If you’ve ever wanted one screen in the kitchen to check the doorbell, set a timer, FaceTime family, and pick the next song, Apple now has its answer. HomeView is a new product category from Apple: a smart display with a 7-inch screen, a speaker base, and the new Siri AI built in. If your home already runs on iPhones, it’s the most tightly integrated hub Apple has made – but do you actually need one?
What it does
HomeView pairs a 7-inch display with a domed speaker base, joined by a tilting stainless steel hinge. It runs on an A18 chip (the processor that debuted with iPhone 16) and comes in silver, starlight, rose pink, and space gray. There’s also a wall-mounted version for the same $299, though the mounts cost extra – from $60 up to $130.
When nobody’s using it, HomeView works a bit like the iPhone’s StandBy mode: it can show a photo frame, cartoon animations, a grid of smart home controls, or up to nine live camera feeds at once. It also handles FaceTime calls with Center Stage, reformats recipes from Safari with hands-free timers, and listens for smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.
The clever part is that it knows who’s looking at it. HomeView recognizes up to six people by face, and your personal messages and calendar only appear when it sees you and your iPhone is nearby and recently unlocked. There’s no App Store, though – this is not an iPad welded to a speaker. Third-party apps work when connected via your iPhone or iPad, so audio apps like Spotify and Audible will work, according to MacRumors.
Siri AI is the headline feature, but it launches in beta, and in my testing with iOS 27 it’s not super reliable yet. Personal requests need an Apple Intelligence-capable iPhone or iPad, and Apple says some server-side features have daily usage limits, with expanded access costing extra in the future. That’s a bit woolly when trying to get customers to cough up.
Price and availability
HomeView costs $299/£299 and arrives on November 13, with pre-orders open from October 13. For now, it’s available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Singapore, plus South Africa through resellers. But the big news is that it isn’t coming to the EU, because Siri AI isn’t available on iOS there thanks to stricter regulations.
Is it worth it?
Back in August, we laid out what Apple’s home hub needed to be worth buying: affordable, extensible, personal, useful when idle, and ideally shaped like an iMac G4. Apple has nailed the personal and idle parts, and the hinged design isn’t a million miles from that iMac. Extensibility is where it falls short, while reception to the price has been a mixed bag thus far.
9to5Mac argues that “Apple is pricing HomeView more as an invitation to try a new category of product,” which is a fair point considering it lands at a cheaper entry point than HomePod. If the sound quality is anywhere close, it might be an obvious switch-up for some people. But TechRadar notes it’s $100 more than Amazon’s Echo Show 8, and that it has “fewer feature than some rivals.” But for those already deep in the Apple ecosystem, it’s a tempting prospect.