Of course, the HomePod Mini in all its colour variants, is an important part of the HomeKit ecosystem in that it’s a ‘Home Hub’ for HomeKit automations, as well as a hub for both Bluetooth and Thread devices, not to mention it has Siri built-in for voice control of your smart home devices.

Enjoy/Endure*

* select as appropriate…

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Specifications:

• Bluetooth 5.0 wireless technology
• IR transmitter
• Lightning connector for charging
• Rechargeable battery providing months of battery life on a single charge (with typical daily usage)
• Charging via USB to computer system or power adapter (sold separately)
• Control your TV or receiver via IR or CEC
• HDMI 2.1
• 802.11ax Wi‑Fi 6 with MIMO; simultaneous dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz)
• Thread
• Gigabit Ethernet
• Bluetooth 5.0 wireless technology
• IR receiver
• Built-in power supply

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Specifications;

• Full-range driver and dual passive radiators for deep bass and crisp high frequencies
• Custom acoustic waveguide for a 360º sound field
• Acoustically transparent fabric
• Computational audio for real-time tuning
• Four-microphone design for far-field Siri
• Multiroom audio with AirPlay 2
• Stereo pair capable
• Apple Music
• iTunes music purchases
• iCloud Music Library with an Apple Music or iTunes Match subscription
• Third-party music services
• Apple Music Radio or episodes on demand
• Radio stations from TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and Audacy
• Apple Podcasts
• News briefings
• AirPlay other content to HomePod mini from iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV, or Mac
• 802.11n Wi-Fi
• Direct guest access
• Bluetooth 5.0
• Thread⁵
• Ultra-Wideband chip for device proximity
• Operating temperature: 32° to 95° F (0° to 35° C)
• Relative humidity: 5% to 90% noncondensing
• Operating altitude: tested up to 10,000 feet (3000 m)

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4K gives you a crisper picture using four times more pixels than standard HD. High Dynamic Range (HDR) delivers brighter, more realistic colors and greater detail. From the hottest new movie to your favorite TV show, everything is more lifelike than ever.

Combine Apple TV 4K with a Dolby Atmos–compatible sound system and you’re fully immersed in three-dimensional audio that sends sound around and above you with pinpoint precision. Whether a jet zooms overhead or a torrential downpour erupts, the true-to-life sound puts you inside the action. And as the first streaming player to be both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos certified, Apple TV 4K brings home the complete cinematic experience.

Apple TV teams up with some of the world’s largest TV networks and broadcasters to bring you the live content you care about most. Find sports from apps like NBA and MLB. Late-breaking news from apps like Bloomberg and CNN. And your favorite shows on apps such as DirecTV Now, YouTube TV, and Sling TV.

Coming later this year, you’ll get even more content from major cable providers, making Apple TV truly the best box to connect to your screen.³

The Apple TV App lets you browse content from over 60 video services without switching from one app to the next. You’ll find movies and shows, handpicked recommendations, and live sports and news. The Apple TV App is already on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV and works seamlessly across them all. So if you stop watching in one place, you can start again later on a different device.

No more typing to find exactly what you’re looking for. Just ask Siri for a movie, show, genre, actor, or song you love. Siri also shines when you’re not sure what you want. Just say something like “Show me action movies,” and Siri delivers.

You’ll find everything from family games to epic adventures to high-speed racing apps on the App Store for Apple TV. The A10X Fusion chip provides a powerful platform to run every last one of them smoothly and beautifully. And when you add accessories like game controllers and headphones, you can take your experience to the next level.

Enjoy photos and videos from your iCloud Photo Library or shared albums on the big screen.⁴ Connect Apple Music to your home theater. And let your friends and family share their photos and videos with AirPlay.

Apple TV4K on amazon.com

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this is the 5th gen Apple TV, with the 4th Gen being the Apple TV 4, which is only capable of streaming upto 1080p. Apart from this major functional difference, they are in fact fairly similar, and on the outside pretty much identical.

The 4K has a more powerful GPU to cope with 4K content, and is also of benefit when it comes to games on the Apple TV, but also generally improving the overall smoothness of the UI and background tasks.

The main difference you will notice ‘off the ba’t is the included Siri remote which now comes with a raised white ring around the menu button. This is meant to aid you when holding the remote in (presumably) dark scenarios.

One other perhaps less immediately noticeable, but nonetheless major alteration is the removal of the mini USB input at the back. This wasn’t something that the average consumer would ever be able to use, so it’s not a big deal to the majority. Aside from that, the ethernet socket has has a speed upgrade, now going from 10/100 megabit connection to a 1 Gigabit connection.

If you don’t have a 4K TV you can still use and enjoy the Apple TV 4K, as it’ll detect the TV’s resolution capabilities automatically. It’ll generally be faster overall as well, although as a person owning both of these models (besides a very creaky 2nd gen Apple TV), and using them on 1080p TVs, I really can’t see any noticeable difference.

As a Hub

So, other than the obvious reason for having an Apple TV to stream movies, TV shows, look at photos and play games etc. What about the ‘hub’ side of things? Well if you are getting into home automation, you’ll soon notice that some companies proudly declare that their product need no hub. This means that they generally connect to you wifi network which then will allow you to control them from a iPhone, iPad or iPod that’s also connected to the same network.

This is great if you don’t really want an Apple TV, but what the hub does allow is for remote access to these devices. So, in the case of devices with an emphasis on security, like cameras, motion or door sensors, without a hub, there’s no way for these devices to let you know if a door has been opened or movement has been detected if you’re out of the house (as you’re no longer connected to the same network, basically). So, you’re not notified of these things, but having the hub (Apple TV in this case) gives you that connectivity. Putting that to one side, remote access also allows you to activate smart devices remotely too.

As an example, you might be coming home from a long day at the office and it’s a very hot and stuff trip back home on the bus. With remote access you can easily instruct your AC to turn on and set the living room to be nice and cool by the time you return, and perhaps with a smart plug connected to a coffee machine, you could send a trigger to the smart plug to turn on a few minutes before you arrive, ensuring that a hot pot of coffee is waiting the minute you step in the door.

This is essentially what a hub does for you – allow remote connectivity from anywhere in the world. Personally speaking, we have a main apartment we rent in the city, but we own an apartment in another city for getting away occasionally, and it’s geared up with HomeKit devices, an Apple TV 4 and a camera. so I know if someone has entered the property when they should, by way of a door sensor and a motion sensor, and as I’ve got the hub, I’ll be notified immediately. Better still, when we do want to get away, as mentioned before, I could set the air con to cool, and arrive with mood lighting and a hot coffee waiting for us after a two hour drive.

Can’t be bad!

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Now, I don’t see the need to review the iPad, and certainly not mine in particular, as it’s a bit old now, so I’ll just mention what its uses are when it comes to HomeKit.

I have a couple of Apple TVs acting as hubs, but my trusty old iPad Air, which is still able to run iOS 11 (and even iOS 12 when it arrives), can be enabled to run as a backup hub, which in my case is a failsafe if my Apple TV gets disconnected – and yes, it has happened on occasion. This is done via a simple on/off toggle within the settings that allows the iPad to do just this.

This all does mean of course that if you didn’t have an Apple TV and wanted to use the iPad as your hub, it would have to be on permanently, which in turn would mean having it plugged in and powered up. As it stands, it does this job more than adequately, and it also has one over on the Apple TV, in that it’s more mobile, as it’s not going to be tied to a specific room and TV.

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