"The Verge" said this, in their review:
`Nothing about the HomePod when you see it in person is what you’d expect. It’s been both smaller and larger than people I’ve shown it to have thought, as it’s so minimally designed that it’s hard to get a sense of scale from photographs. It’s also heavier than it looks, and it doesn’t feel at all like other speakers: the outside is wrapped in a custom spongy mesh fabric Apple proudly told me was developed by its “soft materials team.” I do not know if that team has any cats, but I suspect cats are going to love the HomePod.
The HomePod’s power cord is built in and wrapped in fabric, and on top, there are LED-backlit volume buttons and a “display” that isn’t really a display at all — it’s LEDs under a cloudy glass panel that diffuses them into a single blob of swirling colors. There’s no obvious way to make this area show anything with precise lines, like an interface; Apple told me it was designed to be a touch surface, not to display text. On the bottom is a hard, rubbery material. You need to place the HomePod on a hard, flat surface: most of its speakers fire down, and it sounds pretty bad if you set it on something uneven or soft. But most of the time, it sounds excellent.`
I'm not sure how much they know about audio, but that sounds rational.