The HomePod mini 2, revealed Tuesday as part of Apple’s renewed push into the smart home, looks the same as its predecessor. However, the updated smart speaker comes in new colors and features upgraded internals for an enhanced Siri AI experience.
“HomePod mini 2 brings together Siri AI, gorgeous new colors, and incredible audio,” said Kaiann Drance, Apple’s vice president of worldwide home product marketing, in a press release.
The new set-top box arrived alongside the HomeView smart hub and the Apple Home Collection of smart home accessories.
HomePod mini 2: Siri AI in same design, new colors
Apple released the first HomePod mini in November 2020, so its successor arrives nearly six years later. From the outside, the speaker looks the same, but inside, it uses Apple’s S10 chip to deliver better dynamic range, loudness and acoustic performance.
The only notable visual upgrade is the addition of sound glow at the top of the speaker. Apple describes it as a “visual canvas that glows and pulses in sync with the music, reacting in real time to bass and treble.” It even automatically picks up colors from the currently playing song’s artwork. Or you can pick a soundscape like rain to trigger bespoke animations.
Photo: Apple
More importantly, Apple says that, for the first time, you can create a four-speaker surround sound experience with the HomePod mini 2 and Apple TV 4K. The devices will intelligently recognize their positions in the room to calibrate the audio timing and levels according to the space.
You can also use the HomePod mini as a speaker for your Mac.
Deep Siri AI integration
Another highlight of the HomePod mini 2 is its deep Siri AI and Apple Intelligence integration. Thanks to the powerful S10 chip, Siri on the HomePod mini 2 can use on-device processing for simpler commands. For more complex requests, it will use Apple’s Private Cloud Compute. In both cases, Apple says it does not store the data or make it available to anyone else.
But it won’t be available at launch. “Siri AI coming to HomePod mini 2 in a future software update,” says Apple. And it also points out that “Siri AI requires the owner of the home in the Home app to have an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone or iPad running the latest software version and have Siri AI turned on and set to a supported language.”
Pricing and availability
The HomePod mini 2 is available for preorder in the United States and more than 20 other countries starting today. It comes in pink, green, blue, white and midnight.
Apple’s updated smart speaker will hit retail stores on October 30, with an MSRP of $149. The speaker will ship with HomePod software 27.2.
The company says a future software update will bring Siri AI support in English to the speaker in the United States, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and the United Kingdom.
Rajesh has been writing about consumer technology for over a decade, with a strong focus on iPhones, Macs and Apple’s ecosystem. He enjoys digging into Apple software updates, hardware changes, and discovering new Mac apps that make work faster and more enjoyable.
You can reach out to him at mail[at]rajeshpandey.me.
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