Apple's £299 HomeView hub is officially here – with two designs and four colour options
The rumours were right
QUICK SUMMARY
Apple has officially unveiled HomeView, a new smart home hub with a 7-inch touchscreen, built-in speaker and Siri AI. It will be available as a tabletop or wall-mounted model, and there are four colours in total.
Priced at £299/$299, pre-orders are open now ahead of its 13th November launch.
Apple has officially unveiled HomeView at its ‘Welcome Home’ event, a new smart home hub designed to bring control of your connected home to every room.
It features a 7-inch Liquid Retina touchscreen and comes in two versions – a tabletop model with a speaker base and a wall-mounted option. The tabletop model is available in Silver, Starlight, Rose Pink and Space Grey, whilst the wall-mounted version comes in Silver and Space Grey.
Both models cost £299/$299, with pre-orders opening on 13th October and availability starting on 13th November in the UK, US and several other markets. The wall-mounted version requires a separate mount, with prices starting at £59.95/$59.95. HomeView won't launch in the European Union for now, as Siri AI is currently unavailable in iOS there.
Both models are powered by Apple's A18 chip and feature Siri AI, a more capable assistant with broader world knowledge and onscreen awareness. When paired with a compatible Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone or iPad, Siri can also draw on personal information from apps such as Messages and Calendar to provide more personalised responses. HomeView recognises up to six people, giving each user their own Home Screen, apps and widgets.
Beyond smart home controls, HomeView supports FaceTime, Messages, Apple Music, Apple TV, Podcasts and other compatible apps. Its audio system is designed to deliver room-filling sound, whilst features such as Handoff and multiroom audio make it easy to move music between Apple devices and speakers.
As a smart home dashboard, HomeView lets you control compatible lights, thermostats, locks and blinds, as well as view up to nine camera feeds at once. It works with Apple Home and Matter-compatible accessories, alongside the new Apple Home Collection, developed with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric.
Apple says privacy is central to the experience, with Secure Exclaves keeping camera and microphone data processing isolated. Siri requests are handled on-device or through Private Cloud Compute, which Apple says doesn't store data or make it accessible to the company.
Keep following our live blog for more announcements as they happen.
