Apple’s HomePods have always sounded good. Their problem has been the price and well, Siri. On the flip side, the predecessors to the Nest Audio, the Google Home, always were intelligent and affordable, but their sound quality was quite ratty. In the last two months, the Indian market has seen these two smart speakers launch alongside a new one from Amazon and even Xiaomi’s Mi Smart Speaker. But the HomePod mini and Nest Audio are more interesting as these two are the newest kids on the block and were in dire need for recalibration.
Without beating around the bush, I’ll jump into the most important aspect of the smart speaker. In terms of pure sound quality and fidelity, the edge remains with the HomePod mini. These diminutive speakers take off right from their elder siblings' left — they sound neutral, clean and dynamic. The sound stage of an individual HomePod mini is also quite wide which is a neat thing. The issue here is the overall volume which doesn’t get mitigated when you’re even using a pair. They sound clean but they aren’t going to be much louder than an iPad Pro. That can be a deal-breaker for some.
This is where Nest Audio comes through. It may not sound as good but it will get extremely loud belying its diminutive size. So much so that it can augment your smart TV as a sound-bar when needed. In terms of pure audio, it isn’t as clean as the HomePod mini. It surely gets muddy at higher volumes and if you’re playing harsh kind of music like Heavy metal, it is not even a comparison. But the thing is that not everyone listens to extreme forms of audio and that’s why for many the Nest Audio will make more sense as it can also be paired with more speakers. It also has more bass which cuts through the mix.
However, this conversation changes its slant when I look at aesthetics. In typical Apple fashion, the HomePod mini is engineered brilliantly and is utterly compact, not much larger than a large orange. It has this mesh-like fabric on the outside like the larger HomePod. It hides discreetly into your room like a piece of furniture and if anyone anciently drops it, it almost has this tennis ball like quality which means that it extremely drops resistant.
The Nest Audio isn’t bad, but it is larger and looks like a miniature bookshelf style speaker with a white mesh on the outside. It definitely isn’t as robust or discrete as the HomePod mini. It also doesn’t have a visible touch area as the touch controls are overlaid on the mesh which can be hard for some people to understand.
Apple has improved the HomePod Mini in terms of integration with services and Siri is rapid fast on it thanks to the S5 chip which has been taken from the Apple Watch. But Apple has dropped some features that made the original HomePods special — like adaptive EQ and support for Dolby Atmos. Instead of this, you get the U1 chip which helps to handoff from an iPhone 11 or 12 series models super fast. It also adds a cool feature called intercom which allows you to interact with other HomePods in the household via Siri and all your Apple gadgets. In a way, it can replace your landline phone.
On Nest Audio, all this hardware wizardry is exchanged for deep knowledge and the power of the Google Assistant which is the best assistant out there. It works with practically anything, while the HomePods need you to be entrenched in Apple’s galaxy of gadgets. It is way smarter than Siri so you can do more things — it even supports more IoT products, though Apple is catching up with HomeKit.
Both are very different types of speakers — one is discrete, classy and meant for something that just is tuned for the hardcore Apple fanatic, while the other one is more like a hub and a traditional speaker that can work with your TV, or even without it. The HomePod mini over indexes towards its experience and wants to perfect whatever it does, while the Nest Audio is certainly more pragmatic and general purpose. At Rs 9,990 the HomePod Mini is also slightly more expensive than the Nest Audio which can set you back by Rs 7,999.
If this is too steep, then Xiaomi’s Mi Smart Speaker is going to be your best friend. It costs less than half of the Nest Audio and fundamentally has all the same capabilities. It is just that it neither sounds as good as the Nest Home nor is as well built and the Google Assistant is slower to respond as it has fewer microphones. But this should be the case as well considering it's less than Rs 4,000 price point. But if you happen to use an iPhone and perhaps even have an Apple TV+ or MacBook or iPad or some combo of both or all of them at the same time, the HomePod mini is the one for you.
(Edited by : Ajay Vaishnav)
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