…pretty disappointed with them?

Got mine earlier this week after waiting for a couple of months for delivery. Plus side, they look great and the sound quality is pretty damn good. In fact when they work they are bob on.

However… It seems that they can’t interface directly with Spotify and won’t stream BBC radio (I’m a 6Music fan). I’m not switching from Spotify to Apple Music, it’s a family subscription and I’ve built up many playlists. It seems that the solution is to use Airplay from my phone (Apple SE 1st Gen). Fine but this keeps breaking up almost like it’s losing signal.

Obviously I’m going to get on to support before boxing them up and sending them back but I thought I’d check for shared experiences on here first. So, anyone..?

Nope, really pleased with mine 😀 You must understand surely that there’s 2 ways of doing things, the Apple way and the wrong way 😂 There are 3rd party apps to transfer playlists between Spotify & AM btw.

I can play BBC Radio fine using the BBC Sounds iPhone app and handing off to the HPM… is the problem that your SE is too old to get the latest updates now?

Mines brilliant. An astonishing amount of good quality noise out of such a small box and I also bought it fully understanding it’s apple and Spotify and bbc have never been and still aren’t supported so was not disappointed 😜

Nope, the SE is still supported OS wise. I’ve been handing off from the phone to the HPM for 6Music and if that’s the way it is then I’m good with that. Problem is that the connection between phone and HPM seems flaky as.

I can give you a steer on getting BBC Radio on the HomePod. You need Receiver app on your iPhone which you can script to play via Siri.

Similarly you can also specify the app and track from Spotify using the same phone.

If you or your family app users don’t have iPhones you probably bought the worst smart speaker for the job.

For me it’s a disappointing product and I’m a mostly apple fanboy.

I was doing a renovation for a customer during the summer who had one of it’s big brothers and it very rarely responded to commands correctly. Asking it to play radio stations required a very slow detailed request or else you’d end up with something totally different. Couldn’t fault the sound quality but having used many google and echo speakers over the past few years, I find them to be far superior. iPhone Siri is just as useless. Pity apple cant just integrate Alexa, like apple maps, I don’t know why they waste their time when google maps are so much better, apple music vs spotify, Apple TV+ vs prime and Netflix. Love their hardware and os but seem to be wasting their time in other areas where the competition is in another ball park

Nope, happy with mine.

RE. the Spotify and BBC radio. It sucks, but have slightly limited sympathy as Apple don’t claim to support these services other than via Airplay direct from iOS device, and it is noted constantly in all reviews. As I understand it, the opportunity is completely open for third parties to integrate but unfortunately the majority are not willing to conform to Apple’s privacy policy (Apple won’t share user data with 3rd parties).

As for the connection issues, unless you are incredibly unlucky you are not going to have multiple faulty units so it’s going to be down to an issue with the network they are connected to. I have four original homepods and they went from performing perfectly well, with very occasional excruciatingly irritating glitches, to absolutely flawless when I changed my wifi from a good multi-WAP system to a banging mesh system. The only problem I ran into recently was when setting up a stereo pair next to my TV. I found that the wireless connection between my soundbar and its subwoofer produced interference that caused intermittent problems with the homepods. So if your wifi is top notch already, then interference from some other device could be the problem (microwave, cordless phone etc.). If you have the capability, switching them to connecting to a 2.4 GHz network from a 5 GHz network seems to help in some cases.

Thanks timmys, food for thought there…

Don’t own one, but have listened to one a few times and sound seems pretty good for the size and price. Can’t really complain that it doesn’t integrate something well when it doesn’t claim to. With Apple you’re either invested in their ecosystem or best going elsewhere. Totally agree that Siri is absolutely shite on every device.

I’m considering a purchase as I love the big one I already have.

I’m a bit surprised that OP bought one as it’s stated in all the reviews I’ve read that you need to be an Apple Music user to get the best out of it … and I thought it was common knowledge that Apple stuff only ever really works with Apple stuff.

I’ve never used Alexa or whatever the Google one is so they may well be loads better, but I have zero problems with Siri on iPhone/Watch/HomePod!

The mini HomePod does seem like a neat device. And if its sound is along the same lines as the bigger HomePod, but smaller, then that’s good.

I have an old Apple Hi-Fi that has an echo dot plugged into its external source input. Works nicely with Apple Music set as the default music source and BBC sounds works fine, except for the tedious repetition of ‘if you want bbc news then just say…’. Alexa is way better than Siri all round, well except for its privacy policy.

I have zero problems with Siri on iPhone/Watch/HomePod

Perhaps you have a magic voice? Since the advent of Siri my ‘hit rate’ of getting what I asked for may be in single percentage figures. Poor voice recognition and woeful knowledge navigation has been my experience.

on airplay streaming problems, I’d go along with what folks have said already: sort out your Wi-Fi first, then check for interference. I’ve not had problems with airplay from iPhones, macs, or iPads to an old airport express router, a couple of Apple TV’s, or an LG webos tv. but my ASUS mesh system with Ethernet backhaul seems to give fair service.

Nope I’m pretty happy with mine, the only niggle is that when I say ‘play absolute radio’ he plays Absolute Soul Radio. But it can work out play absolute radio 90s, the only way round is to play it from the tunein app on my iPhone and then send it to the homepod mini which flattens the battery on the iPhone which is one of the reasons I got the homepod mini instead of using an Ultimate Ears Speaker. Other than that I’m pretty happy with it but I’ve been using apple music for a while now and have built up my likes and dislikes so it’s all good. Only other disadvantage over the wireless speaker is that I can’t take it with me to my bike room for when I’m fettling, I have to turn the volume up and have the doors open instead.

As for the connection issues, unless you are incredibly unlucky you are not going to have multiple faulty units so it’s going to be down to an issue with the network they are connected to. I have four original homepods and they went from performing perfectly well, with very occasional excruciatingly irritating glitches, to absolutely flawless when I changed my wifi from a good multi-WAP system to a banging mesh system.

After realising that my home network was indeed a pile of pish, I upgraded to a Mesh network running on TP Link Deco 5. Happy to say that the connectivity is sorted and using Airplay from my iPhone is delivering flawless performance. Now delighted with my purchase.

@Coyote great, now just say 3 Hail Steves for penance and we will not speak of your blasphemy again 😀

That’s great to hear. They are addictive things to keep adding round the house 🙂
Original ones as a stereo pair are something to hear.