Apple’s iPhone 16 event gave us the AirPods 4, but where are the new HomePods?

There was a time when we thought that the Apple HomePod had taken a permanent dirt nap. Apple discontinued the original HomePod (released in early 2018) despite its popularity and inescapable quality, yet two years after its supposed death, the Californian company decided to surprise and delight us all with the unveiling of the long-awaited sequel. The Apple HomePod 2 was glorious, and it made us hungry for more.

More hasn’t arrived, though. We've gone through another Apple September launch event which gave us the AirPods 4 , the iPhone 16 and the iPhone 16 Pro , yet not a hint of any new HomePods. The second-gen HomePod currently sits alongside the even older HomePod Mini , and while they’re both five-star products that still slot well into the iOS ecosystem, it seems utterly strange that Apple has been so reluctant to give us a sequel. Perhaps there’s more money in the wireless earbuds market, an arena in which Apple are so unbelievably dominant, or perhaps the decision-makers at the top don’t feel that a new release is worth the trouble when the current models are still performing well.

The thing is, while both HomePods are great products, they’re not entirely perfect, with the ravages of time only opening the door for imperfections to become issues. Rivals are taking smart speakers extremely seriously – Amazon seems to pump out multiple models a year, whereas Sonos impressed us hugely with its Sonos Era 300 and Sonos Era 100 smart speakers. JBL’s having a go too, and while its Authentics 300 and Authetics 500 weren’t perfect, they were feature-packed, versatile and thoroughly modern performers.

Apple needs to get back into the smart speaker space before it gets left behind or, worse, its devoted customers are saddled with products that are built for a given ecosystem but which aren’t keeping up with their competitors. The HomePod 2 doesn't offer Siri control for the likes of Spotify and Tidal , for instance, while the HomePod Mini doesn’t have the sort of comprehensive control app that we’d expect from a company such as Apple. The Amazon Echo Dot (5th gen) isn’t as impressive sonically, but it’s a more amenable app and inescapably smarter AI assistant Alexa can make the Mini, sound aside, look a little primitive.

There’s always room to improve your products’ sound, too. Even if Apple did a sterling job with both the HomePod 2 and the HomePod Mini, there’s no question that internal tweaks could take their sound to the next level. We loved the omnidirectionally of the second-gen model, though we felt that rivals such as the Audio Pro C10 MKII gave more sonic punch and impetus for projecting sound further into a room. Also, what about bringing in support for Hi-Res Lossless (anything over 24-bit/48kHz)? It’s worth considering.

External Design tweaks could also bring the HomePod, especially the hypothetical mainline third-gen model, up to date. We keep hearing rumours that the new unit will have its own 7-inch screen, though Bloomberg ’s Mark Gurman has previously speculated that this particular debutante won’t make its bow until 2025. It’s also unclear as to whether that will act as a sequel to the HomePod 2 or, running parallel to the likes of the Google Nest Hub and Amazon Echo Show lines, would be a separate product altogether.

Either way, the wait for a new HomePod has gone on for far too long. It’s been roughly two years since we’ve had a new iteration of either of Apple’s popular smart speakers, and that just feels like an excessively long gap, particularly when you consider how keen its rivals have been to dominate this ever-growing sector. The HomePods are superb, but it may be a little complacent of Apple to assume that they’ll always be top dog, even if it’s tough for its faithful users to jump ship and plug into an entirely new ecosystem. New headphones are all well and good, but a new HomePod would see Apple reassert its authority in a sector that’s only becoming increasingly competitive and sought-after as time goes on.

MORE:

Apple iPhone 16 launch event: AirPods 4 are official, AirPods Max, AirPods Pro 2 get updated

Read our Apple HomePod 2 review

And our HomePod Mini review

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