HomePod Mini Upgrade Costs $50 More and Waits on Siri AI

The HomePod mini upgrade is finally official, and Apple wants fifty dollars more for it than it did the first time around. At its Welcome Home event in New York on October thirteenth, the company unveiled the second-generation HomePod mini, six years after the original tiny speaker landed. According to Apple's newsroom, it costs one hundred forty-nine dollars in the United States, can be pre-ordered now, and reaches stores on Friday, October thirtieth.

What Apple Actually Changed

If you were hoping for a total redesign, keep scrolling. The new speaker looks almost identical to the old one, a small fabric-covered sphere you could mistake for a very fancy stress ball. What changed is mostly inside, plus the color lineup. Apple is selling it in pink, green, blue, white and midnight, and MacRumors notes that green and pink are the two brand-new shades.

Under the hood, the speaker swaps its aging chip for Apple's newer S-series silicon. Apple says that chip powers computational audio, which analyzes music in real time to tune dynamic range, loudness and overall sound. According to MacRumors, the speaker also jumps to Wi-Fi six E and a newer Bluetooth version, which should mean a steadier connection around the house.

Sound Glow Is the Fun Part

The feature most likely to end up in your TikTok feed is Sound Glow. The top of the speaker now works as a little visual canvas, pulsing and glowing in sync with whatever you are playing and reacting to bass and treble. Apple says the colors are pulled from the album artwork in Now Playing, so every song gets its own light show. You can also pick a soundscape such as rain to trigger calmer animations.

It is a small touch, but it turns a speaker that used to hide on a shelf into something that looks good on a desk. Apple even pitches the new colors as a match for a Mac setup, since the speaker can now act as the default audio output for any Mac with Wi-Fi six E or later.

Siri AI Is Coming, Just Not Yet

The headline promise is Siri AI, Apple's revamped assistant, and here is the catch: it is not on the speaker at launch. Apple says it arrives in a future software update, in English, in the United States, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and the United Kingdom. According to TechSpot, the update will make the device far more capable at understanding personal context and answering questions on a huge range of subjects.

Once it lands, the speaker can recognize up to six people in a household by voice. Paired with an Apple Intelligence iPhone or iPad, it could find a song a friend texted you, set a reminder tied to a calendar event, or add ingredients from an emailed recipe to your grocery list. Apple says requests can run on the device or through its Private Cloud Compute system, where data is not stored or made accessible to anyone, including Apple.

The Price Hike Stings

Now the awkward part. The original HomePod mini launched at ninety-nine dollars and was later listed at one hundred twenty-nine, according to MacRumors. TechSpot points out that the new price is a fifty-dollar jump over that first sticker. For a product whose whole appeal was being the cheap way into Apple's smart home, that matters.

MacRumors also spotted a cutback that Apple did not exactly advertise: the new model has three microphones for Siri, down from four. Commenters on the MacRumors forum were not thrilled, with one quipping that asking customers to pay more for fewer features is an Apple tradition. To be fair, that is a reader joke, not a verdict, and we will not know how the speaker hears you until reviewers get their hands on it.

Surround Sound and the Bigger Smart Home Push

For home theater nerds, this is where it gets interesting. For the first time, you can build a four-speaker surround setup using the new fourth-generation Apple TV 4K plus a set of these speakers. Apple says the gear figures out where each speaker sits in the room and calibrates timing and levels automatically. The press release notes that the setup needs four matching speakers, front and rear pairs, so the cost climbs fast.

The speaker is one piece of a larger push. The same event introduced the HomeView smart display, a refreshed Apple TV and a new line of Apple Home accessories, including cameras and a smart lock. Sound Recognition can listen for smoke or carbon monoxide alarms and ping your iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Read more of our coverage in our tech section.

Should You Pre-Order?

Is this HomePod mini upgrade worth it? If you already own a few HomePod minis and mostly use them for timers and music, there is no rush. The headline feature is not available yet, and the hardware looks like a modest refresh. If you are building your first Apple-centered smart home, or you want a color-matched speaker for your desk, the extra cost buys you newer wireless tech and a path to the new Siri.

Either way, the real test starts once the Siri AI update arrives and independent reviews drop. Until then, the new speaker is a pretty, glowing promise with a higher price tag, and Apple is betting you will pay for the promise.