Pros: best sound from a mini speaker, easy to add a second one for whole-room or multi-room sound, great integration with iPhones, iPads, Macs and accessories like AirTags

Cons: more expensive than rivals, doesn’t play Spotify natively, relatively useless with Androids

…..

While Apple is late to the Irish market with smart speakers, its HomePod mini packs an oversized audio punch for its three-inch circular size.

It offers a distinctly better sound than Amazon’s similarly-sized Echo Dot or Google’s Nest mini, as well as integrating really well for smart controls with any iPhone, iPad or Mac that you have (including a useful role as quality external speakers for an Apple TV).

On the other hand, it costs between two to three times as much as its ‘mini’ rivals; you’ll get a larger Echo or Nest for the same price, both of which have more smart home functionality.

Is the combination of sound quality and integration with other Apple products and services a compelling reason to buy one?

I’ve been testing two HomePod mini speakers together for the last week and here’s what I’ve found.

1. Design

Apple’s HomePod mini design is relatively attractive as smart speakers go. This is an item you can comfortably put on almost any living area shelf or surface and not feel like you’re polluting the aesthetic with a tech gadget. It’s a pleasing spherical shape, finished in a nice mesh design, with a flat bottom and top. It’s almost exactly the same size (just over three inches high) and weight as its closest mini-speaker rival, Amazon’s Echo Dot. But for me, it’s undeniably nicer-looking.

The flat touch-sensitive top lights up in different colours depending on what the speaker is asked to do. (You’ll see bits of dust and fingerprints accumulate on the black models.) You can tap it to change volume, pause something or start Siri. There’s no display here, but everything feels really premium. The latticed mesh finish all around the speaker looks and feels really nice.

The setup process is typically easy -- you just bring your iPhone close to it and its sets up in much the same way a pair of AirPods would. This can’t be underestimated as a selling point for HomePod mini -- if you have an iPhone, you simply won’t struggle to set it up. The speaker’s unremovable power cable has a USB-C connection at the end of it. And yes, a plug does come in the box, something which can’t be taken for granted these days with small home tech devices.

2. Smart controls

Apple’s HomePod mini is two things: an audio speaker and a gateway into smart home functionality.

To get into the latter, you’ll need compatible accessories that work with Siri and ‘Homekit’ smart functionality (Apple’s version of Alexa or Google Assistant). There are plenty out there, from lightbulbs to thermostats to security cameras, even if it’s a small percentage of what the larger smart home ecosystems currently support. I connected a smartplug (Eve Energy, €40) that allowed me to control whatever was connected to it using voice commands through the speaker.

One advantage that Apple’s smart home control has over its rivals is the comparative ease in adding new devices. Its ‘Home’ app is relatively idiot-proof.

You see this when you try to do things such as play music from more than one speaker at the same time, or connect your HomePod mini to, say, your Apple TV for better audio when playing a movie. These things can take a while through Alexa or Google, with plenty of fiddling required.

Other casual benefits of being so integrated in Apple’s ecosystem include things like the ‘Find Me’ feature. When I asked the HomePod mini where my Watch or my AirTag-attached keys or my iPhone was, it pinged each one for me.

There are some ‘smart’ things that Apple’s HomePod mini does better than its rivals. For example, if you have an iPhone 11 or 12, and you’re playing a song on it, just tap it against the HomePod mini and the song will immediately shift from your iPhone to the speaker.

You can also take calls on the speaker (assuming your iPhone is nearby) rather than just make outgoing ones. The call quality is good, here, with four microphones on board.

A final knacky smart feature is ‘Intercom’ -- if you have a second speaker elsewhere in the house, you can ask Siri to give that second speaker’s audience a message in your own voice.

As for audio uses other than music, you’ll get a fairly full array of radio stations by asking for them individually (through TuneIn). Audiobooks and podcasts are a more mixed bag -- apps like Audible have to be played manually (through AirPlay) from your iPhone.

3. Audio quality

Smart functionality aside, one of the strongest selling points for the HomePod mini is the sound quality. I’m generally a fan of Amazon’s Echo speakers as the industry standard, but there’s no question that the Homepod mini has better audio quality than the corresponding ‘mini’ Echo, the Echo Dot.

(That comes with a big caveat — the Apple device is almost twice the price of the Amazon one without necessarily being twice as powerful. More on that below.)

This is partially down to the tech inside and partially to its design.

The HomePod mini’s spherical shape allows it to create 360-degree audio, thanks to dual passive radiators (which you won’t see on similar small smart speakers) and a full-range driver.

Clever internal design also manages the sound in such a way as to add more oomph without really creating any distortion; I raised the volume up to the maximum several times and rarely heard any notable distortion.

One additional tech effect is Apple’s application of ‘computational audio’ to the speaker’s output. In plain English, the speaker’s brain does an on-the-spot assessment of the track or song and tweaks bits of the audio output to enhance what it thinks is the best sound. It’s not a feature that you can turn on or off, so it’s hard to say what difference this makes to the actual audio output.

And for sure, this is a judgement call on Apple’s part; it’s possible that the musical artist wants a certain sound. But I never found that it neutered stylistically pronounced tracks. Remember, too, that this is engineered for a mass market sweet spot. Think of it as being a little like the audio version of what the iPhone’s camera does for photos; a dab of HDR here, a dash of highlights retrieval there — all to make a generally more pleasing end product.

Having said all of this, and as relatively impressive as the HomePod mini is in sound quality, a mini speaker has obvious limits compared to larger speakers. You can put one of these in a living room or a kitchen where it does a decent job, but it’s not designed to hold a room if (or when) you invite your two or three different households around next month. This is largely a personal audio tool.

It gets interesting, though, when you pair two of them together — something Apple appears to believe that many HomePod mini buyers may do.

The audio becomes noticeably bigger and richer, somewhat rivalling bigger, more expensive speakers (although bear in mind each one needs its own electric socket to plug into). As I mentioned above, it’s really easy to do this compared to Google and Amazon rivals.

There’s one final use for a pair of HomePod minis — quality external speakers for your Apple TV. Because while there’s no external cabling in or out, these can still be used to support Dolby Atmos in stereo with the Apple set top box. While it’s limited to whatever you’re watching on the Apple TV, it’s guaranteed to be better than the telly’s own sound.

4. Downsides

Are there downsides to HomePod mini speakers? Cost might be one. For the same price as a Homepod mini, you’ll get a full sized Amazon Echo. And while the mini beats the smaller Echo Dot on audio, the larger Amazon device has it beat.

Some might also argue that non-portability (it has to be plugged in at all times and has no portable battery) is a disadvantage, although none of its direct rivals have this facility either. And if Apple did make it portable, it would either have to be bigger (to accommodate the battery) or compromise on audio quality.

In my view, the biggest downside is for Spotify users. While you can play Spotify on the HomePod mini, it’s not ‘native’ -- you can’t ask for tracks or albums or playlists over Siri. Instead, you have to manually do it from your phone over AirPlay. What’s odd is that once you’re playing a Spotify track on the HomePod mini, you can partially use Siri to control the music from that point; it will pause, play, rewind and forward songs in your Spotify account based on your Siri commands to the HomePod mini.

So to be clear, it’s not useless to Spotify subscribers. And Apple has said that it hopes to see ‘other’ music streaming services (mainly meaning Spotify) on its platform soon. But for now, this is really an audio companion to Apple Music, which has a sizeable subscription base here.

A final point on compatibility: if you’re an Android phone user, this is not the smart speaker for you. Apple makes no bones about the fact that this is for the Apple ecosystem only. It doesn’t easily pair via Bluetooth, like most wireless speakers do, with other platforms or gadgets. That means you can’t really use the HomePod mini as an external speaker for a Windows laptop or an Android tablet or an Android phone or anything else other than an iPhone, iPad or Mac (or iPod Touch or Apple Watch).

For likely the same reason, there’s no 3.5mm port in or out of this device, as there is for Amazon’s Echo Dot or Google’s Nest mini. (This is incredibly handy for hooking up larger speakers to the mini speaker in question, allowing you to create your own modular, semi-smart hifi system.)

5. Should you get one?

If you have a minimum of an iPhone and an Apple Music subscription, the HomePod mini is actually fairly good value. You get category-leading audio quality, a nice-looking device and just about enough smart functionality to justify €99. If you have other Apple devices, like Apple TV or AirTags, you’ll get even more out of it. The only real downsides are its limitations for online apps and services, such as Spotify or Audible which, although playable, have to be manually controlled from your phone. This isn’t a limitation on speakers from Amazon or Google.