Apple HomePod release date delayed: What to buy if you were waiting for the new smart speaker

Apple's effort won't be out until early 2018. But there's plenty of alternatives around

A prototype of Apple's new HomePod is displayed during the 2017 Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) at the San Jose Convention Center on June 5, 2017 in San Jose, California (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Apple's HomePod is delayed. But there's no need to worry.

The speaker is coming into a market full of competitors – plenty of which do the same thing. So if you now have a rounded, bin-shaped hole under your Christmas tree, you can replace it with another voice-enabled speaker.

The HomePod boasts of a huge range of features: beautiful sound, a small, beautiful build, and the ability to control it all with your voice. Not all of those features can be replaced – but some of them can be.

Apple scoffed at both the tubes with voice assistants in, like Amazon's Echo and Google's Home, at the launch of the HomePod. And it mocked smart speakers like Sonos for not including voice control, at a time when that was clearly the future.

But since that presentation in summer, all of those companies have done something to address the problems that Apple accurately – if a little hubristically – pointed out. And so despite there being only a few months since the HomePod was launched, there's a huge range of new alternatives that could dress many of the same needs.

Echoing assistants

The most obvious competitors to the HomePod are the Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Both are small, rounded tubes which contain voice assistants and the microphones and speakers needed to power them.

But their real downfall has always been their sub-par sound. The consequence of sticking speakers into such a small box – especially by companies who haven't really had any history in audio – appears to be that the sound is small, too.

As such, the only real way that an Echo or a Home could replace a HomePod is if you were planning on using it primarily as a voice assistant you can talk to in your house. The speakers are perfect for that – loud and clearly audible, just not with enough quality to happily listen to music.

(Reuters)

However, both companies have addressed that problem since Apple's big launch event. Amazon launched its Echo Plus, with better speakers and new smart home tools, and Google has launched the Home Max, which did much the same thing.

The Independent hasn't had the chance to hear either of those speakers. But reviews and the company's track record suggest the same thing: they sound decent rather than grating, now, but probably not quite as good as Apple's HomePod will sound.

Amazon Echo Plus, £109.99, Amazon

Google Home Max, $399 (and probably the same amount in pounds), due to be released in "early 2018"

Sonos One

When Apple introduced the HomePod, it took a very explicit swipe at Sonos. Their speakers sounded great, they pointed out, but they didn't have voice control and so you were left using its app like a neanderthal.

But that didn't last long. Not long after Apple's announcement, Sonos said that it was releasing the One – a version of its hugely popular Play:1 speakers that has Alexa built in. Soon, it will have Google Assistant, too.

(Sonos)

It also already had one of the HomePod's biggest features, in its own form. Apple made much of the fact that the HomePod's built-in speakers will be listening to how the room sounds and adjusting the tone of the music that plays to suit it; that's quite similar to Sonos's TruePlay technology, which uses the speaker in your phone instead and only adjusts itself at the time you set it up, but provides much the same function.

Sonos's commitment to being open mean that it really does get the best of most worlds. It will include a range of different assistants – both of which compete very well with Siri – and can play music from just about every service you can think of.

That approach is a little complicated when it comes to Apple, and clearly it's not quite as integrated as the HomePod will be. The Sonos voice assistant can't control Apple Music, for instance, and you can't use Siri.

But if you're really set on using Apple then Sonos will provide a fix for that, too. Next year, its speakers will get the benefit of Apple's AirPlay 2, meaning that you'll be able to play directly from your phone and use Siri on there, too.

At £199, the One is just a bit more than half the price of the HomePod, but it's also expected to be a bit less loud. You can fix that, however, by buying two – they'll attach to each other in a stereo pair that you can use the boost the sound.

And the Sonos also boasts of a design that's in keeping with Apple's products, even if it doesn't look much like the HomePod itself. Unlike some of the other products on this list – like, particularly, the Echo – its look is such that you won't necessarily mind having it out on your shelf or kitchen counter.

£199, Amazon

So what's best?

The Sonos One provides almost everything that the HomePod will: beautiful sound, the smarts to power it, the ability to listen to Apple Music or anything else, and a built-in voice assistant. And it does it for a lot cheaper.

Clearly, it doesn't do everything the HomePod will do. But the Sonos does a lot that HomePod won't do. And the difference is so minimal that you probably won't notice it, anyway.