Synergy is a great thing. Whether implied or actually existing, the concept of multiple pieces of hardware, software, sometimes even ideas themselves, attaining more worth than the sum of their parts is enticing. It’s basically why Apple has so much success. The AirPods work flawlessly with the iPhone, macOS can communicate and share data with iOS, Contacts will show Maps data right next to the address of a person.

I’m pretty much an Apple user. My personal laptop is a MacBook Air, I use an iPhone, and most of my non-gaming entertainment enters my living room through an Apple TV. Oh, and I use Apple Music (mostly via an iPad or aforementioned Apple TV) after Spotify’s UI just became too much of an actual chore to navigate through years ago. Adding a HomePod Mini to the mix seems to be a no-brainer, right? Right?

Sadly, that is one idea that turns out to be too good to be true. There is little of the implied synergy available and so far the HomePod Mini has been actively working against the concept instead. The main culprit is just playing some music. I was expecting a kind of automatic syncing of the HomePod Mini. If you’ve used AirPods with Apple hardware you know what I mean here. Pop the AirPods into your ears and it’ll automatically connect to whatever Apple device is sharing your credentials if you get close enough or start actively using it. So as my iPad is my main device for putting on some tunes, the idea was to prop up the iPad on a stand, put a HomePod Mini right next to it and enjoy some hassle-free music playing, by pressing play on the iPad and listening to music from the HomePod Mini.

This is not how it works.

One of the reasons for me to get a HomePod Mini was the annoyance of using a Bluetooth-speaker. Whenever the iPad moved away far enough or wasn’t used for some time, it required pairing. Which would require forgetting the device and repairing from scratch whenever another device had paired up with the speaker in the meantime. Based on experiences my AirPods, I would have expected the HomePod Mini to at the very least solve this particular issue.

It doesn’t. It’s actually a worse experience. Pairing up with your device is fairly OK, although because of the HomePod Mini’s lack of macOS or iOS interface, you need to do this through an Apple device. After doing so, the speaker just sits there. Waiting for input. Play music and nothing happens automatically. Instead you need to play music, tap the AirPlay icon, wait for your HomePod Mini to show up in the list (if at all), then tap it, then awkwardly wait for the HomePod Mini to wake up, accept the command, connect to whatever online service it needs to connect to, and finally start the music locally on its speaker. Add some stuttering, volume change, and sometimes, utterly failing to wake ups and that’s your HomePod Mini experience.

Did I already mention you need to do this little dance (sometimes multiple attempts) every time you want to listen to music? Unless you let it play indefinitely, the HomePod Mini has a tendency to disconnect and await whatever other command might receive through AirPlay. I went from being annoyed at having to connect to Bluetooth anew once in a while, to having to perform what sometimes felt like a ritual to placate the gods, in order to listen to music.

Of course, some of you reading this might be screaming at the top of their lungs already. Because this is not how you are supposed to use a HomePod Mini. You are supposed to be in awe of Siri. You can ask Siri stuff through the HomePod Mini and it’ll do so. Granted, whenever I wanted to just play my favourites or a certain genre of music, these Siri-commands would work. Trying to access one of my own curated playlists? Nigh impossible. Trying to play a specific album? Good luck mixing Dutch and English pitch-perfect in order to get Siri to even remotely get what you’re trying to accomplish. Trying to set a timer? Perfect.

Actually, that last bit isn’t a joke. In the end my HomePod Mini got relegated to the most mundane of tasks: serving as a handsfree cooking timer whenever I was preparing some food. And yet, even that failed often enough for me to get fed up and to buy a 2 euro physical wind-up timer. At that point I also realised just how bad of an experience the HomePod Mini turned out to be.

I lack the components of an IoT-household to make Siri useful beyond mundane questions. I lack the laissez-faire attitude to listen to Siri-curated music. And I definitely lack the patience to deal with AirPlay’s ritual tapping to even make use of the HomePod. And that’s on top of all the stuttering issues, the out-of-the-blue signal drops, and the complete shutdown of the device, requiring a complete reset. The first time I had to do a reset, all these issues became more frequent and it never returned to the (already crappy) state it had after unboxing.

So, in the end, I relented. As my old Sony Bluetooth-speaker was now serving up music at my girlfriend’s place, I got a new Sony ULT FIELD 1 and presto. Issues gone. Now whenever I start the ULT FIELD 1 it automatically tries to pair up with the last device it paired with, which 9 out of 10 times is my iPad. I start music, it directly plays. Sure, if I need to reconnect, I need to pair it anew in the Bluetooth-settings, but that’s easier, faster, and more responsive to access than whatever AirPlay throws at you.

And so I marvel at this stupid piece of speaker-fruit. That something that should’ve been so simple to use is such an abomination. I’m not sure what kind of future Apple Intelligence will hold for the HomePods, but you can be quite sure of it that I won’t be first in line to test those particular waters to just listen to some music.