Meh oh well never mind then. 
(Well - I do need more music in my life… thought the Cube/H.Kardon would be the answer but getting a suitable interface hasn’t been ideal…)
I’ll keep investigating.
Score out of 10 when used for:
- Music: 9, amazing sound for such a small device
- Alternative Apple TV Speaker: 5, it does not stay connected from session to session (though I have not tried lately)
- Speaker phone: 8
- Siri: 7, limited capability compared to iPad and iPhone. (It is hard to remember which one does what). My better half has given up on it.
Cannot identify different users, so it only works with my account, my music etc.
For privacy reasons, we have disabled “Hey Siri” and just long-press on top if we want to talk to it.
I have one for upstairs and one for downstairs, and use it all the time - mainly for music, but also to control our blinds, gates, lights. Can recommend.
PSA: HomePods are $298 with free same/next-day shipping at Officeworks.
Just picked one up myself, but if you’ve been looking for an excuse reason to get one, this one is as good as any.
https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/search?q=homepod
Same price at JBs, Catch, The Good Guys.
Wonder if price drop or clearance. Tempting.
Originally announced at WWDC '17 (and 2020 WWDC is fast approaching) and it’s over two years old now. I’d lean towards clearance.
Same, considering there are rumours of a lower cost, smaller home pod possibly debuting at WWDC this year.
It’s just a pity at how poor Siri when compared to Alexa and Google.
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Yes this is a shame 
You’d think after 9 years they would get it somewhat right…
I find Google alright, but there is definately room for improvement, I hear “I can’t help with that yet” pretty regulariliy. While I find most of the time it gets it right, booking calendar events and setting timers, but telling it to play my playlists (from Google Music) is often mis-heard and it plays something totally random. I would have though that “play my playlist XXXXXXX” would be straight forward…
Turning smart lights and switches on/off seems to work about 95% of the time, setting colours of bulbs is probably about 80% and aften it gets confused and turns on multiple lights. Although I suspect that is more to do with the maturity of home automation rather than google assistant (or Siri for that matter).
I pretty much only use mine as a speakerphone or AirPlay 2 target. It’s amazing as a speakerphone. Really really enjoy using it. Glad I picked it up for $250 s/h though. I definitely couldn’t justify any more for it.
I couldnt justify it at any price. Which is sad, because I did want to stay “all-Apple” but I’ve been thinking about going over to the dark side and get an Echo of some kind. Amazon already has me, with Prime, may as well let it have all of me, with Echo/Alexa, which will talk to my LIFX lights and Netatmo weather station.
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It’s good! Nothing all that unexpected, given that it’s been out for years and reviews have covered pretty much everything there is about it.
Playing tunes through it is great, and really highlights the lack of bass in my current speaker setup (Audioengine 2s). Whether that exacerbates the already somewhat anaemic bass of a 2.0 setup, or whether it’s because the HomePod is overly bassy as some reviews have suggested, I’m not sure, but it’s certainly made me re-listen to a decent amount of my varied music library with a new appreciation for that fuller, almost boomy, bass output by the HomePod.
If you’re aware of what Siri can and can’t do, the HomePod is a great companion to your (undoubtedly) casual Siri usage. I’ve never had any other kind of smart speaker, but being able to say “Hey Siri” at a normal conversational volume and have the HomePod pick up whatever I want doing — even across the room, with music playing — is kinda neat.
95% of my HomePod usage is AirPlaying music to it via iTunes on my MBP, with the other 5% being the odd times when I move the HomePod into a different room and AirPlay to it from my iPhone. I experience quite a few drop-outs, but I believe this is more of a Wi-Fi issue than any fault of the HomePod. I’d be interested in hearing how two HomePods sound, especially if I was so inclined to use them with an AppleTV, or if my primary use case was in the lounge room instead of in the home office setup, but not for another $298 — I’d rather put that towards a better 2.0 setup for my MBP.
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Thanks for the detailed reply. Currently have a UE Boom 2. Great in that it is so portable as spend a lot of time outside playing music and great to take on trips. Music quality is good not fantastic but they have bigger models to take care of that.
I think if Apple released a more portable version I would try it out like the Sonos Move but the price would be the sticking point.
What’s frustrating with the HomePods is the inability for it to connect directly to TVs - you can connect a pair to an AppleTV, but not straight to a TV, so that really cripples it as potential home theatre speakers.
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I’ve got one of the OG UE Boom speakers which I use the garage or out in the yard when I’m washing the car. Almost 6 years on it’s a great little speaker, plenty of sound for what it is and fine in the garage.
I’ve also got some Pioneer A1’s and an A3 (which is an A1 with batteries built in). These are both WiFi and do AirPlay or connection via a USB cable. They were used as glorified docking stations for a while as the WiFi was always a bit hit and miss. Over ethernet they seem to work perfectly, although auto power on is a bit hit and miss, otherwise these sound pretty good.
We are just finishing construction on a new deck and I was looking to put some audio gear out there. Originally I was going to use an older AV receiver which supports AirPlay, but it doesn’t do Bluetooth and doesn’t have WiFi. The Pioneer units were briefly considered until I saw the Google Home Max on special for $198 at Officeworks. Reviews put it about on par with the HomePod for sound, the big differences being the assistants. Being currently invested in the google music ecosystem (mostly because for the same cost as Apple Music you also get YouTube Premium and no ads which is pretty compelling), it made more sense to grab this one rather than the HomePod.
It’s possible to direct play music to the Google device via Bluetooth or to the Apple device (from an iOS device) using AirPlay (totally SOL if you don’t have an Apple device). It’s a shame they lock you into their respective ecosystems, making switching that much harder. It’s also a shame there isn’t (or wasn’t last time I looked) a bridge that could allow AirPlay or ChomeCasting from one ecosystem to the other. I’m thinking something along the lines of a Raspberry Pi running some software that looked like an AirPlay/ChromeCast device, but translated to the other.
I did ask on the Homebridge forum and a few other places, but no one seemed interested and/or told me I was asking on the wrong side of the fence… Sadly it seems smart home stuff is still groups of pretty walled gardens.
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That device looks like it has AUX in. Have you considered a previous gen AirPort Express?
To me, AUX in has always been the worst possible option. I’m not saying it doesn’t work, I’m using one here for a Chromecast Audio hooked up to a mini system that does AirPlay and Bluetooth, but no Chromecast. It works well enough, but I have power up the device manually and volume adjustments through AUX are pretty limited. That said, once it’s on and set to the right volume it doesn’t need to much more touching and I can yell at the assistant to play/pause/skip etc.
I find that Alexa is more powerful and has better integrations… it’s more of an open community with Alexa, plus you can hook it’s output to any speaker.
I thought by now that Apple would have at least made an effort to bring Homepod up to the level of Amazon or Google’s offerings and they just haven’t. I may go Alexa sooner rather than later. Been waiting long enough