Apple HomePod release: Pre-orders open for company's new smart speaker

You won't be able to get your hands on it for a week – and very few people have actually heard it

Apple is finally selling the HomePod, its smart speaker.

The round, voice-controlled sound system was initially revealed in June and was supposed to go on sale before the end of the year.

It wasn't initially clear when Apple would start selling the device, since it only said that pre-orders would open at some point today. But they went live at lunchtime, at the same time in all the countries it will be sold in.

It's now available in both colours – black and white – for £319 in the UK or $349 in the US. It won't actually arrive until next Friday, when it is also expected to appear in Apple Stores, though it's still not clear whether you'll actually be able to listen to it in those stores.

People ordering the HomePod today are doing so with little sense of how it actually sounds. While some journalists were able to hear it at the WWDC event in June where it was revealed, they did so in a relatively controlled environment, and there haven't been any mainstream reviews since.

Apple says that the speaker can compete with the best of the smart speaker market, such as the sound systems made by Sonos. It also said that it sounds far better than the other voice-controlled gadgets that have been released, such as Amazon's Echo and the Google Home.

The availability is relatively limited, for now: the US, UK and Australia, with France and Germany coming soon. Other countries tend to get other products at the same time, but Apple has presumably limited the release either to ensure a strong supply in those countries or to give it time to get Siri ready to answer questions in other countries and languages.

Some features won't be available to the people who receive their HomePods when they're released. AirPlay 2 – the updated wireless technology that allows the HomePod to actually play music – isn't ready yet, so people won't be able to use their HomePods in multi-room setups or place two of them together to play in stereo.