 After months of delays and tens of millions of devices shipped by their competitors Apple's late entrant to the home smart speaker game has finally arrived But can it possibly compete with the Google Home Max? A speaker twice its size armed with the almighty Google Assistant? Yes, but it's also a little more complicated than that Cable mod Pro series cables use extra thick wires for a fuller more robust look Merged terminals on the component side of each cable have also been eliminated for a cleaner build check them out below Despite some people's observations that it looks kind of like a giant toilet paper roll Subjectively I would still say that the HomePod wins on the design front The seamless 3d mesh fabric looks great from any angle though I would recommend washing your hands before you touch it the capacitive glass top is an elegant haptic and visual interface displaying volume buttons when you're playing music and a beautiful listening animation when you're talking to Siri and we even found the physical interface more pleasing to use Tapping or holding volume buttons feels more intuitive than the slide gesture you have to do on the Google Home Max and It's nice to be able to hail Siri without using your voice a feature that Google removed from all of its home devices Wrong now the HomePod is small, but don't let that fool you It's much heavier than it looks at five and a half pounds And this is thanks to the incredible amount of hardware that Apple packed inside it it's got a four inch subwoofer at the top six microphones around the middle and Seven tweeters at the bottom and not just regular tweeters these are really cool for one thing They are horn loaded which allows them to more efficiently turn mechanical energy into acoustic energy Increasing their effective radiating area and making them sound bigger than they are and for another their diaphragms are Balanced mode radiators meaning that they can produce high frequencies by rippling or low Frequencies by moving the diaphragm in and out the old-fashioned way so if the HomePod senses that the base demands will make the subwoofer distort it will actually offload work to the tweeters and There is more to this technology than just Using good speakers both HomePod and Google Home Max use special low-frequency calibration Microphones to give themselves spatial awareness this functionality does allow these devices to map the room around them and then apply Automatic bass correction to increase clarity Now Apple said in their keynote that the HomePod would direct certain musical assets like the main vocals to the center of the room and Ambient sounds and backup vocals to the side which is really good news because otherwise an Omnidirectional wired speaker would not be ideal a lot of the time so I guess it's all of that stuff combined that made this thing take so darn long and Also what allow the HomePod to avoid distortion even when it's turned way up So the rumors are true. It sounds really really good especially for its size But what about the elephant in the room the Google Home Max? From our evaluation it actually sounded just as good But with a different sound signature while the HomePod has pronounced mids and highs that are very forward Max offers a wider soundstage with deeper chest bumping bass thanks no doubt to its dual Four and a half inch high excursion subwoofers although this is interesting while Max gets Significantly louder before it starts to compromise on sound quality at lower volumes the HomePod can actually deliver surprisingly strong and Pleasing bass compared to the max do we think to its ability to transfer sound down into the surface it's resting on Okay, then so they both sound great, but these aren't just speakers They're smart speakers which brings us to the next question. We have to answer which one is smarter While both assistants offer the usual fare weather stock prices news We were disappointed to learn that unlike her competitors Siri on HomePod Doesn't search the web so while she can rely on native API hooks to answer questions like who is the president of France? The answer I found is Emmanuel Macron at this time she stumbles on Novel queries like how long is the average ferret? I can't get the answer to that on HomePod Ferret typically has a length of 15 inches. It's very jibo of you Siri sad Although your mileage may vary since some people have reported it working, but while that's a clear disadvantage today the two devices are about equal when it comes to response time latency and their ability to hear your commands over loud music and HomePod does have one awesome feature that Google Home doesn't have yet Siri send a text message. What do you want to say? With that said HomePod does not have voice recognition profiles like Google Home does so in theory Anyone could ask your HomePod to read out your last text message whenever they want I found your most recent message from Edsel. Hey fire buns last night was amazing Speaking of privacy while both devices allow you to turn off the microphones Max is the only one that lets you do it with a physical switch so which one should you buy then? We actually think the answer is pretty simple and comes down to whether or not you use Apple music See with a Google Home or Amazon Echo you can use all the major music platforms Spotify Google Play music Pandora iHeartRadio you pretty much name it including Apple music and The same goes for the HomePod So why do we bring that up? Ah Because it's how you can interact with those services that makes all the difference here With Google or Amazon solution you get full voice control with everything But Apple music which is limited to next song and pause with the Google Assistant And even then only if you are casting your entire device via Bluetooth By contrast the HomePod does feature voice control with Apple music But only Apple music so if you're using Spotify the only way to control it Even if you have an iPhone will be through the buttons on your device And there's some more General inflexibility like we've come to expect from Apple Unlike the Max the HomePod does not include a three and a half millimeter jack for third-party speakers and It requires an iOS 11 device for its initial performance iOS 11 device for its initial setup That's right Android users and even those of you with older iOS devices You will need to go buy an iPod touch on Craigslist to get your HomePod working Well mostly working Which brings us then to the features that Apple promised that aren't out yet and won't be until AirPlay 2 launches later on this year One the ability to connect multiple HomePods in stereo and two Multi-room playback from AirPlay 2 devices be they HomePods or Apple TVs or whatever Max can do both of these things today So then that answer wasn't so simple after all but it's okay. I have a summary If you don't have any wooden tables and you're already deep into Apple's ecosystem with an Apple music subscription And a bunch of money sunk into iTunes HomePod is a beautiful piece of hardware and a fantastic speaker But if you are almost literally anybody else You're probably better off with a competitive offering like a Google Home Max an ALI-XA enabled Sonos Or even some regular dumb speakers plugged into an Echo Dot Hey Siri, tell me a joke Well this whole experience wasn't very funny at all This has been quite the project so far. Yeah, I know Hey Siri read out my last text message. 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