I’d pick one and see how they are doing on the inside. Pick the one with the most apparent ‘chubby ridges’ - where they start to swell on the sides and cease being truly round. They start to ‘square off’ - but with round edges, if that makes sense. Like the second shot of a single fruit that you posted above.
Depending on which variety you have - many poms are pretty tart. I started picking mine early this year - because I found that even though they had dark sunken or ‘tough as nails’ areas on the outside of the fruit - there was quite a bit of salvageable arils and it was worth it to save those . . . even if the taste might be a little sweeter if I’d waited till end of October - or beginning of November.
I like a tart but not sour taste. And so do my grandkids. We have fun ‘picking’ them apart, together. And the sour does not seem to turn them off. They get excited when I show up with a basket of home-grown pomegranates.
I am going to ‘thin the mess’ out of my trees soon. They got so thick this past season and they are hard to manage . . . plus the air can’t circulate very well, I’m sure. I had a lot of fruit this year - but not a lot of GOOD fruit. This was true for the peaches and nectarines - the apples - AND the pomegranates.
Let me know what you think when you finally do taste one! - karen