Apple HomePod (2nd generation) Speaker Review

Overall, this speaker looks pretty similar to the Apple HomePod (1st generation). It has a sleek cylindrical design that blends right in with your existing home decor, available in a couple of different colors to suit your style. The top glass plate illuminates in different colors when you activate Siri, but you can always turn this feature off.

Due to its wired design, this speaker isn't portable. It's pretty lightweight, so you won't have any trouble carrying it from room to room, but it's meant to stay in one place.

Overall, the speaker's materials are of good quality. It sits on a plastic base, and there's a glass plate on top. The mesh fabric wrapping gives it a similar look to the original Apple HomePod (1st generation). Unlike the first-generation model, though, you can remove the power cable, which is handy if you want to thread the cable through a hole in your desk, for example.

On top of the speaker, there's a glass panel that you can use to control the device. You can adjust the volume or tap the buttons twice to skip to the next track or return to the previous track. You can also take calls on the HomePod and answer them by tapping on the top of the speaker. That said, the speaker is designed to be controlled with your voice, so you can command it using built-in Siri. If you want to mute the microphone, for example, you need to ask Siri to stop listening, as there isn't a physical control for this function.

• Apple HomePod 2nd generation
• Power cable (4.9 ft / 1.5 m)
• Manuals

This speaker has very good frequency response accuracy. Its room-sensing feature works like a room correction tool, using built-in microphones to analyze your room's unique acoustics and optimize its audio reproduction accordingly. It's always active, too. Overall, its sound is relatively even with a touch of extra brightness, making it suitable for listening to many different types of audio content.

While listening to the speaker subjectively, we found that the bass holds nicely, so you get a good round sound even at lower volumes. It's likely because of Apple's bass-EQ microphone, which they say is designed to dynamically tune lower frequencies in real-time. To test this feature, we ran a pink noise file at different volume levels, the results of which you can see here. In the graph, the louder the volume, the less of a bass range difference we see. At higher volumes, the bass tends to align with the treble.

We've received some feedback from users interested in whether it would be worthwhile to pair two 2nd Gen HomePods or to purchase the premium Bose Smart Soundbar 900. Ultimately, we found that the Bose soundbar gets much louder, and its soundstage is cleaner and more defined. The HomePods, meanwhile, have a pleasant soundstage, though it isn't as precise, giving a slightly veiled feel. There's somewhat of a hole where the center channel would usually be located, too. That said, the HomePods bring an impressive amount of bass for their size, and their Siri capabilities are a definite advantage. Depending on your preferences, you may opt for one setup over another. Adding on a sub to the Bose soundbar is a good option if you want bass with that setup, too.

This speaker's soundstage performance is good. Thanks to its 360-degree, it has fantastic directivity, meaning that sound is perceived to be wide and open-sounding. It has to downmix stereo content into mono, but you can always stereo pair it with another 2nd generation HomePod if you want.

There's been some chatter in the community about whether the HomePod is truly a mono speaker. To demonstrate why we categorize it in this way, we decided to compare it to a true stereo speaker— the Ultimate Ears MEGABLAST. We started by playing a left-driver-only pink noise audio file, then connected a microphone to pick up the audio. As you can see in this video, there's about a 10 dB difference when we move the microphone from the left side of the speaker, which is playing sound, to the right side, which isn't. Then, we used our hands to cover and uncover each side of the speaker to confirm that all sound came from the left side. Finally, we repeated the same process on the HomePod. This time, there was only about a 1 dB difference between the left and right side of the speaker. Even when we use our hands to cover one side of the speaker, audio is still heard without issue.

This speaker gets loud enough to fill an average-sized living room with sound. However, it's not suitable for listening in larger or more open spaces. While our graph shows some compression in the bass range at max volume, we suspect that this is due to the bass-EQ dynamic tuning, as in actuality, you don't notice much compression in the mix.

Built-in Siri offers excellent voice assistant support with this speaker. You can activate the speaker using your voice, and it has no trouble hearing your commands clearly, even if you're further away from the speaker itself. While there isn't a physical microphone mute button, you can ask Siri to stop listening when you want privacy. To turn Siri back on, just press and hold the top of the device.

The Apple Home app lets you control the speaker from your phone or mobile device. Only available with iOS, it helps you manage other Apple speakers in your ecosystem for stereo pairing or spreading audio throughout multiple rooms in your home. Also, you can set alarms and timers, which is handy. However, there aren't any customization features on hand like with the Sonos Era 100, which is disappointing.

Given the interest from the community, we decided to stereo pair two HomePod speakers and subjectively evaluate the sound. We also launched an Apple TV 4K and added the device to the same Room as both speakers in the Apple Home app. With stereo content such as music, we found speakers offer a balanced sound with a solid amount of bass. The soundstage is wide, and sound effects are accurately localized to the left and the right, as you would expect with stereo speakers. With movies and videos, dialogue and other details are reproduced with clarity. There's a good amount of bass, but not as much as you would find with a dedicated subwoofer. Similarly, Atmos content is clear and engaging but not as immersive as a 5.1 setup. There's a sense of elevation towards the front and the sides on some scenes, but no real sense of height over your head or behind you. You can also ask Siri questions while watching movies or listening to music, which is handy. Siri's only functional on one of the two speakers, though.

While this speaker is advertised to support Bluetooth 5.0, you can't stream audio to the speaker over this connection. Rather, it's used in the initial setup process.

This speaker is Wi-Fi compatible, and you can stream audio from your mobile devices over Apple AirPlay. Its latency is a touch higher than with the Apple HomePod (1st generation), but some apps compensate for latency differently, so your real-world experience can vary.