You don't need Apple's $350 HomePod speaker; there are cheaper options

You don't need to buy Apple's new $350 HomePod for a great-sounding and smart audio experience at home. Reviews of Apple's new smart speaker are out and the consensus seems to be that, while it sounds good, it's not very "smart" and is still very limited in what it can do, especially compared with similar speakers from Google and Amazon. In all, it's a first-generation product that appears to need a lot of updates to catch up with what's already available.

Here's how you can get a smart and excellent audio experience at home without buying a HomePod — and save some money in the process.

The Amazon Echo is my favorite smart speaker on the market right now. You can ask it the weather or for recipes, order items directly from Amazon for two-day delivery, and even play music across services including Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music and more. I recommend buying the Amazon Echo Dot, the cheapest of the bunch, and connecting it to another speaker.

Next, buy a soundbar that accepts auxiliary input from a 3.5mm headphone jack. With a cable that comes in the soundbar's box, you can plug in the Echo Dot. I recommend getting one with a standalone bass, like the Vizio 2.1-Channel Soundbar System. It's $179.

Better yet, if you decide to add other Echo units down the road, you can play the same song in multiple rooms, which you can't do with the Apple HomePod yet. (Apple says a software update will launch later this year that enables it.) Other bonuses: It supports Bluetooth, which the HomePod does not.

All in, with the Echo Dot, you're spending about $219. That's $130 savings over the Apple HomePod.

Or, and I've done this in other rooms of my house, consider buying two Sonos Play:1 Units at $150 each (or just one!). Sonos has a cult following because of its high-quality sounding speakers, and two of them will set you back just $300. You can connect an Echo Dot in the same fashion as the soundbar method above to add smarts ($40) and you'll also get support for stereo sound in a single room, or support for playing music around your house. You can access all of your favorite music services (including Apple Music, Pandora, Spotify and many others) all from the Sonos app, and streaming works over your home Wi-Fi network.