Gadgetory

you have a new message from Mary get off of the game it's time for dinner what's going on guys the Travers consumer and today we have the brand new Apple home pod now this thing has been getting a lot of press recently but I got my hands on this a little bit early so we're gonna do a quick unboxing so you guys can know what's inside and this thing is so so like look how small this is is it bad did you expect it to look like this it is so much smaller than I expected now with this being an Apple product you don't get much you get a couple of stickers I'm assuming and okay you get a sticker and some paperwork a QuickStart guide and some warranty information but for those of you who don't even know what the home pot is this is pretty much a smart speaker in a small compact body it has Siri built into it so it'll be able to answer your questions take control of the apple homekit ecosystem but we're gonna try all of those things out in just a bit out there so we don't need this box anymore so and this is pretty much it this is the home pod there's not much to it it's got a really tiny form factor one thing to note though is that the power cable is actually built into it so this is not something that you can just attach is built into it and it looks pretty long from what I can see yeah this is the cable it's got some pretty decent length to it and it's actually covered in this cloth like materials now one thing I do want to do is compare it to the other smart speakers that are out right now just to give you guys a size comparison and in the world of smart home speakers that have voice assistance that can control your smart home products and I can answer any questions play music you asked for it these are the things you're gonna be looking at we've got the Amazon Alexa this is the second generation of course the home pod is over here and we've got the Google home max but yeah this is just a quick size comparison so you guys didn't see the best speaker that each of these companies offers and how they stack up in size but now it's time to go ahead and set this thing up and show you guys all the different features that it has alright guys so here we've got our home pod this is a little setup that I've got going on for it right now right now you'll see that it has white light that's blinking at the very top that's indicating that it is ready to get paired and just like anything that has a w1 chip like the Apple earpods or the Beats Studio wireless 3 you can just get your phone next to it and then you should see a little indicator showing that it's ready to get set up so here we've got it here tap the button and we can indicate where we actually have it so this is we'll call it the living room continue or enable personal requests we of course want Siri on here agree the terms and conditions all the good stuff transfer our settings and that guy's is pretty much the setup process now something that's pretty cool about the home pod is that it can detect where it's placed so there's no need to find the optimal placement for it so some people I probably I guess I touched it by accident so if it's against a wall it'll be able to detect that if it's got things near it detects that as well and then it sends the audio directly towards you in the best way possible after its analysis that was great is that there's no special setup process for this it's constantly doing it with the aah and it does it within a few seconds now one good thing about having Siri built into the home pod is that it of course can read the messages on your iPhone and notifications so I can say something like hey Siri do I have any new text messages you have a new message from Mary of the game yes when you want to say give me 15 more minutes your reply to Terry says give me 15 more minutes ready to send it yes no that's awesome because I don't even have my phone nearby so being able to tell sunna to send off a message like that is super convenient and what's great about that is I don't even have to put down the controller to do it so just bought myself 15 more minutes okay so this is pretty much how I would use a speaker while I'm working getting footage I'd have some music playing in the back what's great here is I don't have to pull out a phone or anything I can just kind of speak to theory and have her place of music for me so I can say something like hey Siri play this year's Grammy nominees playlist the 60th Grammy Awards nominees now playing can you feel that that's clean let's clean audio right there hey Siri set volume to 80% that's impressive hey Siri pause now what was pretty interesting is that you guys saw that Siri listened to me at 80% volume I'm gonna test it out and see if she can hear me out 100% she's got six microphones built into her so she can pick up my voice even though some loud music is playing so let's see if that works hey Siri set volume to 100% hey Siri pause nice nice when we're talking to our Amazon echo we usually have to yell over her to make sure that she can hear me so that is awesome cuz I wasn't even close to it and she still heard me oh you're a Lexus system I'm glad I can help she did not have now the home pod also acts as a home kit hub so that means you can activate any home kit enable smart home device like lights or your locks so I can say something like hey Siri activate kitchen kitchen you got it I actually use these colors for another video but I can say hey Siri activate kitchen time kitchen time and now and now we're back to some normal lighting and now this is what you call a scene with an home kit if you have a bunch of home kit enabled devices you can set them up to activate and do different things like change different colors or turn on or turn off whenever you have your scene set up so you can go down into the app and actually customize that but you can do it based on whatever have available to you so I've been using the home pod for about a week now and I know the big question is is it actually worth picking up well if you're not on an iOS device you don't even have to consider it because it will not work for you the home pod only works with iOS devices so whether that's an iPhone iPad or even an iPod Touch those are the only devices that it's compatible with and will allow you to set it up which is pretty unfortunate because I think this is an awesome speaker with some great sound quality technology and hardware inside of it but it isn't compatible with everything so it really does limit who can actually use it but if you do have an iOS device that's compatible with it I think you can expect the same Apple experience that you do with most of their products something that's really easy to get into works really well and obviously has some awesome hardware to go with it and you guys were able to see how quick and simple the setup process was how impressed I was with the overall sound quality and even how well those mites work when the music was blaring at 100% still picked me up with no problem and even being in a completely different room Siri was able to hear me which was a little freaky but it goes to show how good those mics are and that only can control the home pop through voice commands but there's also a touch panel at top with volume controls and you can even hold down the sensor to call up Siri and well I personally think the hardware on the home pot is top-notch - the exclusion of an aux port it does lack a bit in the software Department and as you'd expect Siri is the voices system for the home pod but this is more like a watered-down version of Siri than the one you're used to on your phone for instance if you're big on using your online calendar Siri won't be able to check any events that you have coming up or make any new ones which is kind of puzzling considering it's Siri that's what series all about really just being that personal assistant but you're not able to do that with the home pod just yet but I'm absolutely sure that that's something that's gonna be coming out with a future software update there's just a little bit surprising that we're not seeing this feature with the launch I give Google home the same slack for not being able to check calendars as well that came with a future update so there's no surprise that there's gonna be one coming for the home pod now something that I like about the home pod is that you can ask it to read or answer some of your text messages but one thing that was kind of surprising was the fact that you can't actually ask Siri to go ahead and make a call for you I think of course we'll come in a future update but that would have been nice to have it launched as well and from what I can tell Apple focused on creating something that excels at its primary function which is playing music the home pod does that very well while still having smart functionality but in order to take advantage of the home pod and all of its greatness you are going to need to be pretty deep in the Apple ecosystem from having an iOS device to set it up and get it paired with so also using the Apple music listening service you can of course see music from other streaming services over to the home pod but you won't be able to call it Siri and have it play music from something like Spotify but as of you guys watching this right now the home pod is officially available at 350 bucks and somebody who loves audio I really like what Apple did with this thing the engineering that went into it to make you sound like this and to be able to be placed anywhere whatever you want and get the best sound quality out of it it's really impressive so if you're looking for a smart speaker that looks good doesn't take up a lot of space it has amazing sound quality this is something to take a look at that is if you're on iOS let me know also comment down below if you plan on picking one up if you guys want to see a comparison video between the home pod the Amazon echo and the Google home let me know by hitting that like button down below and I'll catch you guys in the next one till then is your average consumer peace