HomePod What expectations did you have for HomePod?

[Endorphine88]

I'm curious. A lot of people seem to have had very confusing (to me at least) expectations from this product.
What were yours? Were they met. Were they exceeded? Were you disappointed?

As far as my experience - I need my music to sound good. My echo device was doing an OK job, but there is no comparison between the two.
I solely bought the HomePod for music. I was very aware that Spotify would not be integrated (Echo doesn't support Apple Music so why is this a big deal? You choose your ecosystem and stay in it...or pay both).
I expected great sound. I was still surprised by how good the sound was for something so small.
What I did not expect was for Siri to be as useful and skilled as Alexa. However, I find Siri much more pleasant to deal with even if she can't get me an Uber. It's also confusing to me when people compare both technologies with the same commands. Some Siri commands happen to be different - you just have to learn how to address her. I also find her much more human-like and responsive. Alexa has issues hearing me even in a quiet environment and will randomly do things I did not ask for.
I really did order this thing with the clear intention of returning if I didn't like it enough. Needles to say, it is not getting returned - I enjoy it thoroughly. Expectation met and exceeded.
How about you?
(Please take some time to back up your responses with examples and don't just blurt out disconnected statements)

 

[za9ra22]

My expectations were that the HomePod would be a typical Apple product, well designed, considered, solid, and that it would sound reasonable, but not exceptional. As someone posted in another thread, you can't beat physics, and small speakers rarely manage much better than small speaker performance.

I planned to place the HomePod on a coffee table that was distant from any structure that might help boost bass performance (most small speakers are designed to be used close to walls for that reason), so I thought it would probably struggle to impress.

I got mine to experiment with. My home already has a few Amazon Echos, which I use mainly for playing background music while I read, and the 2nd generation Echo is remarkably good for the size, but not exactly HiFi, so at most I thought I'd use the HomePod occasionally for AirPlaying my iTunes library.

I already knew that Siri is hopeless in comparison with Alexa, and didn't plan on any use of the HomePod that would involve Siri at all. I was still going to stream music, when I read, on the Echo, because that is usually for one of a few favoured radio stations from the other side of the Atlantic.

I also knew that Apple's main expectation is that the HomePod would lead me to buying into Apple Music, because it's the ecosystem they are interested in drawing customers into, so the lack of Siri's capabilities outside that ecosystem was expected.

First use was to play some of my iTunes purchased music, and immediately it was clear this was no ordinary small speaker. By the time the first track had finished, I could tell the acoustic profile of the HomePod had changed. The sound had tightened up, the bass was firm and there was an actual soundstage, not just a simple point source for the music.

I listened for a couple of hours, and really enjoyed the music. Since then, I've AirPlayed iTunes content and been impressed by the detail it produces, and the solidity of the music. Then I decided to try and AirPlay my favourite radio station from an app on my MacBook. This was really disappointing. It sounded very thin and mid-rangey, with little bass and no dynamic. It had sounded better on the Echo. So I picked the HomePod up in puzzlement and put it back down again. Once I was sitting down again, I could hear bass, and it sounded far more smooth. I turned it up, it got better.

Now, the HomePod is no longer an experiment, it is my go to for music while I'm reading. I have found I use Siri in preference to Alexa for controlling lights that are HomeKit compatible, and I'm going to replace the couple of T-P Link lights I have with Hue bulbs for Siri compatibility. Siri can hear me and responds every time, while Alexa is sometimes sulky or totally deaf. But I've had to switch Siri to US male because the US female sounds like she's in a serious hurry when she speaks. And messing with AirPlay from multiple sources (MacBook, Apple TV, iPad and iPhone) is a bit of a fiddle, but I can live with that.

As was commonly being said when the first iPhone was on the market and users often found it rather deaf to cellular signals, the first thing a phone has to do is be able to make and take calls. The first think the HomePod had to do is play music and make it sound good. It does. It is not superb, but it is excellent. It is not hi-fi, but it is remarkable. It reminds me of the time I first connected a Sugden A48 to my transmission line studio monitors in the '80s. What came out was music. Performance to engage with and be drawn into. The HomePod does that. I don't know how, but it does, and while it is certainly not of the Sugden/TL monitor quality, the fact it produces music in the same way means it has exceeded my expectations by quite a margin.