I didn’t buy the HomePod when it first was released. One issue had to do with the lack of multiple timers and my fear of my listening habits or my GF’s impacting either of our Apple Music algorithms. We have very different tastes in music. Finally, we had a Sonos Play:3 in the kitchen already so it was doing a decent job. In the Spring, I removed the Alexa from our kitchen given how little Amazon cared about my privacy. We are fully HomeKit so the Alexa smart home functions were never enabled. We just used it for timers and weather inquiries. Still, it not going to remain plugged in at my house.
This Fall, I moved the Sonos downstairs to the basement as I was spending a ton of time working on my bikes, car, organizing things, doing some general maintenance down there. Now, our main living space had no music unless you turned on the television and wasted 150 watts of power playing Apple’s screensaver so music could pipe through our sound bar system.
I don’t think Apple’s HomePod is bad, I just don’t think Apple justifiably could charge $350 for it. I consider $299 to be the upper amount Apple should charge given their premium pricing on everything else. However, Best Buy’s Black Friday sale of $100 off HomePod got me to pull the trigger. $249 plus another $30 for AppleCare and the Sonos can live in the basement and HomePod can live upstairs. I’ve been playing music on it for a full week. It’s really nice.
The sound, warmer and fuller than Sonos’. The functionality, well it’s nice that Siri can hear me from anywhere in our living space. She takes over commands for Her Dingus over literally every other device in my home. The Hey Dingus functionality works on my Series 4 watch, iPhone XS, iPad Pro 2018 and MacBook Pro 2018 (not iMac since it’s a 2016 model) and HomePod always answers the call which is nice when I’m asking it to play music because having my iPhone play a song is something I’d never do. I also don’t want my iPhone managing timers and the only time I wouldn’t mind iPhone, Apple Watch, etc answering would be a HomeKit command but I’m okay with HomePod answering for me. She does things much faster than the iPhone.
The sound is really really good. The HomePod is significantly smaller than it looks in marketing ads from Apple. You have to be really careful moving it because the whole thing is wrapped in this honey-comb mesh and the first time I picked it up out of the box, I indented some of the mesh and it never went back. Be careful.
It’s very heavy and at full blast, doesn’t move around the countertop from the bass but it does start to clip a bit with high bass rap music. It was weird yesterday when all of the iOS updates hit to also see HomePod had an update. It’s nice Apple is doing software updates.
Finally, if these go on sale again, I’ll probably get a second one. I could see myself getting a HomePod in 3 different spots of the house and selling off the Sonos completely. It’s that good. Here are some photos:
