The perfect Christmas gift for your loved ones— My review of the HomePod mini

Issue #9 | 26th Dec 2021

Hola!

I hope you had a mirthful and joyous Christmas celebration. Well, Christmas may be over but for some of the procrastinators out there who still haven’t gifted their loved ones something— I have come to the rescue. The perfect gift for your beloved! A simple and lavish gift, the HomePod Mini.

The HomePod mini is essentially a smart speaker with elegant design and a loud, clear sound system. It is a compelling package! Well don’t worry, this article isn’t sponsored (I wish it was, though.) and this is my first-hand review of the HomePod Mini.

The HomePod comes in five distinct colours with a simple and compact design. It has a mesh fabric finish that looks stellar in every room regardless of its location! The compact 4-inch speaker doesn’t feature buttons, but a small touch screen that controls basic functions like pause and play. Quite frankly, I have used the speaker extensively— for music. And it gets loud! Pretty loud. The speakers are clear and have good bass but that’s not it! The HomePod mini also has an array of 4 microphones, making my voice commands comprehendible to Siri from literally anywhere. I never need to raise my voice to control my speaker anymore unlike the Echo Dot.

Well, Siri may not be the smartest among us, but it gets the job done and it’s satisfying. Let’s be honest, a smart speaker is just a speaker you want to cast music to, control some lights in the house and fool around with basic questions when you are getting bored. Right? Well, Siri is ideal for just that. In fact, I choose this over my Echo Dot because I can effortlessly make calls from the HomePod mini when my phone is not around. That’s so cool! Yes, this feature is available on Amazon and Google’s speakers too, but it’s messy, unreliable and so slow! To get the most out of your HomePod, you need to be submerged in the Apple ecosystem. Yes, that may be a problem for some people, if you have an iPhone in the house- the HomePod mini is worth it.

Enough about the positives, let’s be frank now. The HomePod mini is a flawless package but the Home app on the iPhone could be better. Don’t get me wrong, the app is beautiful but it could be a little simpler and more functional. That’s one thing you might need to keep in mind. It took me 10 minutes to reach the settings page- so that’s a bummer. But once you get a hang of it, it isn’t that bad. Well, no luck for Android users- it just won’t work. It won’t! The speaker relies on AirPlay, which only works with iPhone and Macs, so Android users- hard luck! Now for the last flaw of the HomePod mini. You can’t use third-party services to play music or podcasts natively, so that sucks! Well, I have been an Apple Music user but for Spotify users, it is messed up. To play music using voice command, you need to have an active Apple Music subscription! So sorry, Spotify fans. Apple tries to compensate for this by providing 6 months of Apple music but it ain’t enough, according to me! So those are the drawbacks of the HomePod Mini. I mean, half of them are only drawbacks if you are not in the Apple ecosystem but yes, the HomePod mini is an enthralling package and absolutely flawless as a holiday gift!

The holiday gift is not the most expensive but it isn’t the cheapest either. The HomePod mini starts at $99 which is a sweet deal if you ask me, plus it doesn’t even hurt your pocket! In India, you can get this package for Rs. 9900 which is great. Again, this was my personal experience with the HomePod mini. If you were to ask me as an end-user, I am satisfied with this purchase and I couldn’t ask for more. This is the ideal gift and it’s aesthetically pleasing too!

If you are wondering why this issue wasn’t very tech-centric, it's because companies are in the holiday mood and there was literally no action :) I’ll circle back to tech in the next issue that comes out next week! Until then, make sure to update your devices and I’ll catch you next week!

Feliz Navidad,
Tejas