Gadgetory

- I got a HomePod. - I did not. Nor will I. - This thing sounds amazing. - And this lets you play multiroom music from a variety of services, just like all of Sonoses other speakers. - But have you heard how this thing sounds? - Nope, and I bet I'm about to. - This is the new HomePod. It costs $349 and it's Apple's first foray into the world of smart speakers, although Apple says it's been working on this for six years. - And this is the Sonos One, which launched late last year, and for awhile you could get two of these for the price of one of those. - Yeah. This works with Siri. - And this works with Alexa, which anecdotally speaking is everybody's favorite virtual assistant. - But the big sell with HomePod is really its sound. Apple has gone to incredible lengths to make this thing sound good, which in my opinion makes it less of a smart speaker and more of a high-end audio product. - No, the big sell with HomePod is getting you more locked into Apple's ecosystem. Sonos, which has been making smart speakers for a decade, is really all about letting you listen to the music services you want to listen to, not shoehorning you into Apple Music. It's like the Switzerland of speaker makers. Sonos wants to work with all of the virtual assistants. - Yeah, but it doesn't work with all of them yet. - But it will, maybe. - But it doesn't yet. All right, let's talk about set up. In my experience, the HomePod is a lot easier to set up than the Sonos. You just plug it in, take your phone, hold it near it, and voila, it's set up. - So, what happens if you have an Android phone? - Well, then you can't set it up then. - That's dumb. So, you can't use HomePod if you have an Android phone? - Anyway, this is just a lot easier to set up. - Sure, I mean, Sonos isn't exactly plug-and-play, especially if you have more than one Sonos at home. And getting Alexa set up on this requires going back and forth between the Sonos app and Amazon's app, which is a little bit annoying, but it's not like it's hard to do. - I mean, with HomePod you don't even really need to open a whole other app. You can just go to the control center and go to Home from there and control this that way. - Yeah, but the Home app is so limited that when you want to do more advanced things, like control whether Siri can send messages through the HomePod, you have to go digging through your phone settings. I mean, no thanks. - Anyway, this is just better. - We're gonna be hearing this a lot, aren't we? - Now, in terms of design, the HomePod's been built to really give you the best sound imaginable in this small, lightweight speaker. - Seriously? It looks like a bulky, $349 roll of toilet paper, and it's been leaving rings on people's coffee tables. - So, it's not just one speaker. There are actually eight speakers packed in here, all running on Apple's own A8 processor, and fine tuned with lots of custom software. It has seven tweeters, a four-inch woofer... - Do you even know what those things do? - And seven microphones, six of which are used to hear your voice so you can control Siri, and one that helps inform the base. And Apple uses this process called beamforming, which means that the HomePod creates a bunch of sound beams, essentially virtual speakers in the room around you, and then the speaker assigns different parts of the music to these virtual speakers. - Okay, well like I said, Sonos isn't exactly new at this, and knows a thing or two about speakers. I mean, this has digital amplifiers and a tweeter and a woofer and a six-microphone array and an adaptive noise suppression algorithm, and all of that good stuff. It tunes to the room just like HomePod does, although this does take 45 seconds to do that, and you have to wave your phone around the room like a nerd. But, in either case, this doesn't look like toilet paper and it sounds great. - I think it's time for a sound test. - Let's do it. - Hey Siri, play Cardi B, Finesse. - [Siri] Here's Finesse Remix featuring Cardi B, single by Bruno Mars. ♪ Drop top Porsche, Porsche ♪ ♪ Rollie on my wrist, wrist ♪ ♪ Diamonds up and down my chain, aha ♪ ♪ Cardi B, straight stuntin', can't tell me nothin' ♪ ♪ Bossed up and I changed the game ♪ ♪ You see me? ♪ - Hey Siri, stop. - My turn. Alexa, play Finesse by Cardi B and Bruno Mars. - [Alexa] Finesse Remix by Bruno Mars from Spotify, playing on living room two. ♪ Drop top Porsche, Porsche ♪ ♪ Rollie on my wrist, wrist ♪ ♪ Diamonds up and down my chain, aha ♪ ♪ Cardi B, straight stuntin', can't tell me nothin' ♪ ♪ Bossed up and I changed the game ♪ - Alexa, stop music. Okay, so the HomePod, it sounds pretty great, but I'm guessing what will be more important to people are the services that you can play music from. Like, with the Sonos, I can play music from Amazon Music, Spotify, Google Play Music, Apple Music, Pandora, TuneIn, I mean. - I can play music from a lot of the same services on this too. - Yeah, but the only service that the HomePod really supports is Apple Music, and since it doesn't currently play music over Bluetooth, it's using AirPlay, which means it's prone to interruption. If something happens in your phone, then that interrupts the music. - Well, I can use Siri on this to send messages to people. - Right, of course, and you can also ask Siri for the weather or you can set a timer, although bizarrely you can't set more than one timer at a time. Look, there's just a lot that that $349 smart speaker still can't do. Right now, the HomePod still can't tell you your next calendar appointment, initiate a phone call, prompt something to start playing on Apple TV, recognize different voices. So, literally anyone can walk into your living room and send an iMessage through your account from that thing, unless you change it in settings. Also, you can't do multiroom audio, can't pair with another HomePod for stereo sound, although that's supposed to be coming. Should I keep going? - It's not like your speaker can do all of that either. I mean, there are specifically still limitations with Alexa. - Yeah, but there are a lot of things that Alexa can do on the Sonos, and if it can't, Google Assistant can do it, and look, it just seems to me that HomePod is pretty limited out of the gate. So, if you're someone who already has other Sonos speakers, or you're looking for a smart speaker, either because you want multiroom audio or because you're just looking for the basics of what a virtual assistant can do, I don't think the HomePod's for you. - But if you love Apple products and you're an Apple Music subscriber and you want amazing sound, you should get a HomePod. - Or don't. Just don't. (playful music) - Hey Siri, play another U2 song. - Sonos never preinstalled U2 on any of my devices. - [Siri] With or Without You by U2, now playing. ("With or Without You" by U2)