The SoC in the Homepod is old. It's the Apple A8, which was used on iPhone 6 (2014).

The HomePod Mini uses Apple S5, which was in the Apple Watch 5 (2019)

It's not that bad of a CPU. It's powering my iPad Air 2 (A8X) which doesn't do too badly.

Remember when we were freaking out about the unprecedented performance of the A7, the first 64-bit mobile chip? And now it's in a speaker.

For real. Maybe, just maybe, a voice-controlled speaker doesn't need the latest cutting edge CPU.

I wasn't expecting new Homepod hardware until after they announce on-device Siri. That seems like the only thing that would warrant a better CPU.

It feels slower than my old Amazon Echo which is certainly using a crappier chip than the A8.

Doesn't seem slow to me. Mine responds quite quickly.

Maybe depends on country. iCloud is silly slow abroad. Takes 3 minutes to download 30 second video on a gig connection.

Yes, it's super slow abroad. Especially in the US.

Do you have an Echo or Google Home for comparison?

I don't, but the wait time from when I ask my HomePod to do something and when it does it is fast enough for me that I don't much mind.

If I say "Hey Siri, turn on my lamp" it turns it on within a second or so of asking.

Note that the S5 is essentially identical to the S4 chip.

Considering that the HomePod non-mini doesn’t do any on-device language processing, I don’t see a need for that much power.

Yea but who says that a watch chip from 2019 is faster than a phone SoC from 2014?