HomePod mini
The HomePod mini, a $99 mini-miracle that may have absolved Apple of all it’s prior speaker sins.
In many instances, Steve Jobs had his finger on the pulse of what consumers wanted even better than they sometimes did, but the desire for a premium iPod-based home stereo certainly wasn't one of them. The iPod Hi-Fi, introduced back in 2006, was a $349 speaker built around the iPod. It was big, bulky, and at $349, it was very expensive from an iPod-as-stereo frame of reference. By 2006, the market was saturated by dozens of sub-$150 speakers designed for the iPod. Would the iPod Hi-Fi find its legs in such a landscape? Nope. It ate shit and was discontinued after just 554-days on the market.
For over a decade, Apple didn't venture into the speaker market again. However, in the background, Apple continued improving the sound quality across its product lineup and made advancements in beam-forming microphones to improve voice detection & noise reduction.
In June 2017, Apple made its second attempt at the speaker market by unveiling the HomePod: a big, heavy, expensive home stereo. Emphasizing sound quality, the HomePod was Apple's attempt to enter the smart speaker market, by then dominated by a slew of sub-$100 Amazon Echo and Google Home devices. What they lacked in speaker quality relative to the HomePod they made up in being cheaper, having superior voice assistants (sorry, Siri!), and native connectivity to music streaming services like Spotify.
The HomePod quickly began to feel like the iPod Hi-Fi version 2.0. Although features were updated: stereo pairing in 11.4, multiple timers with 12.0, and recognition of different voices in 13.2.1, I began to worry about the future of HomePod. With the HomePod seeing a $50 price cut shortly after launch and regularly going on sale for as low as $199, I figured it was a matter of time before Apple once again threw in the towel on the home speaker market.
But then, on October 13, in the hellfire of 2020, Apple introduced the HomePod mini. Not only was it substantially smaller (about half the height & about the size of a baseball), but it also sounded great. Most importantly, it became much more affordable. Apple managed to slip under the magic $99 threshold, and in doing so, decision making around owning the HomePod became much easier. Previously the purchase of the large $299 HomePod was a calculated investment, requiring the need to consider all the pros and cons of the product before it felt like you could justify the purchase. At that $99 price, HomePod mini became a much more attractive purchase for people who may use several different voice assistants in their home. For example, someone who subscribes to Apple Music but who also has a few Alexa enabled devices. Previously that would require a $30-100 Echo speaker in addition to a $300 HomePod. Now that same setup can cost under $150, a significantly lower hit to the budget for a minimal trade-off in appreciable sound quality for most buyers.
Family Photo: HomePod on the left, iPod Hi-Fi in the rear, & the HomePod mini in the front - the size of which is smaller than the woofer on the Hi-Fi.
The $99 price tag also seems to allow for more leniency towards the product. In watching early reviews, people are a lot less critical of Siri or the lack of connected services like Spotify. With the original HomePod, these were a dealbreaker. With the mini, annoyances can be pardoned by the speaker's other redeeming qualities and compensated for by having multiple hubs in your home.
With the original HomePod, Apple seemed determined to deliver the best sound quality at the expense of both size and price, a move that alienated a lot of would-be purchasers. The vast majority of people aren't looking to drop a little baseball-sized speaker into their living room and are naive enough to believe they now have an audiophile-level home theatre. Most folks are perfectly content with really good sound quality, especially if that preserves size and cost, a balance the HomePod mini has perfectly struck.
My HomePod mini occupies a 10"x12" foot room, which currently quadruples as a guest room, reading nook, Home office, and impromptu gym due to the pandemic; and the sound produced by the mini is more than sufficient for filling that room. It doesn't give off a chest-rattling bass - remember: it's the size of a baseball - but the sound it gives is crisp, reasonably loud, and well-balanced. The long and short of it is that the HomePod mini will meet or exceed the quality and loudness expectations of anyone who is contemplating purchasing a $99 smart speaker for their home. If you fall into that category, you will love it. If you need more or have a very discerning ear, odds are you might be pleasantly surprised, but more than likely, you've opted for a better setup for your environment since sound quality is something you care deeply about. I haven't tested it as my main TV speaker myself, but my guess would underperform as a solitary speaker for a TV, though perhaps two minis in a pair might be closer to adequate for that purpose. But honestly, I haven't tried it.
Small & understated… The mini fits much better in rooms that don’t require a prominent speaker.
Another aspect of the HomePod mini is that its presence is understated. Currently, our mini is tucked under the leaf of our Bird of Paradise plant. Our HomePods take an intentionally prominent residence in the living rooms as part of our home theatre; this is an aesthetic choice. In the office, though, we want to have music and a smart speaker available while not dominating the limited shelf or surface real estate open.
I don't see the mini replacing the original HomePod speaker of 2018. Instead, I see mini becoming the default, bestselling HomePod. In contrast, the original HomePod may become something akin to a "Pro" model - for those that want bigger and better sound quality and are willing to pay a premium for the feature.
As of this entry, the HomePod delivery date is now slipping into late January, proof that this little speaker is turning out to be a mini marvel (I'm not sorry I wrote that!). The balance of sound, size, and affordable price makes this product more desirable to a broader customer range. It's just a shame that it took Apple so long to figure that out.
