TESTED: Apple HomePod vs. Google Home Max - a PC Guy's Perspective
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,629 words · ~8 min read
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after months of delays and tens of millions of devices shipped by their
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competitors apple's late entrant to the home smart speaker game has finally
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arrived but can it possibly compete with the google home max a speaker twice its
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size armed with the almighty google assistant
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yes but it's also a little more complicated
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than that
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cablemod pro series cables use extra thick wires for a fuller more robust
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look merged terminals on the component side of each cable have also been
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eliminated for a cleaner build check them out below
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despite some people's observations that it looks kind of like a giant toilet
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paper roll subjectively i would still say that the homepod wins on the design
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front the seamless 3d mesh fabric looks great from any angle though i would
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recommend washing your hands before you touch it the capacitive glass top is an
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elegant haptic and visual interface displaying volume buttons when you're
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playing music and a beautiful listening animation when you're talking to siri
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and we even found the physical interface more pleasing to use
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tapping or holding volume buttons feels more intuitive than the slide gesture
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you have to do on the google home max and it's nice to be able to hail siri
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without using your voice a feature that google removed from all of its home
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devices wrong now the homepod is small
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but don't let that fool you it's much heavier than it looks at five and a half
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pounds and this is thanks to the incredible amount of hardware that apple
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packed inside it it's got a four inch subwoofer at the top
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six microphones around the middle and seven tweeters at the bottom
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and not just regular tweeters these are really cool for one thing they are horn
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loaded which allows them to more efficiently turn mechanical energy into
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acoustic energy increasing their effective radiating area and making them
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sound bigger than they are and for another their diaphragms are balanced
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mode radiators meaning that they can produce high frequencies by rippling or
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low frequencies by moving the diaphragm in and out the old-fashioned way so if
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the homepod senses that the base demands will make the subwoofer distort it will
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actually offload work to the tweeters and
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there is more to this technology than just
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using good speakers both homepod and
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google home max use special low frequency calibration microphones to
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give themselves spatial awareness this functionality does allow these devices
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to map the room around them and then apply automatic base correction to
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increase clarity now apple said in their keynote that the
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homepod would direct certain musical assets like the main vocals to the
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center of the room and ambient sounds and backup vocals to the side which is
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really good news because otherwise an omnidirectional wired speaker would not
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be ideal a lot of the time
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so i guess it's all of that stuff combined that made this thing take so
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darn long and also what allow the homepod to avoid
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distortion even when it's turned way up so the rumors are true it sounds really
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really good especially for its size
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but what about the elephant in the room the google home max
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from our evaluation it actually sounded just as good but
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with a different sound signature while the homepod has pronounced mids and
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highs that are very forward max offers a
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wider sound stage with deeper chest bumping bass thanks no doubt to its dual
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four and a half inch high excursion subwoofers although this is interesting
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while max gets significantly louder before it starts to compromise on sound
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quality at lower volumes the homepod can
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actually deliver surprisingly strong and pleasing bass compared to the max due we
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think to its ability to transfer sound down into the surface it's resting on
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okay then so they both sound great but
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these aren't just speakers they're smart speakers which brings us to the next
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question we have to answer which one is smarter
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while both assistants offer the usual fare weather stock prices
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news we were disappointed to learn that
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unlike her competitors sirion homepod
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doesn't search the web so while she can rely on native API
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hooks to answer questions like who is the president of france the answer i
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found is emmanuel macron at this time she stumbles on novel
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queries like how long is the average ferret i can't
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get the answer to that on home pod ferret typically has a length of 15
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inches it's very gebo of you siri
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sad although your mileage may vary since some people have reported it working but
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while that's a clear disadvantage today the two devices are about equal when it
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comes to response time latency and their ability to hear your commands over loud
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music and homepod does have one awesome
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feature that google home doesn't have yet siri
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send a text message what do you want to say
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with that said homepod does not have voice recognition profiles like google
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home does so in theory anyone could ask
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your homepod to read out your last text message whenever they want i found your
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most recent message from edsel hey fire buns
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last night was amazing speaking of privacy while both devices allow you to
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turn off the microphones max is the only one that lets you do it with a physical
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switch so which one should you buy then
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we actually think the answer is pretty simple and comes down to whether or not
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you use apple music see with a google
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home or amazon echo you can use all the major music platforms spotify google
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play music pandora iheartradio you pretty much name it including apple
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music and the same goes for the homepod
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so why did we bring that up ah because it's how you can interact with
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those services that makes all the difference here
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with google or amazon solution you get
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full voice control with everything but
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apple music which is limited to next song and pause with the google assistant
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and even then only if you are casting your entire device via bluetooth
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by contrast the homepod does feature voice control with apple music
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but only apple music so if you're using spotify the only way to control it even
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if you have an iphone will be through the buttons on your device
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and there's some more general inflexibility like we've come to
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expect from apple unlike the max the homepod does not include a three and a
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half millimeter jack for third party speakers and it requires an iOS 11
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device for its initial setup that's right Android users and even
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those of you with older iOS devices you will need to go buy an ipod touch on
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craigslist to get your home homepod working
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well mostly working which brings us then to the features
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that apple promised that aren't out yet and won't be until airplay 2 launches
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later on this year one the ability to connect multiple home pods in stereo and
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two multi-room playback from airplay 2
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devices be they homepods or apple tvs or whatever
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max can do both of these things today
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so then that answer wasn't so simple after all but it's okay i have a summary
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if you don't have any wooden tables and
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you're already deep into apple's ecosystem with an apple music
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subscription and a bunch of money sunk into itunes
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homepod is a beautiful piece of hardware and a fantastic speaker
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but if you are almost literally
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anybody else you're probably better off with a competitive offering like a
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google home max and alexa enabled sonos
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or even some regular dumb speakers plugged into an echo dot
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hey siri tell me a joke
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well this whole experience wasn't very funny at all so this has been quite the
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project so far yeah i know hey siri read out my last text message i
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found your most recent message from edsel hey fire buns last night was
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