Alexa/Siri/Amazon Echo/Apple Home Pod?

[LadyAstor]

Which one do I choose?

I'm sick of my DAB radios being unable to store or find channels and I just want to be able to play the music I have on my iphone (Apple Music) which I pay £10 a month for (I think).

Now, am I best having an Apple smart speaker in this case? How many do i need? 3 bed house, only me there.

Will any of the others work with Apple music?

Does the music go via my phone to the speakers? Do I factor in range? if my phone is downstairs and the speaker is upstairs? Its a 1930's brick house. Good BT wi-fi but the brick walls & fireplaces can be a problem.

God I sound like a Luddite. Please feel free to signpost me to any websites that explain this. I have Googled but I just get adverts.

TIA.

Apple Music will work with any speaker that has Airplay 2 or Bluetooth - as will most other music streaming services. That said, the integration with other Apple devices (especially headphones) is excellent. Apple mini pods would also give you the ability to play music in stereo or you could have them in different room for multi room playback.

You might actually want to consider something like a Sonos speaker(s) which has Apple Music built in and works via your Wi-Fi network which frees up your phone for other duties and you have no distance issues to worry about either.

Thanks Tree. I saw an advert for Sonos but remembered that they're very expensive. I might invest though if it would offer significant advantages over the others.

Obviously your budget is key here so you need to work with that.

Apple HomePods are about £89 and Tech Radar identifies them as the best Airplay speaker (which is unsurprising really).

Sonos have a 20% discount at this time so they can be bought more reasonably priced but they are still around £150 for a Sonos One (£130 for the One SL which has no built in voice assistant) or £125 for a Sonos Roam

You can add speakers in time to improve the sound reproduction (stereo).

Bluetooth speakers can be much cheaper so you should consider JBL Charge or Flip speakers as well and also Amazon's Echo speakers too which are often heavily discounted on the Amazon store.

My budget is around £200 so quite flexible. I think I'm favouring the Apple pods but will continue to research.

Ive made costly mistakes in the past buying portable speakers, bluetooth headphones and (3)! DAB radios.

If possible you could try the speaker first to see if it meets with your requirements. Alternatively, if you buy from the likes of Amazon they have a great returns policy so you could easily buy one or two speakers (for a side-by-side comparison) and send them back if you don't like them

Great suggestion @TreePorcupine … why didn’t I think of that? 😁