Apple Announces HomePod mini With Spherical Design and S5 Chip for $99

[Neil Harrison]

Sold on everything, price etc but I have a HomePod and the wire is the most annoying thing. This mini needed to be portable and it isnt

 

[gregohb]

No

Seriously? I have a $50 wireless speaker from another brand for over a year.

 

[gregohb]

Hard to say the extent until we can hear one in person, but it will definitely not sound as good as the full size HomePod. My guess is that it will sound similar to a full size Amazon Echo, which is to say pretty good.

My scale for smart speakers I've heard so far:

Amazon Echo Dot: okay
Amazon Echo full size: pretty good
Google Home full size: pretty good
Apple HomePod full size: very good

Note that nothing on that list says great.

I returned the original Apple HomePod - because it was overly hyped in the base. It sounded horrible for spoken word material. Perhaps it works well for drum-and-bass

 

[Jago]

No standard bluetooth and as a result no Android or PC support? Yeah, that's stilll a NOPE from me.

 

[munpip214]

I don't see any mention of connecting to external speakers, whether through cable or airplay...was hoping for that. otherwise I'm not sure I would get one.

 

[Drogba11]

 

[ggibson913]

I was actually hoping I could pair it with my Mac to be a laptop speaker.

 

[SiskoKid]

Will intercom work on current homepods or is it specific to the new chip?

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Did Apple lock Spotify out, or are they just not promoting them?

 

[appleii.c]

So will this act as a full blown HomeKit hub like the original homePod or AppleTV? If so this is a great little $99 hub.

 

[seinman]

I was actually hoping I could pair it with my Mac to be a laptop speaker.

You can. At least I'm assuming you can, because while they didn't specifically talk about AirPlay 2, of course it will have it. And that's an AirPlay feature.

Edit: no longer an assumption. It's listed as a feature on Apple's site.

 

[danny842003]

In my house we just yell loudly if the other person is in some other room. Small homes ftw. 😆

presumably no babies FTW as well

 

[Phima256]

Love it, but the dark grey one also reminds me of a Magic 8-Ball. I can picture some people picking it up and shaking it.

I suppose it can be a modern Magic 8-Ball, with Siri answering our questions, perhaps just as accurately?

 

[breather]

In what countries will I be able to buy this?

 

[MiniApple]

once availability and the pandemic times will allow for an in person listening somewhere, I'll do so.

 

[archer75]

I'm interested. But I also want to know how many of these features will be coming to the homepod as well?

 

[RobbieTT]

Yep, I will be buying a few.

 

[jlforester]

Wonder if I could get a pair of them to use with my AppleTV

 

[iBug2]

Can someone explain why homepod mini is not available in all Apple countries but only the big 9? Same as homepod. It was released 2 years ago, still not being sold in most Apple countries.

 

[ID_Field_Blank]

Love it, have already added it to my Christmas list!

 

[Techwatcher]

Spotify is shut out? Apple needs to grow up and stop this pettiness.

hopefully it has Bluetooth.

It's not really Apple being petty, it's Spotify continuing to bite the hand that feeds them. Amazon and Pandora understands it's Apple's platform while Spotify continues to act like Epic Games.

 

[123]

"Hey Siri, XYZ." – "Nice of you asking me about XYZ. Now processing the query XYZ. Ok, here's the result for XYZ": <playing music>. Very annoying.

 

[MacAddict1978]

Features sound like a replay of Google and Amazon smart speakers from way back.

Because they are. And both of those have literally hundreds of more features than these.

 

[Techwatcher]

With the updated processor and ultra Wideband support, I am wondering if I should ditch the first gen HomePod, and consider this an upgrade?

This is basically an upgrade so yeah. All we need to know now is how good the sound is.

 

[Squuiid]

Wonder if I could get a pair of them to use with my AppleTV

Looks like not.
https://www.apple.com/uk/homepod/