Bye Bye HomePod

I’ve been a HomePod users since the first day they were available in the UK so I could import one. A year later we added a second one and we couldn’t be more happy. Sound quality has been great in our apartment and the integration with HomeKit has been a game changer to the point that we stopped using the normal light switches. The last thing we say at night is ‘Hey Siri Goodnight’ and the first thing is ‘Hey Siri Good Morning’.

For our new house we’ll most likely be adding a few more for the Home office and maybe one for the bathroom. The HomePod Mini sounds great for that.

I’m still sad though, because although expensive, it was a great speaker for our needs. I was hoping Apple would release a whole lineup of speakers. Sadly the HomePod was never available in more than a handful of countries.

Sound quality

The big selling point of the HomePod was sound quality. The HomePod sounded great to my ears. The reviews for the HomePod Mini say that the sound quality is noticeably worse. It would be strange if it wasn’t worse. So now the question is, do we keep investing in this eco system? or do we look for something else?

My thinking is we will continue, we still prefer Siri as home assistant, both for the integration it offers with our devices and trusting Apple slightly more than Amazon or Google.

I think we’ll start off with two Mini’s and see how they hold up, and worst case we’ll get some AirPlay 2 speakers and permanently leave them connected to the Mini. That way we’ll have the good sound quality with the Siri support we’ve grown accustomed to.