Setting Up Your HomePod Mini

Here we have the HomePod Mini, Apple's budget friendly $99 speaker with Siri built-in.

Now you may say since when is a hundred dollars budget friendly? Especially when I can get an echo dot or a nest mini for $50 or maybe even $25 when it's on sale.

Well, for starters this is Apple and their original HomePod costs $350. It was an absolutely fantastic speaker, but really couldn't do much. So unless you were an Apple fan boy, not a lot of people bought these.

But now we have the HomePod Mini which has Siri built in, but a lot more features also. In today's video, we're going to be taking a look at the new HomePod, setting it up and showing you guys some of the features that it comes with. So stay tuned.

I have had an iPhone for years and years, but I have not used any other Apple products. So I'm going to be pretty interested to see how well this ecosystem compares to what I'm used to.

Now in this video today we're going to be going through the setup process of this device, showing how easy it is and I'll be giving my initial thoughts on the product. From there we're going to be doing more videos on Apple's home kit, which smart devices you should be buying, how it compares to Alexa and so many more.

So if you are not subscribed, consider subscribing and hit that notification bell so you don't miss out on future videos like this one, with that said, let's get started.

All right. We picked out two HomePod Minis, one of each color. Today we're just going to be taking a look at the black one here.

Now, one thing that I do want to mention is that with these being Apple products is that you do have to have an iPhone. You cannot have an Android phone and control these devices. So just keep that in mind that you do have to be an iPhone user to use these products.

Wow! This thing is beautiful. I got to say I've been using all of the other products. I've used Google devices, I've used Amazon devices. I have seen a lot of things that are out there, but I've got to say this is the best looking one that is out there. Now this is something that I would love. Not only would I be okay having this out on say a TV stand or a bookshelf or my desk, but I would actually be pretty proud of having this thing on display.

By far this is the best looking smart speaker that I have seen.

Now, when we take a look at the top we have got a plus and minus. Now one thing that I thought was a little weird is that they don't have any kind of cover on here to pull off. So it's kind of exposed.

However, on the bottom they do have a tab that you can pull off to see the Apple logo underneath. We've got a braided cable in the back that is non-removable. So you cannot remove it. Let's go ahead and take these off, get this out of here.

If we also take a look at what is in the box, we have got some paperwork right here. This is just going to be kind of initial setup stuff. So how to get it connected. There was only three steps right there seems pretty simple.

And then we also have one Apple sticker in there. So we've got that installed. And then in the box we've also got a 20 watt power brick. Now this obviously does come included if you are familiar with everything that has been happening with the new iPhones, they do not come with power bricks anymore.

However, thankfully the new HomePod Mini does. So let's go ahead and get this thing powered up and see what the set-up process is like.

Now, one other thing to mention is that this is a USBC on the end of the power cable.

So that's going to plug right into the brick and let's go ahead and get this plugged in.

All right, we got it glowing on top. Great display on there. Love the look of that. I love how the display in here goes all the way out to the edges so there is no bezel or border around this. We've got a full display all the way to the edges and it looks really nice.

All right, once this thing gets set up let's go ahead and take a look at my phone here, unlock my phone and perfect. So it popped up asking me if I want to do the setup. Let's go ahead and music and privacy that is fine. So all I had to do is unlock my iPhone and it automatically found the Mini. And I'm going to go ahead and say ready to set up.

What room is this one in? We're going to say the office. Do I want to try Apple music for free? So it gives me three months for free and then it's going to be $10 a month after that. I'm going to go ahead and say not now, because I just use Pandora.

HomePod can recognize your voice. We're going to say go ahead and recognize my voice. It's going to be able to give us custom information depending on who is asking for it. So if you ask it for reading your messages, telling you what appointments that you have, reminders, any kind of calls that are coming into you are going to be personalized to your voice.

You have to agree to the terms and conditions. Use your iCloud account Wi-Fi and settings on this iPhone to configure your HomePod. You can always change them later.

So this is just going to transfer all of my settings on my phone into this device. We're going to go head and say transfer. Center the HomePod in the frame. So let's see here. It'll bring it up. Perfect.

I found the device and I was transferring all the information that it needs that is stored in my iPhone to the new HomePod.

Hi, I'm Siri. Welcome to HomePod. You can't tell, but I'm waving. To get my attention say, Hey Siri. Let's get started. Say, Hey Siri what can you do?

Hey Siri, what can you do?

I can do lots of things. Like turn on the lights, give you a news update and tell you about the weather. Now you try, say Hey Siri, play some music.

Hey Siri, play some music.

Playing all songs shuffled.

All right. Now I have to tell you this thing sounds absolutely amazing, especially for the size that it is. It's about three inches tall, so not big at all. All right so now that we have the speaker set up and installed, all I have to do is load up Apple's home kit. That is their smart home software that is going to tie everything in your smart home together. So loading up the Apple home kit right here, I can see that we've got to the office iPod set up.

Now for using any of this stuff I pretty much just have to talk to the speaker. So I don't really need my phone anymore, but some awesome things that this speaker can do is that if it is playing any kind of music and you want that music to transfer onto your phone, all you have to do is walk up, tap your phone to the speaker and now the music that was playing on the HomePod Mini is going to now start playing on your phone and you can reverse that.

If you walk in from outdoors and you were listening to say a podcast or a song, you can walk up, you can tap it to your HomePod Mini and now it's going to start playing on your speaker.

So that is a really cool feature that they have built into this system right here. Some other things that you can do is that if you have an Apple TV, you can sync this up to the Apple TV to use this as a speaker.

Or you can set up two of them in a stereo pair to get Dolby Atmos quality sound. You can also ask for directions on this device and it's going to automatically transfer that information into Google maps on your iPhone.

And you could also ask for information like your calendar events and your reminders that it's going to pull directly from your phone.

You can also have it take notes. So any notes that you have on here automatically are going to get transferred to your iPhone.

So the deeper you are into the Apple ecosystem, the better experience you're going to have with this device.

Now, for the purposes of me getting this device is that we're going to build out an Apple smart home using home kit. Like I mentioned in the beginning of this video, we're going to be going through things like the first devices that you should be setting up with your Apple home kit.

We're going to go into some tips and tricks that you can do with these devices. And also doing a comparison on how this compares to say the Amazon Alexa or the Google assistant environments.