Why AppleCare Might Be a Good Idea for a HomePod Mini
Pre-orders for Apple’s new HomePod Mini kicked off last week. If you were one of the many who received it – shipping estimates now go back to December – you might be tempted to add AppleCare to your cart, too.
To me, the idea of buying AppleCare for a smart speaker that will probably spend most of its life sitting on a bookshelf in an entertainment center seems absurd. I have quite a few smart speakers and have never, ever dropped them, spilled liquid on them, or done anything with them other than talking to them in a calm, soothing tone. But if you’re incredibly clumsy – or more likely living in a home with small children or noisy pets – AppleCare for the HomePod Mini isn’t all that bad.
It’s pretty clear that AppleCare for the HomePod Mini costs an additional $ 15, which is only six times the price of the HomePod Mini itself. Over the next two years, any accidental damage your smart speaker experiences can be repaired for $ 15 per copy, up to two times in total. And of course, if your HomePod Mini is having problems and you haven’t done anything with it, your normal warranty extends to a total of two years.
If you don’t have AppleCare and accidentally ruin your HomePod Mini, Apple will also charge you to repair it. And that board is a whopping $ 79, which is $ 20 cheaper than buying the newest HomePod Mini. You don’t get a break if, say, you break the mesh on your otherwise functional device; you’ll pay the same price as if you threw HomePod Mini off the shelf and it stopped working completely.
Be that as it may, Apple treats the larger HomePod in exactly the same way. The out-of-warranty fix costs $ 279, which is $ 20 less than the full price of the HomePod. These fees seem a little extravagant unless Apple basically says, “We give you a new one and we take the old one apart,” which kind of sounds.
While I still think AppleCare for a smart speaker is an overly conservative $ 15 spend in most cases, feel free to spend money on it if your family has a tendency to break things you put on shelves. Otherwise, you might not even bother Apple to fix your broken speaker. Dispose of it and start over.