Well, I bought one. I doubt it really out performs the KEFs in the sweet spot, but it would beat them just about everywhere else. My “room” is a small capital L, living room in the long part, kitchen in the base, dining in the corner. Placed where the LR becomes the DR, in line of sight from all positions, the Homepod sounds as good standing at the front door, sitting at the dining room table, or cooking at the stove. And that’s very good. Deeper, better-controlled bass than its size, or thrice its size, has any right to expect. Clear, coherent mids. Clear, smooth high end without any noticable harshness. And the DSP is almost indistinguishable from magic. I’ve moved it all around the space, and it calibrates to music, not pink noise, so it takes a few seconds to adjust to new positions, but after a bit of adapting, it sounds the same pushed back into a corner under as it does sitting out in the middle of the room. The woofer is up-firing, so under a kitchen cabinet gets funky, and the tweeters are in the bottom so the highs are a bit better at dining room table height than end table height, but it’s not much difference.
One may not beat the KEFs in their sweet spot, but two might render them irrelevant.
For a system to listen to while living, rather than while sitting still between two speakers, I’ve never heard any thing close to this good without walking around with good in-ear monitors plugged into my phone. And that is the way everybody but audiophiles listens. It remains to be seen if most see (hear?) the difference between this and other talking speakers, but they’re really not the competition; they’re not really even in the same category. This is high fidelity home listening, reinvented. Stereo, outside of headphones, has been on life support for awhile. It has finally been well-replaced.
Oh and it’s kinda cool, when a song I really like comes on, to say, “Hey Siri, turn it up.” And even if it’s already loud, and I’m as far away from the HomePod as I can get, she understands me. Every time.