The big HomePod is back, but does it solve the issues that I raised when Apple killed it in 2021?
It does not.
The new HomePod is cheaper by $50, and competitors like Sonos have raised all their prices since 2021. The HomePod is competitive in price as a standalone speaker or as a stereo speaker.
If all you care about is listening to music and you are deep into the Apple ecosystem, I’d recommend both the HomePod and HomePod Mini. They sound very good for the price, and they look great.
If you care about more than just music, Apple is still not providing an ecosystem that is competitive for the full range of audio needs that users have.
I own and recommend a lot of Apple products. There is almost no one in my life that I would recommend HomePods to.
One product, even if it’s new and improved, does not make a product ecosystem.
Apple doesn’t provide a home theater option
Where is the HomePod soundbar?
People are getting bigger TVs and watching more high-quality content at home. The need for surround sound that is easy to use is big.
Soundbars are everywhere, but many of them are terrible, ugly, and harder to use than they should be. Apple knows how to make good-sounding, attractive, easy-to-use speakers. This is the sweet spot for soundbars!
Apple lets you pair two HomePods together to virtualize surround sound. This is not nearly as good as one of the many other options out there.
There are two ways Apple can solve this.
Apple could release a soundbar that could be paired with HomePods as surround speakers. This would provide a flexible system that people could grow with. Soundbars are insanely popular, and because TVs are so flat with such tiny speakers, they are basically a necessity.
Sonos sells three soundbars, and all of them are well-tuned for both music and TV/movies, and they allow people to add more speakers over time to grow their system. With a lot of wall-mounting setups, a soundbar is the only good option.
A simpler solution, however, would be for Apple to mimic what Sony does with their popular HT-A9 system, which uses four speakers (and a sub) that provide 7.1.4 Atmos sound. It sounds and looks great.
The HomePod speakers are fairly similar to what Sony is doing with these speakers.
HomePods already support Atmos and have up-firing drivers. Why doesn’t Apple let you pair four together to get a proper surround sound experience?
This is, again, a lack of Apple's understanding of how people listen to audio at home. The No. 1 place people listen to audio is in their living rooms, where their TVs are.
Unless Apple can properly support TV/movie watching, people are not going to seriously consider HomePods.
Does Apple expect people to have one set of speakers for watching TV and movies and another set for listening to music? Does that sound like a winning product line?
Where is the subwoofer?
Apple won’t be serious in the home theater/TV-watching space without a sub. Low-frequency effects in movies — the rumble and feel of bass you get in a theater — are not possible without a sub. The HomePods have good bass for their size, but they are pretty small. Apple needs to be realistic here.
A sub would also improve music listening as it would offload the lower-end bass from the HomePods. The HomePods are bass-forward. Perhaps too bass-forward, resulting in muddy mids.
When a Sonos speaker is paired with a sub, the lower-end bass goes completely to the sub, and the other Sonos speakers become clearer, with richer mids. Sonos’s sub products are also transformative to the TV and movie-watching experience.
What would I do?
Allow four HomePods to be linked together like the Sony HT-A9s to provide a proper surround sound experience.
Release a subwoofer to link up to HomePods to provide deeper bass and to offload bass demands from the HomePods, which will make mids cleaner and crisper. Everything will just sound better with a sub.
Look into releasing a soundbar if the HomePod line actually takes off. I think the four HomePod setup is the most logical place to start, but a lot of users love the outright simplicity of a soundbar. And for people wall mounting their TVs, the best, perhaps only, option is a wall-mounted soundbar to go with it.