HomePod I’ll never buy another HomePod

[abatabia]

I’ve bought my last HomePod.

I’ve had enough of the frustration.

When they work they're wonderful. They sound great paired with my Apple TV.

When they don’t work which is often they’re an endless source of frustration and regret.

Every time my home WiFi glitches, which I can count on one hand in several years with fios, all my other smart devices, including many from Amazon and Google; come back online within minutes.

Not my HomePods.

I have a pair of mini in my home office that I use as a pair.

This morning I briefly had to reboot my FIOS router, which took all of 2 minutes. My entire smart home came back online without issue. Except my HomePod.

My HomePods all needed to be manually connected to my WiFi even though my phone was already connected.

Now this pair won’t connect or play as a pair.

I even reset them, and they won’t set up again.

Set up, wait a few hours for them to configure, only for them to ask to be set again, several times.

I’ve had this before with my other HomePod pairs.

So now the mini pair sit unplugged and I’ve moved on with my day.

I just don’t get why every other smart speaker I have does not have this issue except for these damn HomePods.

Why is it so difficult? A simple reboot of a router should not set them into a tailspin of my having to reset them only for them not to work!

So I’ll get another pair of another brand’s speakers or use my Sonos ray I never use as an airplay speaker.

I don’t care how they update HomePods this year. I’ll never buy another pair.

Not worth this endless aggravation on the HomeKit and set up software side.

Thanks for letting me vent.

 

[Itinj24]

I hear ya, but I stopped reading at “FiOS router.” ISP routers have historically been nothing but trash and bottle necks. HomePods are very finicky when it comes to WiFi. There are tons and tons of forum user experiences regarding this. Yes, you may have other devices that work well with it but HomePods require special attention and I still do blame Apple for this. As soon as they announced that the Mini would have the AppleWatch chip, I knew right away that the WiFi issues wouldn’t get any better.

Have you checked to see if they’re connected to the 5ghz? I noticed that if they’re on 2.4, you can forget about any stability and reliability with them.

That said, I moved from the ISP router to first eero and now UniFi as my HomeKit home grew. I didn’t get the best experience with eero as the HomePods would roam to eero nodes on the other side of the house but with UniFi, I can lock the HomePod to the nearest AP. Since then, hey’ve been nothing but a dream to use. Only the occasional Siri hiccup but that’s just Siri being Siri.

On that note, I’m not saying you should go out and get the best networking gear on the market because I still think this is Apple’s blunder but if you want a solid HomePod experience , that would be the best route.

 

[ckuttner]

I am a total Apple fanboy, started with a Plus and kept going.
We have had two Homepod Minis for years. I have literally thrown them in the trash many times, then pulled them out with realization that they’d cost us quite a bit. We keep them updated, etc.
Tonight was the last straw. I was cooking, listening to Apple Music from my iPhone. One repeatedly stopped playing.
Asking Siri to play a station almost never plays what we ask. Bluetooth connection has always been iffy.
Does anyone know of a reliable Bluetooth speaker?

 

[kkclstuff]

agreed with everyone... when they work they're great.

One of my minis has slowly been dying over the past several months to the point its now been downgraded (turning off all Siri and touch actions) to just a dumb BT speaker—which is extremely disappointing after only 2yrs. I'll be rethinking any future HomePod purchase.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I find this situation a bummer ...

I have a use case for these but it's been much better filled with an old Bose SoundTouch speaker pair.

The killer feature, for me, is actually the quick access buttons on the top. It has 6 real buttons you can program to start playing from internet radio stations and from a NAS. It's incredibly convenient to just press a button and get right to hearing one of your favorite sources. I use this every day in my bedroom and in the shower room.

Way better than screwing around with a voice assistant.

 

[CharlesShaw]

Thanks for letting me vent.

And I'm glad you did, as I had forgotten about my OG HomePod which I'd stored in the closet, rather than staring at the expensive, rarely used item and wishing I'd never bought it.

Mine has always performed fine, it's just been entirely too loud with too much bass (even with reduction turned on) for my living space without bothering neighbors.

Anyhow, after reading this post, I realized that I'd rearranged my work space since putting the HomePod away, so gave it another chance in a new location. Instead of across the room on a shelf, it's next me on the desk, so I can listen at low volume. So far, so good. I like it MUCH better at low volume.

its now been downgraded (turning off all Siri and touch actions) to just a dumb BT speaker

Funny, I told Siri not to listen from day one, and logged out of the personal account, using mine only as an AirPlay speaker.

 

[Trevanian]

Well it was mostly my network, this is what I did.

I had disabled the private IP address feature and I found my network was a bit faster, good tip, but it did not address the problems with my HomePod Minis.

Those problems were frequent dropouts, often to the point of play stopping entirely. Shortcuts and Automations would often hang.

I will say that it was confusing that my ISP has a gateway and a separate wifi unit, each with its own IP address and login. Once I figured this out, it was a matter of playing with the settings.

I switched off the 2.4 G and that showed the HPMs are very dependent on that frequency.

I now have the two 5G settings on the recommended 20/40/80 but 2.4 set to 20/40 bandwidth. This is not "recommended" but I noticed a big improvement with my HPMs, not with anything else. Good news is everything else seems the same, maybe even a bit faster.

The other important setting was to only enable n/ax(c). All my devices support that and my ISP had some older modes enabled. Obviously having more modes enabled was a performance hit too.

My ISP had 5G low set to channel 31 by default. I don’t know why. I can see several other people within range of me using the same ISP, so I think that channel likely had a lot of interference. All three radios are set to "auto" for channels now. I don’t know if that did anything but it’s likely it did.

I removed one problematic HPM and deleted its iCloud backup, forcing it to start from scratch when I added it again. I don’t know if that did anything either.

HPMs work very well now.

 

[Itinj24]

Well it was mostly my network, this is what I did.

I had disabled the private IP address feature and I found my network was a bit faster, good tip, but it did not address the problems with my HomePod Minis.

Those problems were frequent dropouts, often to the point of play stopping entirely. Shortcuts and Automations would often hang.

I will say that it was confusing that my ISP has a gateway and a separate wifi unit, each with its own IP address and login. Once I figured this out, it was a matter of playing with the settings.

I switched off the 2.4 G and that showed the HPMs are very dependent on that frequency.

I now have the two 5G settings on the recommended 20/40/80 but 2.4 set to 20/40 bandwidth. This is not "recommended" but I noticed a big improvement with my HPMs, not with anything else. Good news is everything else seems the same, maybe even a bit faster.

The other important setting was to only enable n/ax(c). All my devices support that and my ISP had some older modes enabled. Obviously having more modes enabled was a performance hit too.

My ISP had 5G low set to channel 31 by default. I don’t know why. I can see several other people within range of me using the same ISP, so I think that channel likely had a lot of interference. All three radios are set to "auto" for channels now. I don’t know if that did anything but it’s likely it did.

I removed one problematic HPM and deleted its iCloud backup, forcing it to start from scratch when I added it again. I don’t know if that did anything either.

HPMs work very well now.

HomePods need the 5ghz band. I previously had an eero network and always noticed that my HomePods that were crappy were connected to an eero across the house on the 2.4 band. Not much I could do about that but then switched to UniFi. It lets you permanently lock a client to a specific AP. All my HomePods are connected via the 5 GHz band and they’ve been amazing. No lags even when doing whole home audio (19 HomePods in total). Stereo pairs work great too. Now Siri… well there’s just no fixing that mess with better WiFi. I’m not getting connectivity issues with Siri, just the usual dumb responses.