Credit: Apple
Apple was late to the smart speaker game, and when it finally made it, it botched its initial play. Don’t get us wrong — the 2018 HomePod still sounds amazing, but it launched at $349. That made it costly next to other high-end products, never mind a $100 Echo speaker. And its features were so sharply limited that you couldn’t even set multiple timers, much less use Siri voice commands for non-Apple music. Price cuts couldn’t save it from being discontinued in March 2021.
The HomePod Mini has enjoyed a better response, thanks to a lower price tag and improved software. Still, two years since its release, we think it’s time for Apple to take another crack at the HomePod lineup, adding a variety of upgrades to what we’ll call the HomePod 2.