Huh? Seriously? Maybe the little Sonos One isn't, but they make some hardware that rather clearly outperforms the Homepod.

Sure there’s some level of tracking, but that wasn’t my point. My point is that it’s mic free

Also, Sonos speakers from my research outperform HomePod in terms of sound - but if you have data to suggest otherwise feel free to share

Can't comment about the sound quality.

As far as privacy however, I definitely understand people's worry about the mic, but honestly I think it distracts from really looking at the data tracking practices and how much data is collected even without a mic. See [0]

I'm curious about Apple's data tracking, but based on their marketing page alone it definitely feels like they've given it a big consideration and it's not an afterthought. I cannot say the same for Sonos unfortunately. (I assume Google/Alexa etc are worse, but I don't use those, and didn't dig into it).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24680614

Well maybe not the ~$400 Homepod, but who knows how it will stack up against the $99 one.