Nearly two years after discontinuing the first generation HomePod in favor of the smaller and cheaper HomePod mini, Apple is giving its flagship smart speaker another go.
The company today announced the second-generation HomePod, priced at $299. You can order online starting today and Apple will begin shipping the new HomePod February 3.
While the new HomePod maintains its color Siri display and mesh design, Apple has made changes to both. The new design is slightly smaller than the original, but the new Siri display on top is now edge-to-edge, a larger version of what you find on the HomePod mini.
The new HomePod is also powered by a more powerful chip: the S7—the same chip at the heart of the Apple Watch Series 8 models. Along with the more powerful chip, Apple has also added a temperature and humidity sensor to the speaker, allowing it to automatically trigger certain smart home actions based on the environment of the room it’s in.
HomePod’s sound is driven by a “custom-engineered high-excursion woofer” and “beamforming array of five tweeters around the base.” Apple has added a new room-sensing sound feature as well, allowing the device to pickup vibrations in the room in order to shape the sound better to the environment.
I wast to know how the sound compares to the originals. I have a pair of them doing a great job with my Apple TV.
Stereo configurable this round?
When you say stereo configurable, do you mean able to be paired with another HomePod and used as L/R channels? If so, that capability was possible on the first-gen HomePod and the HomePod mini, and is present on the new speaker as well. However, with the release of HomePod second-gen, Apple has said that you won’t be able to create a pair between a first-gen HomePod and a second-gen HomePod.