Apple’s first proper smart display is now in customers’ hands. HomeView went on sale on November 13, starting in Australia and New Zealand thanks to the time zones, with the rest of the launch countries following through the day. It’s a $299 home hub that Apple hopes will become the centre of the connected home, a role Amazon and Google have spent the better part of a decade trying to claim with the Echo Show and Nest Hub.
The hardware sits somewhere between a small iPad and a HomePod. It has a 7-inch square display, and the standard tabletop version includes a speaker base. There’s also a wall-mounted configuration, but it needs separate mounting hardware, so the $299 price doesn’t cover every setup.
The more interesting part is how it handles a shared home. Using its camera and voice recognition, HomeView can tell up to six household members apart and show each person their own information. That matters because smart displays usually work best for one person and get messy once a whole family is using the same screen and calendar. The device handles video calls, video playback, calendars, weather, music and smart home controls. It can also show widgets from a paired iPhone.
What it can’t do is run third-party apps. There’s no HomeView App Store, only Apple’s preinstalled software. That keeps the experience controlled and tidy, but it also means HomeView will only be as useful as Apple decides to make it, at least for now.
Everything runs through Siri AI, the upgraded assistant Apple introduced with iOS 27, and the launch countries reflect that. HomeView is available in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, the UK and the US. It isn’t coming to the European Union, where Siri AI hasn’t launched. Buyers in the UAE and the wider Middle East aren’t on the list either, so anyone here who wants one will need to buy it abroad and accept the limits that come with that.
The fourth-generation Apple TV 4K launches on the same day, also at $299. It uses an A19 chip, comes with 128GB of storage, supports Wi-Fi 7 and Siri AI, and can pair with up to four HomePods for surround sound. It’s available in the US and 29 other countries and regions.
The two launches close out an unusually busy stretch in which Apple announced more than 25 devices and accessories since late August. HomeView is the most experimental of them. Whether it succeeds will depend largely on Siri AI. If the new assistant proves reliable in a busy household, Apple finally has a real smart home hub. If it doesn’t, HomeView is an expensive screen with nothing else to fall back on.