Vanaf 9 februari (aanstaande vrijdag) is de HomePod te koop in de VS, Australië en het Verenigd Koninkrijk. Zoals altijd op zo'n moment komen de reviews uit van de publicaties die Apple vooraf van zo'n nieuw product voorziet, hieronder een bloemlezing daaruit.

Wat vooral opvalt is dat het geluid zo goed is, dat alle reviewers unaniem zijn in hun lof daarvoor. Daarbij is de ervaring in combinatie met Apple Music zo naadloos dat het eigenlijk een no-brainer is, voor Apple Music gebruikers is de HomePod de ideale speaker.

Dat laat ook meteen de zwakte zien, want niet iedereen heeft Apple Music. Over de HomePod als slimme speaker zijn de meningen verdeeld. Dus als je aarzelt of je er later deze lente eentje gaat kopen, dan is zelf uittesten waarschijnlijk en kijken of Siri op de HomePod voor jou voldoet waarschijnlijk de beste manier om er achter te komen of HomePod wat voor jou is.

• Nilay Patel voor The Verge

The HomePod is a remarkable new kind of audio device. It does more to make music sound better than any other speaker of this kind has ever done before, and it really, truly works. But unless you live entirely inside Apple's walled garden and prioritize sound quality over everything else, I think you're better served by other smart speakers that sound almost as good and offer the services and capabilities that actually fit your life.



• Joanna Stern voor The Wall Street Journal

If you're an Apple Music user, the HomePod is the best matching speaker. There is a very close second though. The Sonos One now comes with Alexa, and Google Assistant is expected to arrive this year. It already plays Apple Music via the Sonos app. And Sonos is now offering two Ones for the price of a HomePod. It really comes down to what you want your speaker to do. If you want the smartest smart speaker, this isn't it. But if you prize music above everything else, the HomePod isn't a dumb choice.



• Megan Wollerton voor CNet

• The Good: Apple's $349 HomePod has excellent bass and consistently superior sound quality across a wide variety of music genres. The speaker is easy to set up and Siri can hear you from across a room.

• The Bad: You're stuck with Apple-only audio services when using voice commands and the HomePod only works on iOS. Some key features, including multiroom audio and stereo pairing, aren't yet available but are coming soon. Siri and HomeKit lack Alexa and the Google Assistant's polish and device compatibility.

• Brian X. Chen voor The New York Times

Apple's speaker is certainly an impressive piece of hardware. Audiophiles will appreciate that it has a woofer with a custom amplifier and seven tweeters. The result is a speaker with a deep bass and rich treble that is loud enough to fill a large room with superb sound. HomePod makes the Amazon Echo and Google's Home sound muffled and tinny in comparison. But Siri on HomePod is embarrassingly inadequate, even though that is the primary way you interact with it. Siri is sorely lacking in capabilities compared with Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant. Siri doesn't even work as well on HomePod as it does on the iPhone.

• Matthew Panzarino voor TechCrunch

The HomePod sounds great but on the surface, it's debatable whether it's great enough to justify the limitations of its smart features when compared purely on those merits and not as a component of the Apple ecosystem. However, if you're an Apple Music subscriber, the equation instantly plops in the other direction: it's near useless to buy any other speaker and this one sounds great, so why not.

• Edward C. Baig voor USA Today

Apple makes no bones that HomePod is a music-first speaker, and it sounds terrific, all the more notable given how small it is. Vocals were pure, bass deep. At the same time, the new speaker can be an exercise in frustration at times, especially when you request something of Siri that Apple's digital assistant can't deliver on HomePod. In answering to your “Hey Siri” vocal commands, Apple's assistant can perform many of the same table-stakes tasks as Amazon's Alexa on Echo's or the Google Assistant on Google Home speakers—from setting timers and reminders to informing you of the weather and traffic, turning on smart lights, or solving math. But Siri on HomePod cannot currently hail you a ride through Lyft or Uber, launch a trivia game, or arrange for an audiobook to be played.

• Jim Dalrymple voor The Loop

I've been very impressed with HomePod in the week I've been using it. The sound when playing music is incredible, and certainly many times better than any smart speaker on the market today. With its access to Reminders, Notes and Messages, HomePod was able to add some functionality, but for me its number one job is as an amazing music speaker. HomePod is smart, it looks great, and it sounds incredible. I don't know what else you would want in a home smart speaker.

• Ben Bajarin voor Tech.pinions

HomePod has what can only be explained by the most balanced audio, not just of any smart speaker but of any speaker I currently own. Which includes a number of Sonos speakers, and a Bose Home Theatre system. By balanced, I mean evenly distributed quality sound. With many speakers and sound systems, there is a zone of perfection. That is a specific place, or alignment of your body, where the system sounds the best. HomePod is unique in that it doesn’t have a singular place where it sounds the best. Apple’s engineers designed HomePod to sound the best no matter where you are in the room. In our demo, Apple explained how this was done technically which is beyond my limited understanding of audio engineering. But I did try to prove them wrong and failed. HomePod truly did sound great from any place in the room.

• John Gruber voor Daring Fireball

Audio quality is what Apple is hanging HomePod’s hat on, and to my ears, they’ve nailed it. In a side-by-side comparison in a fairly representative residential room during a product briefing with Apple last week, HomePod sounded better than an Alexa-powered Sonos One ($199) or Google Home Max ($399), and so much better than a second-generation Amazon Echo ($89) that it proved only that HomePod and Echo are at opposing ends of the product category.

Eén ding kan eigenlijk niet onvermeld blijven: HomePod is niet de eerste speaker die Apple heeft gemaakt, de voorganger was de iPod Hi-Fi speaker en Dock. Daar waren vriend en vijand het wel over eens, dat was niet echt Apple's beste product, en dan zeggen we het aardig. Misschien iets voor mensen die blijven roepen dat het onder Steve Jobs allemaal beter was, het is onder Tim Cook dat Apple een speaker heeft uitgebracht die ook echt goed klinkt.