Apple has added an entirely new product type to its ever-growing family of devices. The company unveiled the HomeView smart speaker at its Welcome Home event in New York on Tuesday — a long-rumored addition that looks like a hybrid between a HomePod and a giant Apple Watch.
The HomeView’s square screen is a seven-inch Liquid Retina display. This bold design choice will set Apple’s smart speaker apart from rivals on the market, most of which have rectangular landscape screens. In the display, two full-range drivers will help deliver room-filling Spatial Audio. The device is powered by Apple’s homegrown A18 chip — the same silicon inside the iPhone 16 Series and the MacBook Neo.
Apple’s home hub functions as a central portal for entertainment, connection and controlling your smart home devices, but also for interacting with Apple Intelligence and Siri AI. This builds on the Siri AI revamp that Apple announced back at WWDC in June, which saw the company introduce a more capable, conversational voice assistant that matches up-to-date AI smarts with the company’s privacy and security standards.
“It is little surprise that the HomeView coincides with Apple’s renewed push on Siri AI and Apple Intelligence,” said Ben Wood, chief analyst at FDM CCS, speaking from the company’s New York event. “The company has undoubtedly been waiting for the upgraded Siri experience, given how important the voice interactions are with this product.”
Unlike most Apple devices, which are either designed completely for personal use (the iPhone or the Apple Watch) or designed to be shared by everyone in the home (Apple TV or HomePods), the HomeView straddles both worlds. “Apple HomeView is designed to be shared by everyone in the home yet feel completely personal to each user,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing in a press release.
Apple HomeView will recognize your family members using built-in facial recognition, and will allow them to check their personal content in Messages, FaceTime, Calendar, Reminders and Find My. Furthermore, when paired with an Apple Intelligence-enabled device, HomeView will draw on your personal context to provide personalized answers to any questions you ask of it.
Your HomeView device can either sit on your tabletop or be mounted to a wall, depending on your preference. One thing to note is that you have to decide this when you buy — either you pick the wall-mounted option, or you choose one with a domed speaker base attached. If you opt for the wall-mounted version, it can be attached using three purpose-built mounts from Schneider Home, with the option to install it yourself or have a professional do it for you.
AppleA collection of playful and informative faces are available for you to choose between — some featuring your personal photos, others featuring an animated Snoopy. These faces respond dynamically to your physical and presence and movement, which sounds like a fun feature for a kitchen dance party. The idea is true personalization — whether you want interactive art, a functional and useful interface, or something in between.
Customers in the US, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and the UK can preorder the HomeView right now for $299, with devices available from Nov. 13. It comes in silver, starlight, rose pink and space gray, so there’s bound to be at least one option that will fit your home decor screen.
Katie Collins
Principal Writer
Katie is a UK-based news reporter and features writer. Officially, she is CNET’s European correspondent, covering tech policy and Big Tech in the EU and UK. Unofficially, she serves as CNET’s Taylor Swift correspondent. You can also find her writing about tech for good, ethics and human rights, the climate crisis, robots, travel and digital culture. She was once described a “living synth” by London’s Evening Standard for having a microchip injected into her hand.
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