HomePod Is HomePod a good gift for my aunt who only owns a MacBook Air?

[DigitalAR]

My aunt's bday is coming up and I want to get her a gift. She loves her MacBook Air 2018 but that's just about it. She does own an Android phone (personal) and an iPhone (for work) but she's recently been talking about leaving the company meaning she'll need to return the iPhone. Even so, she hardly ever uses the work provided iPhone and really only takes phone calls on it but she's more into Android...

But that MBA, boy does she love the MBA.

I was thinking and hoping the HomePod mini would be great for her since she works from home and would be able to play YouTube and Netflix coming out of the MBA and the audio coming out of the HomePod.

 

[iStorm]

It'll "work", but I don't think it'd be the best experience or worth the money.

For YouTube, she would be able to AirPlay to the HomePod mini (can AirPlay YouTube videos in Safari), and the audio would be in sync with the video. That's about the only good thing I can think of.

For Netflix (or anything else that cannot be AirPlayed), she would have to connect to it as a bluetooth speaker, and there would be an audio lag because of that. (Cannot AirPlay Netflix on a Mac, like we can do via the Netflix app on the iPhone or iPad.)

Lastly, the HomePod mini can only be set up using an iPhone or iPad (cannot use a Mac). So if she ends up not having the iPhone anymore, she would have trouble resetting or setting up the HomePod mini again. I'd say the HomePod mini is more of a companion device for the iPhone/iPad than the Mac.