Author: Craig Lloyd / Source: howtogeek.com
The $350 HomePod smart speaker is Apple’s extremely-late answer to Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home voice assistant speakers, but is it a product that’s worth your hard-earned cash?
Before I get too far in, it’s important to know that the HomePod technically doesn’t compete against the Echo or Home, but it’s really easy to want to compare the three in the same category, and that’s completely justified—all three of them are voice-controlled smart speakers more or less.
However, Apple is pretty much marketing the HomePod as a speaker first and a voice assistant second. Whereas the Echo and Home are voice assistants first and speakers second. This gives the HomePod a lot of unique pros and cons.The Audio Quality Is Absolutely Incredible
For its size and price, the HomePod sounds amazing. Compared to the Echo, Google Home, and some other pretty decent speakers I have around the house, the HomePod blows them all out of the water.
The bass response is amazing (but it’s not so much that it muddies the audio) and the highs and mids are super crisp and clear. The HomePod even comes with a “smart” EQ of sorts, where it uses its 360-degree microphones to sense walls and obstacles, and then adjusts the EQ accordingly so that you’ll have the best possible sound no matter where you place the speaker.
Don’t get me wrong, the Echo and the Google Home sound pretty good themsleves, but even if you’re not a huge audiophile, you’ll be surprised at just how much better the HomePod sounds.
It Uses Siri
As for the HomePod’s voice assistant capabilities, they’re pretty lacking. For starters, it uses Siri, and anyone with an Apple product can attest to Siri’s shortcomings.
On top of that, there are a lot of other limitations as far as what you can use voice controls for. You can only have one timer running at a time. You can only control HomeKit smarthome devices. You can’t look up recipes and other…
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