Apple is finally ready to deliver the HomePod with preorders for the smart speaker starting this Friday, January 26th, and deliveries starting on February 9th. It won’t, however, have all the features we saw when it was first shown off last spring because stereo and multi-room support aren’t coming until later this year.
HomePod is Apple’s streaming music speaker with limited Siri support. It packs seven tweeters, a woofer, and six microphones into its little can-shaped body, and can automatically adjust its sound output for optimum quality based on where you place it in a room.
It also includes Siri support for music and podcast playback control, creating memos and tasks, retrieving weather forecasts and news, and limited HomeKit control.
HomePod was originally set for a late 2017 launch, but Apple pushed that out to “early 2018” saying the device wasn’t ready to ship yet. It seems Apple decided to go ahead and pull the trigger even though two key features—stereo and AirPlay 2 multi-room support—aren’t there yet. Apple says those features will come later this year, but isn’t offering a firm time commitment.
HomePod is priced at US$349 and is available in white or space gray. It’ll be in Apple’s retail stores on February 9th.
The big thing I am really hoping is that this can replace my Lexicon, ATI, DyneAudio 5.1 setup at some point in a limited fashion
My Audiophile setup won’t work in our new house in our main TV watching area because it is too imposing. The good surround system will have to go to a new basement setup once I renovate that area.
I was hoping to get 5 of these and a subwoofer to make a up a passable 5.1 setup with 2 front 2 rear and a center plus sub. Right now we just have the TV audio and it is painful at best.
Sound is tolerable with my Beats Studio 3 W1 headphones on my Apple TV 4k (bad thing is only one set works for the ATV 4K at a time… hope something changes there). So we are largely limited with crappy sound or only one person listening to tolerable sound on the W1 headphones.
But I am patient. Looks like I may be waiting a long time for some solution from Apple if ever.
These look promising, but it will be interesting how ultimately one might be able to set these things up. Flexibility will be paramount.
I think I will pass until I read some reviews. Apple is not releasing the product as announced and I am a little worried. Hope that it does live up to whats promised and get the features it was supposed to have.
That’s due to the problems of getting AirPlay 2 working correctly. As of now, if you were only going to buy one unit, nothing changes for you.
The years got messed up in the article.
The corrected version would be:
“HomePod was originally set for a late 2017 launch, but Apple pushed that out to “early 2018” …”