Apple HomeView Reviews Are In: What to Know Before It Ships November 13

Quick summary: Apple’s first smart display, HomeView, goes on sale Friday, November 13 for $299, and the first reviews landed this morning. The short version: reviewers love it as a smart home controller, kitchen helper and photo frame, but they’re split on Siri and on how it handles personal stuff like texts in a shared home.

Key takeaways

• Price and date: $299, available starting November 13, per Apple’s store page.
• You need an iPhone or iPad on iOS 27.2 or iPadOS 27.2 or later to set it up.
• Up to six people in a home can be enrolled, each with their own Apple Account.
• The Verge calls it “a gorgeous, speedy smart home hub,” but its reviewer could read her teenage daughter’s texts on it.
• Tom’s Guide says it can do less than Amazon’s rival displays and that Siri still trails Alexa+ and Gemini.
• There’s no App Store, but it runs CarPlay-style audio and video apps like Spotify and Apple TV.

What HomeView actually is

HomeView is a 7-inch square display on a speaker base, connected by a tilting hinge, built for a kitchen counter, nightstand or side table, as MacRumors describes it. Apple introduced it back in October in its newsroom announcement, and this is the first Apple speaker with Siri AI built in.

Here are the hardware details reviewers confirmed:

Spec	What reviewers reported
Display	7-inch square, 1088 x 1088, 220 ppi, 0.3 to 500 nits (Tom’s Guide)
Usable screen	About 6.4 inches because of the bezels (Tom’s Guide)
Speakers	Two full-range drivers plus a down-firing woofer (Tom’s Guide)
Camera	12MP (The Verge)
Sensors	Temperature and humidity (The Verge)
Tabletop colors	Silver, starlight, rose pink, space gray (Tom’s Guide)
Wall-mount colors	Silver, space gray (Tom’s Guide)

The apps that come on it are Alarms, Calendar, FaceTime, Find My, Home, Intercom, Messages, Music, Podcasts, Reminders, Safari, Settings, Timers, Weather and World Clock, according to MacRumors.

Wall mount pricing

The tabletop and wall-mounted versions are both $299, but the wall version needs a mount you buy separately. MacRumors says Apple sells three mounts from $59.95 to $129.95. Tom’s Guide lists a USB-C wall connector at $59 and a hardwired mount at $79, and suggests calling an electrician for the hardwired one. Apple’s store page says ADT professional installation is available in most areas for the wall version.

What reviewers loved

The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison Tuohy says HomeView “nails everything I want from a smart display.” Her highlights were fast smart home control, excellent guided cooking, customizable faces and great sound for its size.

9to5Mac’s Chance Miller lived with it in his kitchen for ten days. He says it went from a “nice-to-have to something I use and rely on for multiple tasks each day,” and called the $299 price about $100 less than he expected from the rumors.

Where it stumbles

• Shared texts. HomeView pulls in your texts, calendar and reminders when your iPhone is home on the same Wi-Fi. The Verge’s reviewer says she could read her 15-year-old daughter’s messages on it, and vice versa. That’s a big one for families.
• Siri is still slow sometimes. The Verge says Siri AI is an improvement but “still slow at times.” Tom’s Guide says Siri is less capable than Alexa+ or Gemini.
• Apple Home only. It can only control devices that work with Apple Home. The Verge notes that rules out Ring doorbells and Nest cameras without workarounds.
• No physical camera or mic switch. Tom’s Guide lists this as a reason to avoid it.
• Fewer apps. Tom’s Guide says it has fewer streaming apps than other smart displays, and there’s no App Store.

My take

If your house already runs on iPhones and Apple Home, $299 for a really nice-looking controller, photo frame and kitchen timer is a pretty easy yes, and reviewers seem to agree on that part. The texts issue is what would make me pause in a house with kids. I’d want Apple to add a way to turn the personal features off before I put one in the kitchen.

If you’re on Android, or your smart home is built around Alexa, Ring or Nest, HomeView isn’t for you. A display like the Amazon Echo Show 8 works with Zigbee, Matter and Thread devices, has a built-in camera shutter, and is $149.99 on Amazon as of today. That’s half the price of HomeView, and it’s available right now.

Sources

• The Verge: Apple HomeView review
• Tom’s Guide: Apple HomeView review
• 9to5Mac: Apple HomeView review
• MacRumors: HomeView review
• Apple: Meet Apple HomeView