Golurk
Well-known member
Well it’s marketed towards current iOS users with an Apple Music subscription as a superb sounding speaker that you control with your voice that happens to have some Siri functionality. It succeeds at that with flying colors. Best sounding speaker in my opinion for $350 or less. Is Siri lacking on the assitinant front? Sure but even Phil Schiller only spent like 2 minutes of the 12 minute HomePod keynote talking about that stuff. You can tell that first and for most this is meant to be a good sounding speaker first and a home assistant second.
If you are like the majority of people who just want a good home assistant in a speaker and don’t care if said speaker sounds like trash, save your money and buy an echo.
If you’re my like me, who already uses an iPhone and subscribes to Apple Music and wants the best sounding speaker possible without spending at least $500-$1,000 (that would be overkill and unnecessary in my room) and one that doesn’t require you to be in the sweet spot or find the perfect spot for it (hell you can set it anywhere in a room and it’ll sound good no matter where you stand) get a HomePod.
I think people think it’s “over hyped” because they want HomePod to sound like it costs $500+, costs $200 and has google home/Alexa in it but with the privacy of Apple.
Sorry but that’s not what this speaker was ever intended to be. It’s like Toyota designing the best looking sedan ever and then people claiming that it is over hyped because it’s not as fast as a super car when it wasn’t never intended to be.
The fact is when you have Google and Amazon selling great-quality smart home speakers which are (arguably) more versatile, are of the same quality and have superior AI assistants built-in for around $100, it makes people ask what they have to gain for paying an extra $250 for a fatter Amazon Echo with an Apple logo and Siri.
The only thing the HomePod has better than the Echo and Google Home is slightly better audio quality...but then if you’re and audiophile you could easily get a smart speaker from a company like Bose with Alexa built in for around the same price but better audio quality.
Again, Apple faces the same dilemma as it did with the XS. Great quality products which work very well, but are undercut by the competition.