Apple today announced the second generation HomePod, the smart speaker that brings Siri into your smart home. With a superior quality audio and a minimalist design but sophisticated, it also allows you to listen to music, podcasts and any other form of entertainment. As well as managing the smart home and answering all your questions.
Apple announces the second generation of HomePod
The new HomePod arrives in the Apple Store starting today, with deliveries starting February 3. An update that many users have been waiting for, especially since these new models promise to bring the audio quality to a higher level.
As he explains Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, “Leveraging our expertise and innovations in audio, the new HomePod delivers deep, rich bass, natural mids, and crystal clear highs. Thanks to the popularity of HomePod mini, we have seen growing interest in even more powerful acoustic performance, possible in a larger HomePod. We are excited to bring the latest generation of HomePods to customers around the world.”
Touch design and controls
The coating in seamless mesh fabric is acoustically transparent, as well as sustainable since it is 100% recycled. Available in white or midnight, it includes a matching braided power cord.
The touch surface is backlit and lights up to the edges, helping not only to give feedback when you use the speaker but also to give a touch of light on the desk or shelf where you place it. Apple has its own clear style and it seems that the second generation HomePods fully embrace it.
Great attention to audio
In recent years Apple has amazed several times with their own AirPodscontinuing the tradition of audio excellence already started with the iPod. Cupertino’s audio engineers wanted to bring all of this expertise in the new HomePods: Apple promises rich and deep bass, with clear and melodically perfect high frequencies.
Il high excursion woofer has a 20mm diaphragm, designed to deliver thunderous bass, also thanks to the microphone with built-in bass equalizer. It then has five tweeters in an array with beamforming to deliver quality high-mid tones.
Il chip S7 offers advanced computational audio: Cupertino promises to exploit every millimeter of this audio system. In fact, it recognizes the acoustic reflections of surfaces in order to understand how to emit sound into the environment, giving you well-modulated audio in any environment.
READ ALSO: Apple presents the new M2 Pro and M2 Max chips[/box]
The apple ecosystem
Beyond the technology inside these HomePod second generation, the advantage for Apple users lies in Apple’s ecosystem of services and hardware. The ability to play over 100 million songs from Apple Music oi millions of episodes on Apple Podcast. Which you can also enjoy with spatial audio, perhaps creating a home theater effect while watching a TV series such as Ted Lasso su Apple TV 4K. And then, you’ll have the ability to talk to Siri, which all iPhone users are familiar with.
Apple explains that you can too use two or more HomePods or HomePod minis to create stereo effects or multiroom con AirPlay: Just press and hold the top of HomePod and say “Hey Siri” to play the same song, play multiple different songs, or use it as an intercom.
With the ultra-wideband technology, you can play anything you’re listening to on iPhone directly to HomePod – including calls. And by bringing the Apple smartphone close to HomePod, anyone in the house will see what you are playing and the suggestions will appear automatically.
Finally, there is the app Where is it on HomePod to locate your Apple devices: just ask Siri.
Discover the best offers of the day on the techgameworld.com Telegram channel
Apple announces second generation HomePods: compatible with Matter
The smart speaker is also essential for those who want a truly smart home. Indeed with Acknowledgments soundsSecond-generation HomePods can acknowledge alarms from smoke detectors and the like by poi notify you on iPhone or other Apple device.
They also integrated istemperature and humidity sensors to analyze environments. And you can create automations, for example to activate shutters or fans based on the temperature.
With Siri, you can create scene (the classic “Good morning” which activates everything you need in the morning, for example). You can also create ambient sounds to wake you up in a good mood or fall asleep better.
Integration with the Home app allows you to control air conditioning, lighting, security. And with the full support of the standard Matter, you can connect a large number of new compatible products. All with Apple’s usual attention to privacy and a particular care for the environment: on HomePod you find 100% recycled gold in the plating of various circuit boards and 100% recycled rare earth in the speaker magnet. And the packaging is made up of 96% fibers and eliminates the external plastic film.
Price and availability
You can order HomePod (2nd generation) today for the price of 349 euro on the Store, with deliveries starting from February 3rd.
We point out that HomePod (second generation) is compatible with iPhone SE (2nd generation) and later or iPhone 8 and later with iOS 16.3 or later; or iPad Pro, iPad (5th generation) and later, iPad Air (3rd generation) and later, or iPad mini (5th generation) and later with iPadOS 16.3.