Apple HomeView is official: a $299 smart display with Siri AI and face recognition, not sold in the EUApple HomeView is official: a $299 smart display with Siri AI and face recognition, not sold in the EU

Apple announced HomeView, its first smart display, on 13 October.

HomeView puts a 7-inch Liquid Retina screen on a domed speaker base, joined by a stainless steel hinge that tilts. It runs on an A18 chip and comes in silver, starlight, rose pink and space grey. A second model, HomeView (Wall Mounted), drops the base and comes in space grey and silver. Both cost the same, and pre-orders opened on the day of the announcement, with deliveries from Friday 13 November, according to Apple's press release. Singapore pre-orders start on 15 October, and South Africa sells through resellers only.

The announcement confirms most of what Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported two days earlier, when he said the hub would be called HomeView, use an A18 and ship in mid-November. The four finishes and the per-person recognition match code and reporting we covered at the start of October. Apple's release does not name the software the device runs.

How much does HomeView cost?

Prices from Apple's regional newsrooms on 13 October 2026. The tabletop and wall models cost the same in every region listed.

The tabletop model ships with a USB-C cable and power adapter. The wall model does not: Apple's product page says the mount, USB-C cable and power adapter are all sold separately. The mounts come from Schneider Home, which leaked iOS 27.2 code had already named as a second Apple Home partner. There are three: a plug-in USB-C Wall Connector at $59.95, an AC Wired mount at $79.95, and a PoE Wired mount at $129.95 that arrives in early 2027.

What does HomeView do?

• Recognises up to six people by face, each with their own Home Screen, apps and widgets.
• Runs Siri AI, in English only at launch. Canadian French follows in a later update.
• Shows personal Messages, Calendar and Reminders only when it sees your face and your paired iPhone or iPad is on the same Wi-Fi and recently unlocked.
• Acts as an Apple Home hub, Matter controller and Thread border router, The Verge reports, with up to nine camera feeds on screen at once.
• Makes FaceTime calls on a 12MP Center Stage camera, and listens for smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.
• Plays Apple Music, Podcasts and Apple TV, and some third-party audio apps from your iPhone. The Verge saw Spotify and Audible, but no third-party video apps yet.

Apple says camera and microphone data for recognition is processed in Secure Exclaves on the A18, out of reach of apps, the user and Apple. Siri requests use on-device processing or Private Cloud Compute.

One detail differs between Apple and the first hands-on. Apple says the interface shows more detail as you walk closer. The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, who saw it in New York, wrote that the screen did not adjust as she approached. The demo may have had the feature off, and Apple's page limits it to select features. We report Apple's claim and note that it has not yet been seen working.

Why is HomeView not sold in the EU?

Apple says HomeView is not for sale in the European Union because Siri AI is not available in iOS there. It says it is working constructively with the EU in an attempt to find a path forward, and gives no date. MacRumors confirms the same position. The UK, outside the EU, gets it on day one.

Our take

HomeView is less a smart home controller than a second screen for your iPhone. Almost everything that makes it personal depends on a recently unlocked iPhone or iPad on the same network. The Verge reached the same conclusion from the demo: everything it showed also works with Siri AI on the phone. Someone in the household without an Apple phone gets a good speaker, a photo frame and home controls, but little that is their own.

The privacy design is the strongest part. A shared screen that hides a teenager's messages from a younger sibling is a real problem solved, and doing face matching where Apple says even Apple cannot see it is the right answer for a camera that lives in the kitchen. Whether it is fast enough is the open question. Some controls, such as viewing recorded footage or unlocking security accessories, need a recognised user. If recognition is slow, HomeView will be frustrating at exactly the moments it matters.

On price, the matching $299 hides a difference. The wall model needs at least a $59.95 mount plus your own cable and adapter, so it really starts at around $360 in the US. APPDOOK's view is that buyers should treat the tabletop as the default and pay for the wall model only if they want a fixed control panel by the door.

The EU exclusion is a bigger cost for Apple than for buyers. It follows Gurman's warning that Siri AI could stay off EU iPhones for five months or more. A product designed around Siri AI cannot ship where Siri AI is missing, so its EU launch now depends on that dispute being settled. What is still unknown: how well recognition works with six people, whether third-party video apps arrive, and what Apple will let developers build for it.