Apple HomePod Mini review: Monolicious

Jun 05, 2023

A mostly fantastic speaker with some serious limitations

When it comes to smart speakers, there are many great options, but for ones that also function as a smart home hub, there are really just two names: Amazon and Apple (though Google is starting to make some noise with their offerings). Amazon seems to have a stranglehold between its full-sized, if somewhat elderly Echo, the newer Echo Dot (5th Gen), the Echo Show, and Echo Studio, along with all the older discounted generations of each model that’s still available.

The Apple HomePod Mini does a lot and does most of it well. It sounds pretty fantastic for its form factor. It can be used as a smart home hub for Apple’s HomeKit. However, not only are most of its features only for Apple users, but you can’t use a HomePod Mini without an Apple device.

Don’t let models like the Amazon Echo Dot fool you. At $99, the Apple HomePod Mini is an affordable smart speaker. It’s certainly cheaper than its larger brother, the Apple HomePod, which comes in at $299. You'll be paying the same price if you buy directly through Apple, Best Buy, or some other retailer (note: Amazon doesn’t carry them). That’s true for whichever color strikes your fancy.

While I don’t want to say all smart speakers look the same – they don’t – the Apple HomePod Mini shares more than a passing resemblance to the spherical Amazon Echo Dot (5th Gen). However, this being Apple, there’s more to it, resulting in a more premium-feeling product. As it should, considering the HomePod Mini is twice the price.

Some differences include that the Apple HomePod Mini comes in five colors: Space Grey, blue, yellow, white, and orange. It’s also a bit shorter, standing at a petite 3.3 inches, making the HomePod Mini just as capable of blending into just about any interior design. Its outer grille is also covered with a mesh fabric similar to what would cover the grille of a traditional speaker.

The biggest difference is at the top of the unit, where the controls are. While the Echo Dot also has controls placed atop its sphere, those are physical buttons. The HomePod Mini instead is flat on top, where a backlit touch surface is accessible that only shows + and - (as in Volume Up and Volume Down). It also lights up whenever you engage the speaker through touch or voice command. And iPhone users will hold their phone’s camera over the touch surface when prompted for fast pairing.

The Apple HomePod Mini showcases the wonders of single-unit speakers and their limitations. Thanks to that circular shape and its internal driver and passive radiators, a single HomePod Mini cannot only fill a (small) room with a surprising amount of sound but a fairly full sound. While you won’t get wall-thumping bass from anything this small, the bass response is still robust enough when listening to music.

It’s even better than the Echo Dot I have sitting beside it. The mids are not going to compare to a set of bookshelf speakers, but again, they sound full, if maybe slightly too full, when listening to music with distorted guitars or busy arrangements. The high end is satisfying enough, with plenty of detail to hear everything clearly. While not the most detailed-sounding speaker, you can’t ask for better from something this small.

The main complaint about audio from something like this is that there’s no stereo sound. It’s all mono. Of course, that’s to be expected with anything like this. The Echo and Echo Dot suffer here, as do more expensive speakers like the Bang & Olufsen Beoplay A1 1st Gen. That’s just the nature of the beast.

While not the most detailed-sounding speaker, you can’t ask for better from something this small.

Of course, the one way around that with HomePod Mini is the ability to pair two units together as one unit, almost like HomePod Mini-shaped bookshelf speakers (and I believe some other single-unit speakers do the same).

Also, I appreciate the HomePod Mini’s ability to hear my voice commands even when the volume is turned up. While I can certainly use voice commands for the HomePod Mini to play directly from my streaming service, I like to use Bluetooth when I want more hands-on control.

As an Apple product, the Apple HomePod Mini pairs nicely and quickly with an iPhone or iPad. As mentioned, you can quickly pair the speaker as the phone automatically connects. It requires you to hold the phone or tablet over its touch surface, using your device’s camera to finish the setup. While you’ll have to follow through a few steps on your phone after, those are just to designate some specifics in HomeKit, such as which room the speaker is in.

Unfortunately, like most Apple products, this speaker exists in a walled garden, essentially locking Android users out. If you have an Android device, your only option is to have someone with an Apple device set the speaker up for you to use in a limited capacity (they would have to connect whatever services like Deezer for you to call up). Also, if you’re a Spotify user, be aware that the HomePod Mini does not support Spotify natively.

However, iPhone users have quite a bit to be excited about feature-wise. As this is a smart speaker, you have all the normal functionality of Siri on hand. And, since the HomePod Mini can act as a smart hub for the HomeKit ecosystem, you can also call out to the HomePod Mini to engage with whatever smart devices you have on hand. You can use your voice for other features or dig into the app for such as navigating music, setting alarms, and playing with different settings such as whether the touch surface lights up under various conditions.

Not only can you make calls with the HomePod Mini, but you can also use Siri as the smart speaker will connect via Bluetooth to your phone when making a request directed at it. It also can hand off from the phone to the speaker. Of course, you can still make calls using the speaker if you’re an Android user. But, again, you’ll just be using the Bluetooth connection and will have to make the call from your Android phone first.

Though being able to do that is convenient, I noticed that my voice was a little harder to hear than when I just held the phone up to my ear or even put it on speaker. I sounded farther away. Now, that’s because I set the speaker up on the side of the room from where I usually sit. But, unless you set the speaker up right next to you, your voice will sound a little distant to whomever you’re talking to.

On the positive side, though, the HomePod Mini can supposedly recognize different voices, though I wasn’t able to test this. Other features worth mentioning that I wasn’t able to test, as I had just one unit, is the fact that you can either set up two HomePod Minis as a stereo pair of speakers or put different HomePod Minis in different rooms to not only play the same song in each room like a Sonos system (you can also use each separately), but you can use them as an intercom system.

The smart speaker space has started to become saturated. However, just one speaker stands as the main competitor to the Apple HomePod Mini: the Amazon Echo Dot (5th Gen). At $50, it costs half as much and does many of the same things from functioning as a smart speaker, a smart hub, a conference call device, and more, except that it does so in Amazon’s Alexa ecosystem instead of Apple’s HomeKit one. Of course, there are slight differences between the two beyond that. The Apple HomePod Mini sounds a little fuller, again, not by much. It also uses that backlit touch surface instead of physical buttons for on-unit controls. Conversely, the Echo Dot is compatible with Android and Apple devices.

If you want to spend more, both Apple and Amazon have larger units of the Apple HomePod, which costs $299, and the Amazon Echo (4th Gen), which goes for $99. Of course, the full-size HomePod is the only one that’s not spherical, going for a more conical look. It’s also much larger.

If you want to think outside the box, plenty of alternatives exist. Consider the Google Nest Audio, which supports Google Assistant and can also be used as a smart home hub. It also goes for a similar price as the HomePod Mini. However, most smart speakers won’t function as a smart home hub, such as the Sonos Era 100 or the Bose Portable Smart Speaker, which have voice assistant support but can’t function as a hub.

The Apple HomePod Mini is an excellent smart speaker. It sounds better than it has any right to. It’s chock-full of features, including some interesting ones, once you start getting more than one unit. And it integrates pretty seamlessly with the Apple ecosystem. There’s not much to hold against this speaker except that it’s only for Apple users. And even though it’s twice the price of the Echo Dot that I keep comparing it to, you’re still only paying $99 for a solid speaker.

The Apple HomePod Mini does a lot and does most of it well. It sounds pretty fantastic for its form factor, and can be used as a smart home hub for Apple’s HomeKit. However, not only are most of its features only for Apple users, but you can’t use a HomePod Mini without an Apple device.

James combines his love of music and general tech gadgetry with a passion for writing to not only cover the latest audio equipment but to actually put that English degree to work. From headphones to soundbars and more, he applies his expertise to help guide readers in their online quest for the right piece of tech. When he’s not writing, he’s playing guitar, traveling, or eating. Sometimes, all three at once!