to use AirPlay from another device to play your music. There’s a long list of Alexa-compatible speakers on the market that already support Spotify. Hopefully Apple will change that with a future software update.

If you’re a HomeKit smartphone device user HomePod is great. Mine responds to my commands more reliably than my iPhone or Apple Watch, plus it hears me from practically everywhere in my apartment. If you use a wider range of smart home devices, an Alexa-compatible device like Amazon Echo, or a Google Assistant device like Google Home may be a better choice.

HomePod also serves as a HomeKit bridge, just like Apple TV, so you can remotely control your smart home devices when you’re out and about. That’s handy if you don’t own an Apple TV, or if you do, now you have a backup in case it drops off your network for some reason.

If you already have a full-home streaming audio system like Sonos, there isn’t any need to reinvent what you already have with HomePod.

I ultimately went with a mixed solution: HomePod and Amazon Echo. I prefer the HomePod’s audio quality for music streaming, but my conglomeration of smart home devices means I need the Echo for some voice control, and I can set multiple timers—something I didn’t realize I do a lot until I got my HomePod.

And finally, if HomePod makes you happy as a music player, smart home voice assistant, or for any other reason, get it. Speakers are subjective, and if HomePod is the one that makes you happy, that’s great because we can always use more happiness in the world.

The Bottom Line

I love HomePod as a streaming music smart speaker, despite the instances where the low tones are too heavy. It sounds great and fills my living room nicely, regardless of where I stand.

I love that I never need to talk above a friendly conversational level for Siri to hear me even when I’m playing music far louder than I should. I also love that HomePod looks really nice and blends in with my decor instead of looking like a clunky speaker that stands out.

Setup is so simple that you don’t really need the small flier that’s in the box. Once your HomePod is up and running, it just works. No need to think about turning it on or off, or whether or not it’s in a sleep mode. In fact, there isn’t even a power button anywhere on HomePod.

I’d like to see Siri become more versatile on HomePod, but I’m glad it at least performs as advertised today. I also want to see HomePod settings management to be less clunky.

Before my HomePod arrived I wondered if I would keep it considering I already had a streaming music and smart home voice control system in place. Turns out the answer is yes, I am keeping it, and I really love listening to music on it.

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