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Apple HomePods vs. Bose Smart Soundbar 600: can a pair replace a soundbar?

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Bose Smart Soundbar 600 (left) and Apple Second-gen HomePod.
Simon Cohen / Digital Trends

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Simon Cohen
Simon Cohen
Contributing Editor, A/V
Simon Cohen is a contributing editor to Digital Trends' Audio/Video section, where he obsesses over the latest wireless…
Apple HomePod mini vs. Google Nest Audio

The Apple HomePod mini is arguably the best HomeKit hub on the market, offering impressive audio quality, an eye-catching design, and a surprisingly affordable price tag. If you’re not sold on HomeKit, however, Google Nest Audio gives it a run for its money. Google’s popular smart speaker clocks in at the same $100 price tag while offering access to Google Assistant -- making it easy to communicate with the rest of your smart gadgets.

If you’re in the market for either of these products, here’s a closer look at everything offered by the HomePod mini and Google Nest Audio.
Design
The next generation of the HomePod takes on an almost perfectly spherical shape versus the cylindrical shape of its predecessor. It looks somewhat similar to the Amazon Echo, but the elegant design comes as no shock -- Apple has always excelled at making attractive products.

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Apple AirPods Pro 2 vs. Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II
Apple AirPods Pro 2 and Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II

When it comes to noise-canceling earbuds, Apple and Bose make some of the best products on the market. Comfortable, enduring, and featuring top-notch sound quality and customizable controls, there's no beating the kind of performance you'll get from these two reputable brands. But when it comes down to Apple versus Bose, which in-ear titan comes out on top?

To unpack the answer to this question, we compared the AirPods Pro 2 with the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II, weighing in on key criteria like sound quality, battery life, and controls, to help you decide which set of noise-canceling buds is best for you.

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Bose Smart Soundbar 600 one-ups the Sonos Beam with up-firing drivers
Bose Smart Soundbar 600.

Bose's latest soundbar, the $499 Smart Soundbar 600 is the company's latest volley in the cat-and-mouse game it plays with Sonos. In 2021, Sonos updated its compact Beam soundbar with Dolby Atmos capability, giving it a feature that Bose's similarly priced and featured Smart Soundbar 300 didn't possess. The Smart Soundbar 600 addresses that gap and even moves the needle just a bit further by integrating up-firing drivers, something the Beam lacks. It will be available October 20, but you can pre-order it starting October 10.

For those who may not be steeped in Dolby Atmos minutiae, the 3D immersive sound format takes advantage of height as well as left/right/center and rear surround speakers. But not all Dolby Atmos soundbars possess dedicated, up-firing drivers to bounce those height sounds off your ceiling to your viewing position. The second-gen Sonos Beam is one of these soundbars, and it uses virtualization to create that sense of height instead.

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