Apple's HomePod brings the bass, Siri voice control

[MUSIC] Hey, Siri, stop. [BLANK_AUDIO] Hey, Siri, close the shades. [BLANK_AUDIO] Got it. [MUSIC] The HomePod is Apple's long awaited Answer to Amazon's Echo, Google's Home Max, and the Sonos One. But the tech giant wants its $349 Siri powered wireless speaker to be much more than a voice enabled smart home assistant. In every marketing campaign Apple makes it clear that home pod is a speaker first. And everything else is secondary. It's true that the home pod delivers impressive audios slightly better than the home max. Still it isn't perfect. Apple claims home pod is an omni directional speaker, but it has definite sweet spots where the music sounds better, particularly when it's in the middle of a room. My iPhone occasionally answered questions I asked Homepod when using Hey Siri as a wake phrase. You're pretty much tied to Apple Music for audio. But if you want to use services like Spotify, you'll have to send them to Homepod from your phone. On the speaker's display, you'll find volume up and down buttons when audio Was playing. Press and hold the center to bring up Siri without having to say, hey, Siri. A variety of taps let you play, pause and skip music straight from HomePod. Everything else is done either with voice commands or through Apple's home app on iOS. HomePod's set up process takes a minute tops and you new speaker immediately shows up in the Home Apps list. List of home kit devices. In addition to playing music and podcasts, the home pod can tell you the news and answer general questions about the weather. It can also control your home kit devices just like your iPhone. And thanks to advanced machine learning, Siri is more conversational than ever. Hey Siri, who is Bob Dylan? Bob Dylan is an American singer songwriter, author and painter who has been- Hey, Siri, how old is he? Bob Dylan is 76. HomePod is a smart device with solid sound quality that will likely improve over time. Although pricey, I can confidently recommend it to Apple customers who are sold on a HomeKit smart home. But audiophiles simply looking for a great speaker system can find better sound quality for roughly the same price. And if you're already heavily invested in an Alexa or Google assistant smart home, you won't find much value here. [BLANK_AUDIO]