As part of today’s announcements related to Home (including the brand new HomeView, which we’ve covered here), Apple also announced HomePod mini 2, an update to its popular line of diminutive speakers for the home first launched in 2020. The new HomePod mini comes in new colors, will support Siri AI in select markets with a future software update, has a new ‘Sound Glow’ top panel that intelligently adapts colors shown to match what is playing, and offers more integrations with the Apple TV 4K and Mac – all while delivering improved and richer sound compared to the first-generation model.First, the look. The HomePod mini 2 looks nearly identical to its predecessor, except for the aforementioned Sound Glow and the new colors: pink, green, blue, white, and midnight. From the photos we’ve seen so far, they look really nice, and I’m personally a fan of the green and pink options.Sound Glow is the most apparent hardware-related innovation here: the top panel has been re-engineered to become “a visual canvas that glows and pulses in sync with the music”. The panel reacts in real time to bass and treble, adjusting its animation accordingly, but it also borrows from the Music app’s Now Playing screen: the colors displayed on Sound Glow will be subtly color-matched to the artwork of the audio that’s playing now. According to Apple, Sound Glow will also play custom animations when a soundscape like ‘Rain’ is activated, although a footnote on Apple’s website suggests that the feature will require an iPhone with Apple Intelligence enabled.Sound Glow.The real-time music analysis capabilities of the HomePod mini are made possible by the upgraded chip inside the device, the S10 previously seen on the Apple Watch. (The original HomePod mini had an S5.) In addition to dynamically adapting to sound in real time, the S10 is behind the HomePod mini 2’s ability to run Siri AI (more on this below) as well as to become part of a four-speaker surround group when combined with the also-new fourth-generation Apple TV 4K.When four speakers are grouped, they can coordinate with an Apple TV to recognize each other’s position in a room and calibrate audio levels and timings to match what is playing. As someone who used for several years a two-HomePod mini pair with an Apple TV in my old apartment, I’m very intrigued by the potential of four little units carefully placed in my larger living room. As detailed by Apple, surround sound requires four HomePod mini 2 or HomePod (2nd generation) speakers in matching pairs front and center, so you can’t mix and match HomePod and HomePod mini 2 at the back of your couch, for instance.In addition to Apple TV, the HomePod mini 2 can also act as a default speaker for the Mac now. This potentially creates even more purchasing problems for me because, while I have a Sonos Move speaker at my desk, I dislike that I cannot set it as a default sound destination for my Mac mini, so I may even have to consider new speakers for my desk now. Ouch.I love this look. I need this setup (but not in pink).In its announcement today, Apple touts the work that has gone into computational audio powered by the S10 and aspects such as “Apple-designed force‑cancelling passive radiators” to improve the HomePod mini’s bass extension; those are things that we can only evaluate with an actual hands-on (ears-on?) with the product. What we can judge today is the Siri AI announcement: HomePod mini 2 will support Siri AI with a future software update, which means the assistant will be able to draw from the user’s context from a paired Apple device (Apple mentions “device”, not “iPhone”, meaning that iPad and Mac should work, too?) and offer personalized suggestions. You can read more about Siri AI in my review from last month here. In an interesting detail, however, Apple notes that even if you have Apple Intelligence disabled on a paired device, you’ll still get access to Siri AI’s newfound world knowledge features when Siri AI becomes available on HomePod mini 2: Once Siri AI is enabled on a supported HomePod mini speaker, even users without an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone or iPad will benefit from Siri AI’s broad world knowledge; its ability to have rich, natural conversations; and its improved music discovery.Notice how the quote above mentions “iPhone or iPad”, which makes the role of the Mac a little unclear.That’s about it for the HomePod mini 2. It costs $149, which seems fair given the product’s features, and is available for pre-order today in the U.S. and 23 other countries. It launches on October 30, presumably without Siri AI given Apple’s “future software update” wording. It’s available in Italy, and I’m leaning toward pre-ordering two of them.