Five years later The original HomePod, Apple has finally deemed it time to release a successor. The second-generation HomePod breathes new life into the company’s smart home aspirations, with a new processor and improved sound quality, along with a temperature and humidity sensor, simpler smart home automation and support for Matter —the standard that aims to make all smart home devices interoperable.
However, this smart speaker is almost as expensive as the original. Sure, it’s $50 less, but it’s still $299. At least there’s still the HomePod Mini. If the price doesn’t deter you, the second-generation HomePod is available for pre-order and officially hits shelves on February 3rd.
Wrapped in mesh fabric with a backlit touch surface, the new HomePod looks identical to its predecessor. However, there is a new color option – midnight, in addition to the traditional white. You’ll get a colorful woven power cable, which is always a nice touch.
The most obvious improvements are in the interior. The new HomePod is powered by an S7 computational audio processor — yes, the same one inside the Apple Watch Series 7 — which is said to be a massive upgrade from the A8 chip in the original. When combined with the high-excursion woofer, internal microphone with bass-EQ, and a set of five tweeters, Apple says you’ll get a “groundbreaking listening experience.” Par for the course in Applespeak, but audio quality was never one of our issues with the HomePod.
It now comes equipped with a new room sensor technology. With the ability to recognize sound reflections from nearby surfaces, HomePod can identify whether it’s facing a wall or standing, and adjust the sound according to its specific placement in the room for clearer audio. We’ve seen variations of this technology from audio brands before, as well as smart speaker makers like Google. For a more immersive experience, you can pair two HomePod speakers for stereo sound, and yes, you can also pair it with HomePod Mini for multi-room audio.
This new model also includes the Ultra Wideband technology we first saw on HomePod Mini in 2021, which lets you stream media from your iPhone to HomePod. You can transfer any audio playing on your iPhone (like a podcast or phone call) to the HomePod when both devices are next to each other, perfect for when you get home and want to go hands-free. With Find My support, you can also use the speaker to locate your iPhone by playing a sound on the lost device.
As for those improved smart home features, you’ll now be able to use your HomePod to listen for smoke and carbon monoxide alarms using its Sound Recognition feature (originally launched with iOS 14). Unsurprisingly, this won’t be available at launch, but will make its way to the speaker via a software update in June. If HomePod detects these sounds, it will send a notification to your iPhone immediately (these functions are already available on smart speakers from Google and Amazon as well).
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