**HomePod Second Generation Review: A Significantly Improved Speaker**

The HomePod second generation sounds any better but it definitely doesn't sound any worse, which is great news and what I was kind of expecting. Um, I think the controls are much faster. Let's try hey I have Google at home I have I'm about to say hey Google hey turn off production room light okay the lights are off the Ikea floor lamp is not responding check the home app for more details. Okay, I feel like that's a lot faster than the original HomePod that I had uh hey turn on production room lights the Ikea floor lamp is not responding yeah I uh I don't use the HomePod Mini here a lot and so I actually had this in my home theater setup but um I I think whenever I ask Siri to do something with lights it's not as fast so I'm actually gonna plug in the old version we're gonna do the same test while this is booting up. One other thing that you'll notice or that I wanted to talk about is with this like glass area here, you'll see that whenever we invoke Siri or we play a song or something and this is illuminated it's actually illuminating the entire top here it kind of goes from edge to edge and then on this one here you'll see that there is going to be like a bezel whenever I invoke Siri so if I say hey turn off production room lights it doesn't take up the full edge here and it's also much slower. I mean, look at how much slower this is we haven't even gotten the lights turned off yet um so the lights are taking a while to respond no Siri you're taking a while to respond um so you can see huge difference in this model uh compared to this and that's obviously a lot to do with the new chip that's inside as well um we're finally bumped up to what I believe is an S7 which is an A13 equivalent um so yeah huge difference and if I got that wrong I'll annotate it but that's what I'm pretty sure is in here. Obviously, I wanted to point out that the screen here whenever I ask this HomePod with Siri here and it illuminates with its rainbowy colors you kind of get it from edge to edge also just like the HomePod Mini these uh volume controls are always on it's part of the actual glass this here it illuminates up um whenever we start something or anything you can see that they kind of go away I like that a little bit more than having this like part of the etched in glass but it is what it is. You can see here if I ask Siri again hey turn on production room lights that was a little better okay let's give Siri another shot here since it was much faster on the second time around let's see hey turn off production room lights okay that was better um but that initial one was pretty bad and then lastly one of the things you should definitely do obviously when you get this new HomePod but with your other HomePod Minis, you can download version 16.3 of the HomePod software and as you can see here it gives you a whole list of new features primarily temperature and humidity sensing which measures your indoor climate with again this HomePod second generation not the first and your HomePod Mini so if you have an existing HomePod Mini you should be able to check out your temperature and humidity levels using your HomePod.

**The New Features of HomePod Second Generation**

There are a bunch of other things on here you can have find my on HomePod which enables you to ask Siri for the location of friends and family, you can have reoccurring home automations be set up using just your voice Siri confirmation tone will now play to indicate when smart home requests are completed which is what we heard on the original HomePod there uh audio tuning optimizes spoken content such as podcasts for even greater clarity on HomePod Second Generation and the first generation, updated volume controls for your first gen to give you more granular adjusted volume updates um, and remastered ambient sounds are more immersive and can now be added to scenes automations and alarms inside of the Home Map.

**Setting Up Your HomePod Stereo Pair**

If you're planning to pick up a new HomePod, you'll need two of them. The HomePod Mini cannot be used as a HomePod, which makes sense but what doesn't make sense I guess is that you cannot use HomePod 1 to HomePod 2 because it will sound technically different. I guess I don't know but you need two of these and so let me know in the comments down below what your setup plans are for the new HomePod.

**Conclusion**

This has been quite a test with Macramers, thanks so much for watching and I hope to see you around in the next video

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enoh God these are a little heavy a little heavy new home pods I mean kind of new home pods they're going to look pretty much the same but uh Apple finally released an updated version of the bigger home pod and uh well I got two of them and we're gonna unbox them and I'll do a quick listening test and let you guys know how they are and get you my first impressions but let's just start doing it so they come in this all brown box with a pull tab here ow out there we go typical Apple packaging always wonderful um I went with the white version because I wasn't convinced that the midnight was any different than the last iteration of I think that was space gray and apparently I'm wrong and it's a little bit more blue like apple usually does I don't believe in Apple's cohesiveness with colors but I also have a bunch of the darker ones from before so I wanted to go with the lighter version in here is another one now we got two for stereo pairing because you still can't cross stereo pair with you know definitely not a homepod mini but not even the first generation of these larger home pods so if you want a stereo pair you need to do you need to buy two of them why do I keep unboxing so weird they don't fully flap down they only do it on just this one side it's a little strange anyways get that out of here so here we have two home pods here is another Apple pull tab my favorite way to unbox things just pull tabs and throw the mess on the ground and here we go now I do have another homepod okay so one of the biggest differences that you'll know is that you can actually remove the cable like it's supposed to come out uh I know in the past when we had the original homepod people did take the cable out and Apple's like hey don't do that um you can do that they actually come pre you know detached and so yeah and then another thing is if you have untreated or unfinished wood or unsealed wood um it's still going to leave a mark at least with the white one you might stain that wood a little bit so just a heads up if you got an Ikea desktop or a tabletop that you use for a desk like a lot of people do this might leave a ring and so well that's just something to keep in mind inside the Box again you have your cable it's braided and it's color matched which is nice and it easily attaches like so don't know why Apple didn't do this the first time around but it learned from its mistakes and now we have a detachable cable which is super helpful probably one of the biggest upgrades in my opinion and then there's some booklets in here pamphlets things no stickers um but you do get a guide if you need it and then one of the other things you'll notice is that up here this little glass area is actually smaller and a little bit like more recessed kind of like the homepod mini which I have one right here that I'll just take off the shelf and as you can see it uh it very much matches the top here um these two both look the same where the glass is kind of recessed now if you're wondering what I'm talking about on the old one which I also have on this shelf um the glass is much larger area and it's like flush with the mesh like netting around it and so yeah it's smaller and it's kind of recessed in let's see if this bottom part has changed a little bit yes it has so that's completely flush and flat and it does maybe that's why it looks a little taller you do have that's probably what it is this little coaster stand here just looks a little bit bigger and so it'll sit up a little bit taller but I think the actual dimensions are the same okay we got the setup boom you're gonna have to scan this scanned boom we have the little chime going and where do we want to put it we're going to put it in the studio we can put it it doesn't matter let's put it in the editing room sure sure why not so one of the first things I'm noticing with the new homepod is how immediate it is with like taking over and doing the handoff obviously the homepod mini behaves in the same way but the previous home pod was not very good at this and that's because it didn't have the U1 chip and this does another key difference but I mean really it's really just a bigger version of the homepod mini in terms of all of its features and what it can do and then just better sound quality and speaking of sound quality is it better than the original I think again a lot of the people out there who have had this before we did have said that it's pretty much the same which is actually impressive considering that they remove some of the sound components like the tweeters and the woofers in there so um yeah let's just do a quick sound test and see how it is I mean it sounds good um yeah it sounds a lot like the first generation um I think it's uh yeah I mean so far it sounds a lot like the original homepod I don't think it sounds any better but it definitely doesn't sound any worse which is great news and what I was kind of expecting um I think the controls are much faster let's try hey I have Google at home I have I'm about to say hey Google hey turn off production room light okay the lights are off the Ikea floor lamp is not responding check the home app for more details okay I feel like that's a lot faster than the original homepod that I had uh hey turn on production room lights the Ikea floor lamp is not responding yeah I uh I don't use the homepod minis here a lot and so I actually had uh this is what I use for like the home theater setup but um I I think whenever I ask Siri to do something with lights it's not as fast so I'm actually gonna plug in the old version we're gonna do the same test while this is booting up one other thing that you'll notice or that I wanted to talk about is with this like glass area here you'll see that whenever we invoke Siri or we play a song or something and this is illuminated it's actually Illuminating the entire top here it kind of goes from edge to edge and then on this one here you'll see that there is going to be like a bezel whenever I invoke Series so if I say hey turn off production room lights it doesn't take up the full edge here and it's also much slower I mean look at how much slower this is we haven't even gotten the lights turned off yet um so the lights are taking a while to respond no Siri you're taking a while to respond um so you can see here huge difference in this model uh compared to this and that's obviously a lot to do with the new chip that's inside as well um we're finally bumped up to what I believe is an S7 which is an a13 equivalent um so yeah huge difference and if I got that wrong I'll annotate it but that's what I'm pretty sure is in here and then obviously I wanted to point out that the screen here whenever I ask this homepod with Siri here and it illuminates with its rainbowy colors you kind of get it from edge to edge also just like the homepod mini these uh volume controls are always on it's part of the actual glass this here it illuminates up um whenever we start something or anything you can see that they kind of go away I like that a little bit more than having this like part of the etched in glass but it is what it is you can see here if I ask Siri again hey turn on production room lights that was a little better okay let's give Siri another shot here since it was much faster on the second time around let's see hey turn off production room lights okay that was better um but that initial one was pretty bad and then lastly one of the things you should definitely do obviously when you get this new home pod but with your other homepod minis you can download version 16.3 of the homepod software and as you can see here it gives you a whole list of new features primarily temperature and humidity sensing which measures your indoor climate with again this homepod second generation not the first and your homepod mini so if you have an existing homepod mini you should be able to check out your temperature and humidity levels using your home pod and then there's a bunch of other things on here you can have find my on homepod which enables you to ask Siri for the location of friends and family you can have reoccurring home automations be set up using just your voice Siri confirmation tone will now play to indicate when smart home requests are completed which is what we heard on the original home pod there uh audio tuning optimizes spoken content such as podcasts for even greater Clarity on homepod Second Generation and the first generation there are updated volume controls for your first gen to give you more granular adjusted volume updates um and uh remastered ambient sounds are more immersive and can now be added to scenes automations and alarms inside of the home map and so those are just some of the things that you can do so let me know in the comments down below what you think are you planning to pick up a new home pod are you going to use it for stereo pair for your Apple TV if so you're going to need two of these you cannot do a homepod mini to homepod which makes sense but what doesn't make sense I guess is you cannot do homepod 1 to homepod 2 because it will sound technically different I guess I don't know but you need two of these and so let me know in the comments down below what your setup plans are for the new homepod this has been down with macramers thanks so much for watching and I hope to see you around in the next videooh God these are a little heavy a little heavy new home pods I mean kind of new home pods they're going to look pretty much the same but uh Apple finally released an updated version of the bigger home pod and uh well I got two of them and we're gonna unbox them and I'll do a quick listening test and let you guys know how they are and get you my first impressions but let's just start doing it so they come in this all brown box with a pull tab here ow out there we go typical Apple packaging always wonderful um I went with the white version because I wasn't convinced that the midnight was any different than the last iteration of I think that was space gray and apparently I'm wrong and it's a little bit more blue like apple usually does I don't believe in Apple's cohesiveness with colors but I also have a bunch of the darker ones from before so I wanted to go with the lighter version in here is another one now we got two for stereo pairing because you still can't cross stereo pair with you know definitely not a homepod mini but not even the first generation of these larger home pods so if you want a stereo pair you need to do you need to buy two of them why do I keep unboxing so weird they don't fully flap down they only do it on just this one side it's a little strange anyways get that out of here so here we have two home pods here is another Apple pull tab my favorite way to unbox things just pull tabs and throw the mess on the ground and here we go now I do have another homepod okay so one of the biggest differences that you'll know is that you can actually remove the cable like it's supposed to come out uh I know in the past when we had the original homepod people did take the cable out and Apple's like hey don't do that um you can do that they actually come pre you know detached and so yeah and then another thing is if you have untreated or unfinished wood or unsealed wood um it's still going to leave a mark at least with the white one you might stain that wood a little bit so just a heads up if you got an Ikea desktop or a tabletop that you use for a desk like a lot of people do this might leave a ring and so well that's just something to keep in mind inside the Box again you have your cable it's braided and it's color matched which is nice and it easily attaches like so don't know why Apple didn't do this the first time around but it learned from its mistakes and now we have a detachable cable which is super helpful probably one of the biggest upgrades in my opinion and then there's some booklets in here pamphlets things no stickers um but you do get a guide if you need it and then one of the other things you'll notice is that up here this little glass area is actually smaller and a little bit like more recessed kind of like the homepod mini which I have one right here that I'll just take off the shelf and as you can see it uh it very much matches the top here um these two both look the same where the glass is kind of recessed now if you're wondering what I'm talking about on the old one which I also have on this shelf um the glass is much larger area and it's like flush with the mesh like netting around it and so yeah it's smaller and it's kind of recessed in let's see if this bottom part has changed a little bit yes it has so that's completely flush and flat and it does maybe that's why it looks a little taller you do have that's probably what it is this little coaster stand here just looks a little bit bigger and so it'll sit up a little bit taller but I think the actual dimensions are the same okay we got the setup boom you're gonna have to scan this scanned boom we have the little chime going and where do we want to put it we're going to put it in the studio we can put it it doesn't matter let's put it in the editing room sure sure why not so one of the first things I'm noticing with the new homepod is how immediate it is with like taking over and doing the handoff obviously the homepod mini behaves in the same way but the previous home pod was not very good at this and that's because it didn't have the U1 chip and this does another key difference but I mean really it's really just a bigger version of the homepod mini in terms of all of its features and what it can do and then just better sound quality and speaking of sound quality is it better than the original I think again a lot of the people out there who have had this before we did have said that it's pretty much the same which is actually impressive considering that they remove some of the sound components like the tweeters and the woofers in there so um yeah let's just do a quick sound test and see how it is I mean it sounds good um yeah it sounds a lot like the first generation um I think it's uh yeah I mean so far it sounds a lot like the original homepod I don't think it sounds any better but it definitely doesn't sound any worse which is great news and what I was kind of expecting um I think the controls are much faster let's try hey I have Google at home I have I'm about to say hey Google hey turn off production room light okay the lights are off the Ikea floor lamp is not responding check the home app for more details okay I feel like that's a lot faster than the original homepod that I had uh hey turn on production room lights the Ikea floor lamp is not responding yeah I uh I don't use the homepod minis here a lot and so I actually had uh this is what I use for like the home theater setup but um I I think whenever I ask Siri to do something with lights it's not as fast so I'm actually gonna plug in the old version we're gonna do the same test while this is booting up one other thing that you'll notice or that I wanted to talk about is with this like glass area here you'll see that whenever we invoke Siri or we play a song or something and this is illuminated it's actually Illuminating the entire top here it kind of goes from edge to edge and then on this one here you'll see that there is going to be like a bezel whenever I invoke Series so if I say hey turn off production room lights it doesn't take up the full edge here and it's also much slower I mean look at how much slower this is we haven't even gotten the lights turned off yet um so the lights are taking a while to respond no Siri you're taking a while to respond um so you can see here huge difference in this model uh compared to this and that's obviously a lot to do with the new chip that's inside as well um we're finally bumped up to what I believe is an S7 which is an a13 equivalent um so yeah huge difference and if I got that wrong I'll annotate it but that's what I'm pretty sure is in here and then obviously I wanted to point out that the screen here whenever I ask this homepod with Siri here and it illuminates with its rainbowy colors you kind of get it from edge to edge also just like the homepod mini these uh volume controls are always on it's part of the actual glass this here it illuminates up um whenever we start something or anything you can see that they kind of go away I like that a little bit more than having this like part of the etched in glass but it is what it is you can see here if I ask Siri again hey turn on production room lights that was a little better okay let's give Siri another shot here since it was much faster on the second time around let's see hey turn off production room lights okay that was better um but that initial one was pretty bad and then lastly one of the things you should definitely do obviously when you get this new home pod but with your other homepod minis you can download version 16.3 of the homepod software and as you can see here it gives you a whole list of new features primarily temperature and humidity sensing which measures your indoor climate with again this homepod second generation not the first and your homepod mini so if you have an existing homepod mini you should be able to check out your temperature and humidity levels using your home pod and then there's a bunch of other things on here you can have find my on homepod which enables you to ask Siri for the location of friends and family you can have reoccurring home automations be set up using just your voice Siri confirmation tone will now play to indicate when smart home requests are completed which is what we heard on the original home pod there uh audio tuning optimizes spoken content such as podcasts for even greater Clarity on homepod Second Generation and the first generation there are updated volume controls for your first gen to give you more granular adjusted volume updates um and uh remastered ambient sounds are more immersive and can now be added to scenes automations and alarms inside of the home map and so those are just some of the things that you can do so let me know in the comments down below what you think are you planning to pick up a new home pod are you going to use it for stereo pair for your Apple TV if so you're going to need two of these you cannot do a homepod mini to homepod which makes sense but what doesn't make sense I guess is you cannot do homepod 1 to homepod 2 because it will sound technically different I guess I don't know but you need two of these and so let me know in the comments down below what your setup plans are for the new homepod this has been down with macramers thanks so much for watching and I hope to see you around in the next videooh God these are a little heavy a little heavy new home pods I mean kind of new home pods they're going to look pretty much the same but uh Apple finally released an updated version of the bigger home pod and uh well I got two of them and we're gonna unbox them and I'll do a quick listening test and let you guys know how they are and get you my first impressions but let's just start doing it so they come in this all brown box with a pull tab here ow out there we go typical Apple packaging always wonderful um I went with the white version because I wasn't convinced that the midnight was any different than the last iteration of I think that was space gray and apparently I'm wrong and it's a little bit more blue like apple usually does I don't believe in Apple's cohesiveness with colors but I also have a bunch of the darker ones from before so I wanted to go with the lighter version in here is another one now we got two for stereo pairing because you still can't cross stereo pair with you know definitely not a homepod mini but not even the first generation of these larger home pods so if you want a stereo pair you need to do you need to buy two of them why do I keep unboxing so weird they don't fully flap down they only do it on just this one side it's a little strange anyways get that out of here so here we have two home pods here is another Apple pull tab my favorite way to unbox things just pull tabs and throw the mess on the ground and here we go now I do have another homepod okay so one of the biggest differences that you'll know is that you can actually remove the cable like it's supposed to come out uh I know in the past when we had the original homepod people did take the cable out and Apple's like hey don't do that um you can do that they actually come pre you know detached and so yeah and then another thing is if you have untreated or unfinished wood or unsealed wood um it's still going to leave a mark at least with the white one you might stain that wood a little bit so just a heads up if you got an Ikea desktop or a tabletop that you use for a desk like a lot of people do this might leave a ring and so well that's just something to keep in mind inside the Box again you have your cable it's braided and it's color matched which is nice and it easily attaches like so don't know why Apple didn't do this the first time around but it learned from its mistakes and now we have a detachable cable which is super helpful probably one of the biggest upgrades in my opinion and then there's some booklets in here pamphlets things no stickers um but you do get a guide if you need it and then one of the other things you'll notice is that up here this little glass area is actually smaller and a little bit like more recessed kind of like the homepod mini which I have one right here that I'll just take off the shelf and as you can see it uh it very much matches the top here um these two both look the same where the glass is kind of recessed now if you're wondering what I'm talking about on the old one which I also have on this shelf um the glass is much larger area and it's like flush with the mesh like netting around it and so yeah it's smaller and it's kind of recessed in let's see if this bottom part has changed a little bit yes it has so that's completely flush and flat and it does maybe that's why it looks a little taller you do have that's probably what it is this little coaster stand here just looks a little bit bigger and so it'll sit up a little bit taller but I think the actual dimensions are the same okay we got the setup boom you're gonna have to scan this scanned boom we have the little chime going and where do we want to put it we're going to put it in the studio we can put it it doesn't matter let's put it in the editing room sure sure why not so one of the first things I'm noticing with the new homepod is how immediate it is with like taking over and doing the handoff obviously the homepod mini behaves in the same way but the previous home pod was not very good at this and that's because it didn't have the U1 chip and this does another key difference but I mean really it's really just a bigger version of the homepod mini in terms of all of its features and what it can do and then just better sound quality and speaking of sound quality is it better than the original I think again a lot of the people out there who have had this before we did have said that it's pretty much the same which is actually impressive considering that they remove some of the sound components like the tweeters and the woofers in there so um yeah let's just do a quick sound test and see how it is I mean it sounds good um yeah it sounds a lot like the first generation um I think it's uh yeah I mean so far it sounds a lot like the original homepod I don't think it sounds any better but it definitely doesn't sound any worse which is great news and what I was kind of expecting um I think the controls are much faster let's try hey I have Google at home I have I'm about to say hey Google hey turn off production room light okay the lights are off the Ikea floor lamp is not responding check the home app for more details okay I feel like that's a lot faster than the original homepod that I had uh hey turn on production room lights the Ikea floor lamp is not responding yeah I uh I don't use the homepod minis here a lot and so I actually had uh this is what I use for like the home theater setup but um I I think whenever I ask Siri to do something with lights it's not as fast so I'm actually gonna plug in the old version we're gonna do the same test while this is booting up one other thing that you'll notice or that I wanted to talk about is with this like glass area here you'll see that whenever we invoke Siri or we play a song or something and this is illuminated it's actually Illuminating the entire top here it kind of goes from edge to edge and then on this one here you'll see that there is going to be like a bezel whenever I invoke Series so if I say hey turn off production room lights it doesn't take up the full edge here and it's also much slower I mean look at how much slower this is we haven't even gotten the lights turned off yet um so the lights are taking a while to respond no Siri you're taking a while to respond um so you can see here huge difference in this model uh compared to this and that's obviously a lot to do with the new chip that's inside as well um we're finally bumped up to what I believe is an S7 which is an a13 equivalent um so yeah huge difference and if I got that wrong I'll annotate it but that's what I'm pretty sure is in here and then obviously I wanted to point out that the screen here whenever I ask this homepod with Siri here and it illuminates with its rainbowy colors you kind of get it from edge to edge also just like the homepod mini these uh volume controls are always on it's part of the actual glass this here it illuminates up um whenever we start something or anything you can see that they kind of go away I like that a little bit more than having this like part of the etched in glass but it is what it is you can see here if I ask Siri again hey turn on production room lights that was a little better okay let's give Siri another shot here since it was much faster on the second time around let's see hey turn off production room lights okay that was better um but that initial one was pretty bad and then lastly one of the things you should definitely do obviously when you get this new home pod but with your other homepod minis you can download version 16.3 of the homepod software and as you can see here it gives you a whole list of new features primarily temperature and humidity sensing which measures your indoor climate with again this homepod second generation not the first and your homepod mini so if you have an existing homepod mini you should be able to check out your temperature and humidity levels using your home pod and then there's a bunch of other things on here you can have find my on homepod which enables you to ask Siri for the location of friends and family you can have reoccurring home automations be set up using just your voice Siri confirmation tone will now play to indicate when smart home requests are completed which is what we heard on the original home pod there uh audio tuning optimizes spoken content such as podcasts for even greater Clarity on homepod Second Generation and the first generation there are updated volume controls for your first gen to give you more granular adjusted volume updates um and uh remastered ambient sounds are more immersive and can now be added to scenes automations and alarms inside of the home map and so those are just some of the things that you can do so let me know in the comments down below what you think are you planning to pick up a new home pod are you going to use it for stereo pair for your Apple TV if so you're going to need two of these you cannot do a homepod mini to homepod which makes sense but what doesn't make sense I guess is you cannot do homepod 1 to homepod 2 because it will sound technically different I guess I don't know but you need two of these and so let me know in the comments down below what your setup plans are for the new homepod this has been down with macramers thanks so much for watching and I hope to see you around in the next video\n"