Image via Apple
Way back in 2014, the world was introduced to a new category of tech devices when the Amazon Echo arrived on the scene. The Echo ushered in an era of smart assistants with a speaker and microphone that allows the user to play music, turn on other smart devices, and order goods and services. Since then, it seems that smart speakers have become a stocking stuffer, gadget for the holidays. The candle or scarf of the tech world, a gift that says “Hey I wanted you to know I tried, but I wasn’t sure what to get you exactly.” Most people I know have one floating around their home.
Apple entered this category in 2018 with the HomePod, and now that the HomePod mini has arrived, it’s clear that Apple’s strategy is to become the smart speaker for not just every household, but every room in your home.
The More the Merrier
The experience of having a HomePod mini gets exponentially better when you have more than one. If you have one in each room of your home, you can create a network of mono and stereo speakers that are each assigned a room. This unlocks the ability to use the intercom feature, and multi-room audio features, such as playing synced audio throughout the house or the ability to play different music in each room. If you have two HomePod minis in one room, you can pair the two speakers together and have them sync together for a stereo sound.
Not all aspects of multi-room audio syncing are unique to the HomePod mini, but Apple has made these features easy-to-use to encourage owning multiple.
Proximity Controls
Proximity Controls allow the user to tap their iPhone to the HomePod mini and transfer what’s playing on their iPhone to the HomePod mini. If your iPhone is playing on your AirPods and you tap your iPhone to the HomePod mini, the audio will transfer from your AirPods to the HomePods, or vice versa. This works with music, podcasts, and calls, too. If you’re leaving the house and you want to transfer what’s playing on the HomePod mini to your iPhone, just tap and go. It is both useful and a great example of something to show a friend when they ask, “so what does this thing do?”
Multi-room Audio
Multi-room audio allows you to indicate where each HomePod is within your home, and then play all of your HomePods at the same time—or specific HomePod minis separately. If you are using stereo sound with two HomePod Minis for your Apple TV, but a different housemate wants to play music in other rooms, you can do that with no problem.
While these Multi-room Audio features aren’t necessarily unique to Apple, they are very easy to use.
Sound Quality and Design
The sound quality takes a huge bump up when there are two using stereo sound. The bass feels heavier and the treble feels crisper. That being said, a single HomePod mini is a pretty competent little speaker in an attractive package. Being a “mini,” it takes up less of a footprint than the original HomePod. Comparing it to other smart devices in the “mini” category, it has a bit of an advantage to overall sound quality, especially with two.
Interestingly enough, it is one of the few new Apple products that came with a 20w power adatper. Logically that makes sense for Apple to include the brick—the HomePod mini is a static device that’s meant to be in one area and always be connected to a wall. Plugging this into a non-20w brick will render the device underpowered, so most of the logic behind eliminating e-waste wouldn’t apply to this device because only 20w power bricks can be used. That being said, the argument could be easily made that it makes sense to include the power brick in all of their new products this year because most of those devices come with a lightning-to-USB-C cord, and a charging brick with a USB-C plug is not the most common Apple power adapter to own.
Intelligent Assistant
There are three basic ways to control the HomePod mini. The first is through Siri, the second by using a different Apple device, and the last is via its touch controls located on top of the speaker. The four mics located on the speaker do a good job of being able to detect when you’re talking to Siri, even when you have the music going loudly. As a side note, privacy is always a concern—some people don’t like the idea of a device that is always listening. While you cannot turn off Siri, the HomePod mini uses on-device processing to listen for “Hey Siri.” Any audio before that trigger word isn’t recorded, and any request that is recorded is encrypted and sent directly to Apple’s servers. These recordings are never stored by default.
The big elephant in the room with smart speakers is whether or not the user experience with the smart assistant is good. Alexa, Google, and Siri all have their quirks, pros, and cons. If you have an iPhone you already know how you feel about Siri. That being said, as I spend more time with my smart assistants, regardless of manufacturer, I feel I’m being trained by the device to speak in very prescriptive ways to get the devices to do what I’d like them to do. With most smart devices it works, some of the time. With that in mind, I’ve found that I tend to use my phone to control this device.
Apple ecosystem
The more embedded into the Apple ecosystem you are, the better the experience is with the HomePod mini. I am a faithful Spotify user, so I was bummed with Siri when it wouldn’t play a playlist on the HomePod mini when I asked it to. The Homepod mini was able to play Spotify just fine when paired with my iPhone via Airplay2. In addition to iPhones, Airplay2 can be used to pair the HomePod mini to your iPad, Mac, or Apple TV as well.
That being said, when I used Apple Music, Siri performed actions that were based on my personal recommendations that were found within Apple Music. That integration to Apple Music is echoed in the HomePod mini’s seamless integration into Notes, Reminds and Tasks, Calendar, Maps, Find My, Phone Calls, and Messages. If you are already living in the Apple App ecosystem, using the HomePod mini as your smart hub makes a lot of sense.
Bottom Line
At the end of the day, if you’re a huge Apple fan that has quite a few Apple products and live within the Apple ecosystem, this is a great device for you. If you have the desire to buy a few so you can play music throughout your house easily, these devices might be for you.
If you already have a different smart speaker with multiple smart devices connected to it, then you’ll have to take into consideration compatibility, and what it’ll take to switch over. If you’re living in a studio apartment, there are still some applications for having two versatile speakers that can be used in place of a soundbar or to fill a single room with sound makes it worth it. That being said, $99 is an attractive starting point for an Apple device.