The Apple HomePod reviews are in
by Volker Weber
I like Matthew Panzarino's four sentence review on Techcrunch:
Apple’s HomePod is easily the best sounding mainstream smart speaker ever. It’s got better separation and bass response than anything else in its size and boasts a nuance and subtlety of sound that pays off the 7 years Apple has been working on it. As a smart speaker, it offers best-in-class voice recognition, vastly outstripping the ability of other smart speakers to hear you trying to trigger a command at a distance or while music is playing, but its overall flexibility is stymied by the limited command sets that the Siri protocol offers. Buy a HomePod if you already have Apple Music or you want to have it and you’re in the market for a single incredibly over-designed and radically impressive speaker that will give you really great sound with basically no tuning, fussing, measuring or tweaking.
Lots of details and lot of other reviews. All reviewers say the speaker sounds amazing and beats the other speakers they compared them to. But they also said it has less power than a Play:1 stereo pair and that most people will not notice that the HomePod sounds better.
I think it's pretty simple. If you own an iPhone and use Apple Music exclusively, you should consider buying a HomePod. If you use Homekit devices, HomePod will be a better hub than Appke TV. And it works best if you live in a small apartment all by yourself. Otherwise you will have to disable quite a bit of the little Siri support it has, or it will all end in tears.
HomePods don't sell Apple Music. Apple Music sells HomePods.
Comments
One of the best comparism i have found so far:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6H1divN--A
Too bad that homepod Plays only from Apple Music. Its soooooooooo stupid!!
Ich fand das Stück von Brian Chen in der "New York Times" gut >> https://nyti.ms/2sbCdVn
Das Review von Nilay Patel für The Verge ist ziemlich unaufgeregt und zudem gut produziert. https://youtu.be/jQF5Q3773uk
I've fallen into the walled garden and have a HomePod on pre-order. My understanding is that I should be able to use iTunes matching, so access my entire music collection.
I AM tempted by AppleMusic, and may take up the 3 month trial soon.
Should arrive in the UK, to my home, by Friday...
If all your content is on Apple, you should be very pleased.
