Apple HomePod available February 9: Australian Price $499

The oldest of the Voice Assistants just grew up with Apple announcing (Finally) the availability of its HomePod speaker with Siri.

Siri has been around for six years, yet this is the first time she’s been available to talk to outside of a phone or mac, this speaker has been designed to give you all of home access to Siri as well as amazing sound.

And it is first and foremost an amazing speaker. Apple have put sound quality first here – having heard it myself last June I can tell you its a high end sound.

That is reflected in the price though, at $499 the HomePod is way more expensive than the devices it will be compared to – Google Home and Amazon Echo, however it’s not really comparable.

“HomePod is a magical new music experience from Apple. It brings advanced audio technologies like beam-forming tweeters, a high-excursion woofer and automatic spatial awareness, together with the entire Apple Music catalogue and the latest Siri intelligence, in a simple, beautiful design that is so much fun to use,” said Apple’s Philip Schiller

“We’re so excited for people to get HomePod into their homes, apartments and businesses to hear it for themselves. We think they will be blown away by the audio quality. The team has worked to give Siri a deeper knowledge of music so that you can ask to play virtually anything from your personal favourites to the latest chart-topping releases, simply by saying ‘Hey Siri.’

Where it really sets itself apart from other speakers is the spatial awareness – its able to detect if it’s near a wall and not amplify sound toward the wall that would change the sound in the room – instead it focuses the sound toward the middle of the room.

Setup is said to be as easy as AirPods with a pop-up on your iPhone and the features Apple talk about are all to do with Music, Sound quality and controlling things through Apple HomeKit.

Though, Apple has announced partnerships with ABC News, SBS News, 7 News and Fox Sports News to deliver audio headlines through Siri on the HomePod.

Orders start Saturday (27th), and HomePod ships from February 9 at a price of $499.