The HomePod 2 hits stores today, but it’s strictly for hardcore Apple fans
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Apple’s HomePod 2 is on sale starting today and can be picked up in stores in the US and UK. But should you buy the surprising second edition of Apple’s smart speaker? Only if you have fully bought into the Apple ecosystem.
Our Apple HomePod 2 review praises the speaker’s “rich sound,” concluding that “for its price, no speaker sounds quite as good.” If you can afford to double the $299 / £299 / AU$479 price tag, we’d also recommend combining two of them into a stereo system. While home delivery is still awaited, the HomePod 2 is available to purchase online from the Apple Store (opens in new tab) today if you choose the in-store pick-up option.
The second edition HomePod — which follows the original that arrived in 2018 and was discontinued just three years later — continues to have relatively niche appeal. It’s not a huge improvement over its predecessor or fixes the main issues, especially the lack of Bluetooth connectivity.
The latter means the HomePod 2 is again quite picky about where it gets its audio from. In fact, the only ways to play music are to use Apple AirPlay 2 over Wi-Fi or the Siri voice assistant. That means you can only send audio from an Apple device, which is pretty limited if someone in your household uses Android.
But if you mainly own iPhones and iPads – and also subscribe to Apple Music for its Dolby Atmos powers – nothing beats the HomePod 2. It’s the best smart speaker out there for Apple fans, even if it’s still still not very smart.
The HomePod 2’s new support for the Matter smart home standard, plus the temperature and humidity sensors, have some potential, but we didn’t find them particularly appealing at the moment. The speaker’s smart home potential is probably one of the main reasons Apple brought it back, so we look forward to seeing how this develops.
Analysis: Why has the HomePod returned?
It’s highly unusual for Apple to relaunch a product within two years of saying it has been discontinued. As our Apple HomePod 2 review found out, the new model doesn’t offer much more than the original version or fix its biggest problems; so why did it come back?
Apple’s Matthew Costello (Vice President of Hardware Engineering and Operations) recently shared TechCrunch (opens in new tab) that Apple fans simply demanded it. “We really heard from our customers this growing interest in more powerful and richer acoustics from a bigger speaker,” he said.
Considering that sales are also a good way to gauge customer demand, and that they apparently weren’t high enough to prevent Apple from discontinuing the original HomePod, this is a slightly odd argument. But it’s also true that a few things have changed in recent years to make a full-size HomePod more appealing again.
First, Apple Music now supports lossless playback along with Dolby Atmos spatial audio. The latter bounces sound off your walls to create more separation and is especially useful if you have an Apple TV, as you can use a pair of HomePod 2s as an alternative to the best soundbars.
We also saw the Matter 1.0 smart home standard finally launch last November. All devices that support it – including the HomePod 2 – can communicate with each other, regardless of their manufacturer and whether they support Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa or Apple HomeKit.
Apple clearly sees the HomePod 2 as an important part of its new push to become part of your Matter-enabled smart home. While it’s still early days for that, the new HomePod’s detailed and balanced sound will make a good soundtrack to listen to in the meantime.