Apple has just revealed its second-gen HomePod Mini smart speaker, promising new Siri AI smarts, more impactful audio and a neat new Sound Glow interactive light show, all stuffed inside a familiar-looking spherical body. If you’re an iPhone household, it might finally be time to give that Amazon Echo the shove.
At just 8.4cm tall the HomePod Mini 2 keeps its dinky stature and seamless, mesh-wrapped exterior. Even the power lead wears a colour-matched weave. Inside you’ll still find a single, full-range speaker driver, paired with passive radiators for bass extension, except Apple has added some “computational audio” tweaking to optimise dynamic range, volume and overall acoustic performance in real-time. Translation: epic sound from something barely bigger than a baseball.
You’ll be able to use one solo, pair two for stereo listening, dot Minis around the home for multi-room listening, or add four to an Apple TV 4K for surround sound streaming. Bring your iPhone close to the HomePod Mini and it’ll hand off music playback, no voice commands needed.
The biggest visual change is the new Sound Glow feature. The backlit, tinted touch surface on top can light up in colours that match the currently playing song’s album artwork, pulsing in tune with the track.
Internally, the same S10 chipset last seen in the Apple Watch Series 10 is running the show. It’ll be a whole lot faster than the S5 chip found in the original HomePod Mini, which was also used in the Apple Watch Series 5, and brings support for Siri AI.
The smarter Siri is coming in a future software update, and will need the HomePod Mini to be paired with an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone or iPad. Once it is, the speaker will be able to recognise up to six different users purely by their voice, and connect to their individual device for announcing personalised info like incoming messages.
It has plenty of sensors inside to act as an extension of your smart home, including temperature and humidity measurements. It’ll also listen out for non-smart smoke or CO2 alarms and send an alert to your phone.
The Apple HomePod Mini launches on October 30. Prices are set at $149/£149. You’ll be able to snag one in pastel-hued Green, Pink, Blue, White or Midnight (black) varieties.
Developing story, more to follow…
