Apple's Smart Home Display Finally Has a Name: HomeView, Priced at a Surprisingly Restrained $299

The rumored "HomePad" never materialized. Apple went with a different name for its long-in-the-works smart home display — HomeView — sidestepping any confusion with HomePod. The device, which outside observers have compared to the Amazon Echo Show and Google Nest Hub, was officially unveiled Tuesday at Apple's "Welcome Home" event in New York. The same event also brought updates to the Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini, but Apple saved most of its spotlight for this new product category, HomeView.

At the heart of HomeView is a tiltable 7-square-inch Liquid Retina touchscreen mounted on a base with built-in speakers, available in both tabletop and wall-mounted versions. The tabletop base packs in two full-range speakers, a downward-firing woofer, and two force-canceling passive radiators; the wall-mounted version ditches the base, with Apple saying the audio has been tuned specifically for wall placement. The display can hit a peak brightness of 500 nits and dim down to as low as 0.3 nits — low enough to sit on a nightstand without disturbing your sleep.

Powering the device is the A18 chip, the same silicon found in the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16e, and MacBook Neo. Reports had suggested HomeView was previously delayed due to setbacks with Apple's AI-powered Siri overhaul, but the device has now finally arrived with Apple Intelligence and an AI-integrated Siri on board. Users can start a conversation on HomeView and pick it back up on another Apple device.

The device can recognize a user's face and automatically switch from a shared home screen to a personalized interface, pulling in notifications and calendar data from that person's iPhone or iPad. The interface also supports customization similar to Apple Watch faces, letting users add up to four adjustable widgets showing things like weather, featured photos, or Snoopy animations. Apple emphasized that HomeView is designed to keep user data separated by profile, and said it does not track or sell this data.

Feature-wise, HomeView covers FaceTime calls, music and podcast playback, and video streaming. Apple also noted you can pull up a recipe on screen while cooking.

The tabletop version comes in four colors — Silver, Starlight, Rose Pink, and Space Gray — while the wall-mounted version is available only in Space Gray and Silver. Both versions are priced at $299, with preorders opening today and shipping starting November 13. At launch, the interface will only support English, and the device will be available in the US, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, and the UK. Apple says Canadian French support will be added later via a software update.