After having reduced its size to give birth to a HomePod mini cut for the connected home, Apple returns to its first love with a more powerful and smarter large format speaker.
It looks like the old one, but smarter and more amazing. In any case, this is what Apple promises when reviving its HomePod, a connected speaker cut to highlight its Apple Music service in particular. But not only.
Launched in 2017, the HomePod offered very good quality sound in a rounded template, with a touch control pad at the top. Limited to the uses of Apple Music and Siri, the home speaker had quickly reached its limits, even more glaring with the arrival of the HomePod mini.
The reduced version took advantage of an advanced version of the voice assistant to make it easier to control the connected home, Thread technology to extend the connection between connected objects, the close connection with the iPhone to easily transfer songs, podcasts or calling from one device to another, the intercom function to contact household users on their different devices, etc. A versatility that made it more easily essential, at a significantly reduced price (99 euros). It is now a thing of the past.
The same reviewed and corrected
The 2nd generation HomePod takes all the strengths of its little brother. It keeps its iconic design, in white or black (but in a new shade made from 100% recycled mesh fabric), and improves all its existing ones. Apple promises an upgrade in acoustic quality with advanced computer audio processing and the arrival of spatial audio in particular (for compatible songs).
“With the popularity of the HomePod mini, we have seen a growing interest in the powerful acoustics that a larger speaker could offer, explains Greg Joswiak, Apple’s global marketing director. The audio has therefore been redesigned to offer more power than the mini version (there are 5 tweeters with beamforming, a long-range boomer, a microphone with bass equalizer to properly manage the music-voice-response balance of Siri).
It finally becomes an ally for the connected home with support for scenarios and routines to automate management using Siri, which can take control, but also notify in the event of an alarm from a smoke detector. Or other. Because the speaker embeds the recognition of sounds. The HomePod has a temperature and humidity sensor to understand the accommodation and offer automation of use (raising or lowering the heating, closing the shutters, etc.). It is obviously already ready to support the Matter protocol which will standardize the use of connected objects, whatever their brand, and integrates Thread.
Smarter to serve everything
The Apple brand has equipped it with an S7 chip that was fitted to the Apple Watch Series 7. This will offer real management intelligence to the speaker and the versatility it lacked. The HomePod keeps its detection technology from the room it is in to analyze reverberations and adjust the sound to its environment, whether it is against a wall or in a more open area.
It can work in stereo with a second HomePod, connected alone or in pairs to an Apple TV 4K to output audio from the TV, or work in multiroom with the same song broadcast in several rooms thanks to AirPlay.
The HomePod also competes in intelligence. Not content to take advantage of the advanced version of Siri, it also knows how to adapt to the home by offering the recognition of six different voices and defining as many user profiles with playlists, reminders, calendars, suggestions, etc. Thanks to the voice assistant, it is also possible to locate your Apple devices or your relatives sharing their position.
A HomePod that is making a comeback with more possibilities for upgrading, always the emphasis on sound to use Apple Music, but also other streaming and radio services. And on the French invoice, it arrives at the same price as that of the launch of the first model (later reduced to 329 euros) while in the United States, it drops by 50 dollars (299 dollars against 349 dollars).
The HomePod (2nd generation) is on pre-order and will be available on February 3, 2023 at a price of 349 euros.
