HomePod How suitable is the HomePod for phone calls?

[afir93]

I'm currently looking into the HomePod, but one area that I'd be interested to use it for that I can't find an awful lot about is the quality of phone calls done through the HomePod, and I was hoping that some of you who have tried that could share their experience. I know what it technically works like (that you have to make/take a call over the iPhone, and reroute it to the HomePod, which personally wouldn't bother me too much), but I'd like to know what the experience when talking to people via the HomePod is like.

To keep it short, my most important question is: when using the HomePod as a speaker for phone calls, will the other person hear their own voice during the call? Or is this cleverly avoided using software filters and the like? Has anyone tried that?

Outside of that, I'd like to know how clearly the person on the other hand can hear and understand you, even if you're not sitting right in front of the HomePod but maybe a few meters away. Reviews say that the HomePod is able to distinguish "Hey Siri" even from a bit further away and during loud music playback, so it seems the HomePod mics themselves are excellent, but does anyone have experience if that also carries over to the audio quality for the other person on the line?

 

[mallbritton]

I've used my HomePod this way a few times, and for the most part the quality is outstanding. The person on the other end does not hear themselves, and they could not tell I was using an "external speaker." Obviously, they could tell I was on "speaker phone," though. They also said the call quality on their end was outstanding.

The only problem I had on my end was when on a FaceTime Audio call with a person on an iPad, I was having trouble hearing them as they walked around the kitchen because the mic on the iPad apparently isn't all that great.