Apple’s original smart speaker is back – and better than ever
> £299 FROM apple.com/uk FEATURES 4-inch high-excursion woofer, 5x horn-loaded tweeters, 4x microphones for far-field Siri, multi-room audio with AirPlay, Spatial Audio, Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n), Thread, Ultra Wideband chip, 168x142mm, 2.3kg
The HomePod delivers your tunes with real gusto, sounding loud and punchy
Like the follow-up to the first Stone Roses album, HomePod aficionados had almost given up on its second coming following Apple’s ditching of it in 2021; its focus shifting to the HomePod mini instead. Only now we have this; the all-new second-gen HomePod and, boy, was it worth the wait.
While outwardly little seems to have changed, in reality everything has – from the design of the mesh fabric outer (available in black or white) to the Siri window on the top, the 2023 HomePod is new. We like this design a lot – it looks nice when you focus on it, but it’s also great at just blending into the background when you’re not, because it feels very neutral. The fabric looks nicer than plastic or a similar finish, and doesn’t reflect light. The black (sorry, ‘Midnight’) and white finishes are lovely and neutral, though we would’ve liked to see some funky colours like the HomePod mini has. On the insides it is now driven by an Apple S7 chip, it features a 4-inch high excursion woofer (for mid-range and bass sounds), five hornloaded tweeters (down from seven in the original) and four microphones (down from six) for listening to Siri instructions, plus humidity and temperature sensors (also now enabled on the existing HomePod mini). Other new features include Thread smart home support and an Ultra Wideband chip so you can hand off music (and other sources) from your iPhone to the HomePod by bringing it close to the speaker and, somewhat controversially, Wi-Fi 4 (aka 802.11n) rather than Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) – Apple’s reasoning is that support for the latest Wi-Fi standard simply isn’t needed on a device primarily designed for streaming sound.
Sound astounds
And what sounds they are. Where the HomePod mini gives a spirited but small-scale rendition in mono (pairing two in stereo works better), the HomePod delivers your tunes with real gusto, sounding loud and punchy without overwhelming with boomy bass (like the original could). From jazz to rock, classical to vocal, the HomePod rarely disappoints – and, when used for soundtrack playback on Apple TV, it sounds glorious with realistic-sounding dialogue, music and sound effects.
Let’s get something out of the way for people who used the original HomePod: the new version is not as loud as the original. I tested it directly against the original model, and the HomePod 2 at about 50% of maximum volume was equiv
