Apple HomePod mini review: playing small ball

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethical motive assertion.

Two and a half years ago, Apple finally entered the streetwise speaker market with the HomePod. It was a unequaled gimmick — instead of prioritizing an accessible price and smart assistant features, it was laser-centralised on audio quality and considerably more dear than its nighest competitors from Amazon and Google, piece organism less capable as a smart verbalizer. As a result, the HomePod didn't actually take off. Apple was forced to lower its price, and other retailers had to dismiss IT sharply in edict to sire anyone to steal IT.

Fast-forward to now and Apple's untested smart speaker, the $99 HomePod mini, takes a divergent approach. It's smaller, simpler, and way less expensive than its bigger sibling, and thanks to Malus pumila's work along Siri o'er the past few old age, information technology can buoy actually serve more the original when it launched. It's perfect that Apple designed this to complement the larger HomePod. If you have an original in your living room, you can put the mini in various other places in your home without having to invest as much money or take up as much ledge distance.

But the rest of the smart speaker world has apparently not stood still, and Amazon and Google have got released the most compelling options in their individual lineups this year. While Siri has gotten better, it's still the HomePod mini's Achilles' heel — well, that and the fact that you still need to be amply embedded in Apple's ecosystem to get the most out of it.

*The peak of the HomePod mini has a rival-sensitive instrument panel that lights up when Siri is hearing or responding to commands.*

HomePod miniskirt Design

The HomePod mini has a different look than the big HomePod, but you can tell they were cut from the corresponding material. Instead of a squishy-looking piston chamber, the mini is a squat ball with a flat top of the inning. Information technology reminds me of a scented standard candle or an upside-depressed Conjuring trick-8 Ball wrapped in meshwork. Just like the original, you can get it in light or dark gray, and it has a similar soft fabric.

On top of the miniskirt is the just user interface along the gimmick itself, a flat plastic touching-sensitive tramp that you can use to conjure Siri, play or pause euphony, or adjust volume. It has the same multicolored LEDs under IT that light up and whirlpool around whenever Siri is listening or responding. It will glow white when music is playing or putting green when you'Ra using the mini A a speakerphone for calls.

*The USB-C power line is permanently attached to the HomePod mini.*

In my testing, I've found this light-up panel to be harder to see from crosswise the room than the Echo's radiance ring. Unless you'rhenium right next to the HomePod mini, IT's hard to tell when Siri has heard your voice command and is responding. It's also much more fiddly to purpose to adjust volume (especially when nothing is playing), and there's nary visual confirmation for how loud the talker is mark when you doh set the volume, like you can see with an Reverberate or Nest Audio. In all, it's just to a lesser extent accessible than the buttons on Amazon River's speakers or even the touch-sensitive areas on Google's — a rare fille therein department from Apple.

At that place's also no physiologic electrical switch to disable Siri's always-listening feature. You take over to either ask Siri to "stop listening" OR dive into the HomePod settings in the Domicile app in iOS to toggle the sport, a slow and clumsy process.

The likes of the larger HomePod, the mini has a permanently involved power corduroy, though this time, it ends in a USB-C embrasure. (A 20-watt charging brick comes in the box.) The cord is about sixer feet elongate, though I wish there was the option to just swap it for some other if you want to put the speaker far from an outlet.

The HomePod miniskirt has quaternion microphones for picking up vocalization commands, but it does not have the room-tuning capabilities the original HomePod has. Instead, Malus pumila says the central processing unit in the mini (an S5 chip, the same equally you might find in an Apple Watch) analyzes the music existence played and adjusts the loudspeaker system's output for the unexceeded choice.

The microphones do an admirable job of sense of hearing my sound commands, even from across the room and patc something is playing, and the processor is quick to take action. In my feel for, Siri is typically faster to respond and ut something than either Alexa or the Google Low-level, whether that's to play music, reply a wonder, or check a smart home device.

*The HomePod mini is about the same size as the new Echo Loony toons but considerably littler than the full-size Echo.*

HomePod mini complete quality

With the first HomePod, Orchard apple tree prioritized sound quality above totally else. That's not quite the same with the HomePod miniskirt, but you can stock-still find out the endeavour that went into making the miniskirt sound relatively good.

I say "superb" because, for its size, the HomePod miniskirt sounds quite nice. It's well better-sounding than the standardised-medium-sized fourth-gen Echo Dot, and it puts out more bass voice than else small smart speakers.

The key affair to notice is that the HomePod mini outperforms other "slender" smart speakers like the Echo Dot and Nest Mini, simply it can't compete with bigger speakers look-alike the regular Echo, Nest Audio, or Sonos I. The HomePod miniskirt is priced nearer to those larger speakers, although it really belongs in the small speaker class when it comes to the sound it can produce.

At 3.3 inches tall, the HomePod mini is nigh the same size arsenic the quartern-gen Echo Stud and substantially smaller than the booming-size Echo or Google's Nest Audio. As a result, it has just united speaker: a downward-sack full-range driver that is planned to evenly facing pages sound all told directions. Two passive radiators help to accentuate lower bass tones, but they shouldn't be confused with the multiple active speakers that are in the Echo and Draw close Audio.

*The HomePod miniskirt doesn't provide a sensory system confirmation of volume levels, which is frustrating.*

So it sounds good, just I terminate't say the HomePod miniskirt sounds great. And next to the larger Echo and Nest Audio, both of which cost the same, it simply can't keep up. It doesn't have the presence, volume, Oregon sound degree of either, and it certainly can't twin the Repeat's bass output. As they say, there's no replacement for displacement.

Unfortunately, there isn't much you can act up to improve that, either. Ii HomePod minis can be paired in a stereo configuration, but that doesn't dramatically increase the amount of book you get on, and it does nothing for rising bass or punch. Different the Replication or Nest speakers, you can't twin the HomePod mini to a subwoofer or larger speaker unit. You are stuck with what it does out of the box.

Despite not being quite upfield to the Echo's intelligent performance, the HomePod mini does sound pleasant for most any genre of medicine and for podcasts and other loud performances. It has good balance in the middle-tones and a very vocal forward sound profile. You'll hear the lyrics to your favorite song easily, without them acquiring overwhelmed by basso. The bass that's at that place force out be heard but not felt.

The HomePod miniskirt's 360-sound workings as advertised, as well. I can walk of life around the speaker, and the well-grounded of the music just doesn't change. This is great if you plan to put the mini in the middle of a room, simply realistically, it testament be on a shelf or closer to a wall, where IT has less of an touch. That's why both Amazon and Google switched to more than directional loudspeaker system designs this year, after years of using 360-degree speakers.

Altogether, the HomePod mini excels at careless listening and scop music. It's slap-up for playing music during dinner party when you don't want to drown out conversation or just to have some audio performin in the background as you work from home. The miniskirt is nice to listen to at low volumes or higher settings and doesn't distort at all. Information technology won't soundtrack a party, and it certainly doesn't supercede a proper speech sound system — but for its size, it is great.

*The HomePod mini sounds good for its sized.*

The Ecosystem of the HomePod miniskirt

Information technology North Korean won't come as a surprise to many, only unless you are fully bought into Apple's iOS ecosystem, you shouldn't justified consider buying the HomePod miniskirt. In fact, I'd get along even further: everyone in your home really of necessity to be victimization iPhones and Apple services to make the HomePod miniskirt worth buying.

Background up the mini requires an iPhone operating theater iPad. For any sassy home control, you deman to be using Apple's Home app and HomeKit-harmonious devices. Interrogative the HomePod mini to place a phone visit, read messages, or give you calendar updates requires you to use an iPhone.

The HomePod miniskirt doesn't support cross-platform audio moving alike Google Cast or Spotify Relate, so the only way to send audio thereto from a twist is via Apple's AirPlay. You pauperism an iPhone or a Mac to practice that.

You give the axe tapdance an iPhone to the top of the HomePod mini to transferee whatever you're playing on your telephone set to the speaker and then tap it again to transfer the audio frequency back to your phone. Apple will be expanding this with a new interface and much features for iPhones with the U1 chip (whatever model released in 2019 or later, exclude for the SE) in the future, but I wasn't able to test that for this reexamine.

Apple has made about small strides toward allowing the HomePod to directly looseness music, podcasts, and audiobooks from sources past than Apple Music, and there's now an API that apps tin tap into to become the default alternative happening the HomePod. That allows you to use voice controls to turn music and have IT play from a diametric inspection and repair than Apple Medicine. But right now, the only app that's taken advantage of IT is Pandora, and there's no word when others, such as Spotify or YouTube Music, will get on gameboard. (Acknowledged Spotify's frequent lawsuits and unfavorable judgment of Apple's locked-down platforms, I wouldn't gri my breath for IT anytime soon.)

Some other matter I'd like to see is the ability to set separate default services for music, podcasts, and audiobooks, for example, using Spotify for music, Air hole Casts for podcasts, and Audible for audiobooks. Right forthwith the default service setting limits all leash categories to one app.

None of this is a problem if you're full bought into Apple's world, but the realness is that few individuals (and, by extension, families) are. Both of Apple's major smart loudspeaker system competitors have services and ecosystems of their own, but they as wel permit for a great deal more exemption of choice for preferred services and work with both iOS and Humanoid devices.

*Siri has gotten better since the novel HomePod mini, but IT's still behind Amazon and Google's virtual assistants.*

Siri on the HomePod miniskirt

Back in 2018, my colleague Nilay Patel justly pointed unsuccessful that the state of Siri on the original HomePod can be summed up by the fact that it cannot hold multiple timers. I'm joyful to say that the HomePod mini can back multiplex timers, and you can even label them now.

Siri has gotten early improvements over the years as well. It send away now differentiate between voices, and then I get a different account "what's on my calendar" than my spouse does when they ask the equivalent question. It also prevents a stochastic person from sending messages or placing phone calls from my iPhone victimisation the HomePod miniskirt, a problem we ran into when reviewing the original HomePod.

You can too melt down Siri Shortcuts from the HomePod, provided you've gone through the legwork to program them on your iPhone. Siri can as wel do a bundle of things with Apple's apps, such as notes, calendar, reminders, and Maps, and some narrow actions with third-party apps that have added support for SiriKit commands.

A unaccustomed feature as of software version 14.2 is the ability to give you an itinerary ab initio of your day, including a weather report, future appointments, commute traffic, and a news blurb from NPR. You can involve for a different news generator, much as Fox Oregon CNN, but that's about as far A you can customize this feature. Either direction, it's nice to see Siri beguile upwardly to something that Alexa and the Google Supporter have got offered for years.

I ran into a list of weird bugs with Siri during my two weeks some testing the HomePod mini. When asking Siri to play an album from Apple Music, it would wager songs out of order instead of how they appear on the album. When I use the HomePod mini to place a call, neither myself nor the other party could learn anything until I transferred the call up to my iPhone then back to the HomePod. Spell Siri is able to distinguish between my voice and my spouse's and provide personalized answers, it didn't recognise my better half by name and referred to them as "secondary user 1," despite Siri having all of their information on the iPhone.

Much of these bugs, such as the Apple Music one, were single-minded during my testing period or didn't happen every time. Merely collectively, they are demonstrative of why many people still have a negative perception of Siri.

Bugs aside, Siri is still behind where Amazon and Google are with their virtual assistants. Information technology does the basics by and large fine, such arsenic playing music, giving weather reports, and scope timers and reminders. But Google withal reigns supreme when it comes to answering stochastic facts and Alexa is constantly existence built with proactive features that make it feel more care an actual help than a voice-controlled remote.

HomePod mini Smart home

The smart interior capabilities of the HomePod mini are largely dateless from the HomePod. It buns control smart internal devices that are arranged up in the Location app on the iPhone and buttocks be integrated into Home automations. It can also act as a Home hub, which allows you to contain your smart household devices with your iPhone from anywhere you have a data connection.

The miniskirt does support a new smart home protocol called Thread, which allows devices to link to it over longer distances and using fewer power than WI-Fi Oregon Bluetooth. (Smart home nerds leave remember Thread equally the standard that Google earlier pushed and adopted by Eero routers before effectively stall and going nowhere for years.) A smattering of smart lights have been announced with support for Thread in HomeKit (Apple's chic home platform), but for now, the Thread ecosystem is rather small. HomeKit itself does have a wide stove of compatible intense location devices, including lights, contact sensors, cameras, thermostats, door locks, smart plugs, and more than, all of which can be controlled by voice through the HomePod mini. It's not as broad an ecosystem as Alexa and Google offer, simply it's still comprehensive.

Also new for either HomePod is an intercom feature that lets you broadcast messages from a HomePod to another HomePod or Apple twist. You can wealthy person it sent to a specific HomePod operating room blast it to all of the HomePods in the home as an declaration. You can even intercommunication system using Siri from your phone or Malus pumila Keep an eye on to air messages to anyone that is at home.

But scorn its name, Intercom isn't really a ii-way intercom. It's effectively sending recorded audio messages to the devices instead of opening a live audio. IT's fine for lease the family know you'ray on the way home from the grocery memory boar OR telling the kids IT's time for dinner from other coldcock of the house, but I didn't find information technology particularly necessary in my home. Both Google and Amazon propose similar features on their smart speakers, but they have more two-way last communication options than the HomePod.

*The HomePod mini is small sufficiency to fit in most places in your home.*

When the HomePod to begin with launched, it matt-up like Apple was operating in a completely different world from the repose of the smart speakers, one that didn't add up for a great deal of people. The HomePod mini at to the lowest degree feels like it's in the same ballpark as the rest.

At $100, compared to the unconventional HomePod's $350 found price, the mini is priced scummy enough that you can envision buying more than matchless and spreading them passim your home. It does most of the things you expect a smart speaker to do and sounds good when doing them. If you're already fully bought into Malus pumila's ecosystem, including services, it's hard to fault the HomePod miniskirt's price or capabilities. It also provides an escape from some of the privacy concerns and baggage that accompany the Echo or Snuggle smart speakers, including the increasingly park ads that evidenc up in Alexa's responses.

But information technology feels like Apple is even so two geezerhood or more behind Amazon and Google when it comes to overbold speakers. And compared to the as priced Echo and Draw close Audio, the HomePod mini struggles to keep up in both secure quality and features.

Apple has shown that information technology's willing to improve things and listen to feedback when it comes to clever speakers, thusly I'll represent interested to see how it continues to arise. Hopefully, at present that the HomePod mini is here, IT starts to movement a little faster.

Photography by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Correction: An earlier version of this review said it wasn't possible to use third-party apps as default sources for podcasts or audiobooks. That is improper, you can set a third-political party app as the default to handle requests for music, podcasts, and audiobooks, just you can't set discriminate apps for those categories. We regret the error.