How does Apple’s HomePod speaker sound?

Apple has in several areas, including smartphones and music players, joined markets after entrenched rivals and ultimately dominated them. With the announcement of the new Apple HomePod, the tech giant is looking to place Siri directly in your living room. “If Apple had not done this, its customers would embrace Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant“.

And similar to Google and Amazon smart speakers, Apple said audio information is not being recorded or sent to the Apple’s cloud until the “Hey Siri” voice command has been issued.

How does it line up?

The HomePod has seven beam forming tweeters and an upward- facing 10.2cm woofer for improved audio output, said Apple. The Amazon Echo, with its signature Alexa assistant, is still the undisputed market leader in terms of compatibility with smart home brands. Granted, the other two are much smaller in size than the HomePod and naturally would weigh less. We wanted something that, number one, sounded unbelievable. For now there doesn’t appear to a toolkit that third-party programmers can use to create apps for the gadget or any way to distribute them to consumers, and Apple hasn’t said anything on the subject (we’ve asked).

It is the first new device Apple has announced in nearly three years. That means no support for Spotify, Pandora, SoundCloud, Prime Music, etc. I personally would go for the Amazon Echo Dot. Google Home has Pandora, YouTube Music, Google Play Music, Pandora and a few others. With HomePod, not so much.

Since the launch of Amazon’s Echo previous year and Google Home in March, both of which have been popular with consumers, Apple had been widely expected to enter the market.

For connectivity, both Amazon and Google have their units connect through wi-fi and BlueTooth while the Apple HomePod so far only connects by wi-fi only.

And HomePod can do that – some of the time, and only with Apple services.

Amazon and Google are early movers in this market.

HomePod will be available for $349 starting in December initially in Australia, the United Kingdom and the US.

However, the way Apple presented the device – emphasizing the music experience it can deliver – it sort of feels like Siri is more or less an add-on for a listening device, much so for the HomeKit part.

The device features what Apple calls innovative signal processing, which allows Siri to process request from afar, even with the music playing at full blast.