As I mentioned earlier, Apple’s HomePod is designed to be something between a smart speaker like an Amazon Echo and a connected speaker like a Sonos device — and its price is meant to be a reflection of that, too. As of June 2017, here’s what the most popular smart-home and connected-speaker options are:
- Amazon Echo Dot: $50
- Amazon Tap: $130
- Google Home: $130
- Amazon Echo: $180
- Amazon Echo Look: $200
- Sonos Play 1: $200
- Amazon Echo Show: $230
- Sonos Play 3: $300
- Apple HomePod: $350
- Sonos Play 5: $500
As you’ll notice, Apple’s HomePod is actually on the upper-end of the most popular options, price-wise. And that, to me, is another big knock against it.
Like I mentioned earlier, I own both a Sonos family of speakers as well as an Amazon Echo. Sonos speakers sound better than the Echo, as most people will tell you. But over 90% of the time, when I want to play music, I choose the Echo.
There's an important reason I play music through my Echo more often than the Sonos: The Echo is simply easier and more satisfying to use. I can ask to play a song with my voice more quickly than I could searching for that song on my computer, via the Spotify section of the Sonos app. I can also change songs on the fly, as quickly as my imagination can come up with new songs to suggest. And the audio quality on the Echo, while not better than the Sonos, is “good enough” to merit me choosing the Echo as my main speaker.
This is the same reason I prefer Apple’s $170 AirPods over most headphones, even my favorite over-ear pair for 3+ years now, the $300 V-Moda Crossfade Wireless. If the difference in audio is negligible — and most people cannot discern small differences in audio quality — ease of use wins out, every single time. I don’t mind that AirPods can’t achieve the same bass as my V-Moda’s. They’re easier to charge, easier to carry, and easier to use, and that makes all the difference.
In other words, the key selling point of the HomePod is its Echo-like attributes, not its Sonos-like ones. Trust me on this one: Connected speakers are nice, but they’re not as transformative as smart speakers, because audio quality matters less when its other abilities can have a bigger impact on your life. So when considering the price of the HomePod, don’t compare it to Sonos; compare it to the Amazon Echo. And in this particular case, the Amazon Echo can do all of the same things the HomePod can (with the exception of AirPlay and Apple Music-related features), for $170 less. You can buy two Amazon Echos for the price of one HomePod, pretty much.