Now, we can’t give you a good review on the sound and music quality of Apple’s answer to Google and Amazon – The Apple HomePod. That is still to come, be rest assured!

But, for now, we will cover what we can with the information we have gathered thus far.

We have to presume that the HomePod will have fantastic music and sound quality, because in all fairness, the price for the HomePod certainly doesn’t add up just yet.

Apple HomePod Spatial Awareness

The first thing we’ll go through is the smart technology that allows the Apple HomePod to “sense where in the room it’s playing” – Apple have said that the HomePod senses where it has been placed in any given room, and automatically analyses the acoustics, adjusts sounds based on the location and “steers the music in the optimal direction”



Apparently, if you’re placing this Apple HomePod in a corner of a room, you won’t get that ugly tinny sound bouncing off two walls – It will instead adjust the several tweeters to adapt to its surroundings and play the best acoustics it possibly can.

Apple’s HomePod is able to detect the centre vocals and use beam forming to direct them. It uses the information it’s given by the A8 chip inside to precisely detect how to play music with the most optimal settings. It can detect something called direct energy to best make instrumentation as good as it can. The direct energy also helps with ambient audio (backing vocals and reverb), giving a fantastic boost that provides a rich mix to fill any room.

Two Are Better Than One

If you are excited to hear the Apple HomePod play your favourite tracks with its smart ability to adjust the acoustics to suit where it has been placed in any room, you should be excited to hear two of them (we don’t expect the average consumer to do this, as it will set you back a cool $700USD or $1000AUD)

But, if you wish to add another HomePod to your collection, and place it in the same room as your other one, you’re bound to hear a far greater music experience.

Not to forget, that with AirPlay 2, when you add multiple HomePod’s to different rooms of the house/office, the speakers can communicate with each other so you can play your favorite tunes throughout the whole house (or office, to liven it up a bit)

Now for the original question?

If you remember the title of this article asked, “Is the Apple HomePod’s music/sound quality better than Amazon Alexa/Google Home?” – The short answer to this is yes.

As both Alexa and Home are fantastic (and likely better home assistants than Siri), they are not purpose built for music and sound quality. Of course they both play a decent quality, but not the quality you’d expect after spending a few hundred dollars on a sound system type quality. This is where you see the price difference for these with Amazon’s Alexa fetching for about $229AUD and Google Home for $199AUD.

We hope that Apple’s promises of a superior music quality that will “blow us away”, as CEO Tim Cook said, are true, but we will wait, like the many other millions of Apple fans waiting to listen.