Apple HomeView Is Official at $299, With Preorders Open and Delivery on November 13

Apple put a price on the home screen it has been missing. At the “Welcome Home” event in New York on Tuesday, the company introduced HomeView, a 7-inch Liquid Retina display on a speaker base, or on a wall mount, at $299 either way. Preorders opened today in the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and India. Singapore starts Thursday. Both versions reach customers on November 13. South Africa gets them through authorized resellers on the same date. The countertop model comes in silver, starlight, rose pink, and space gray. The wall-mounted model is space gray and silver only. Greg Joswiak called it a device meant to be shared by everyone in the home and personal to each user. The personal part is a 12-megapixel camera that recognizes up to six faces and switches the screen to that person’s Messages, FaceTime, Calendar, Reminders, and Find My. The shared part is the home: lights, thermostat, a live view of up to nine cameras, music, and a Siri that Apple is now calling Siri AI. When it is paired with an Apple Intelligence device, it can pull Calendar, Messages, and other personal context. It is a Matter controller and a Thread border router. It is not, on the product page, an App Store. What $299 Buys The panel is square, Liquid Retina, and dims to 0.3 nits so it can sit on a nightstand. Brightness adjusts to the room. The countertop version has an aluminum body, a domed speaker base, and a stainless-steel hinge that tilts. The Verge’s first listen put the sound above a HomePod mini and below a full HomePod. The wall version drops the speaker base and offers three power options: plug-in, in-wall power, and in-wall Power over Ethernet. Faces on the display swipe like an Apple Watch: clock, photos, weather, complications, Snoopy. WIRED’s first impression was a giant Watch. The chip underneath is an A18. The requirement is the line that will decide who buys it. HomeView expects every user in the household to have an iPhone on the latest software. A mixed house, or a house with an older phone, does not get the personal layer. Apple Intelligence features ride that phone connection. The hub is the screen. The phone is still the account. Alongside it, Apple showed a Home collection with partners: LG cameras, a video doorbell, a door lock, and thermostats from LG and Schneider Electric at $199. The cameras are up to 2.5K and work with HomeKit Secure Video. No release date was given for the cameras in the U.S., Canada, and the UK. HomeView can show a doorbell press, drop in on a camera, play back footage, and hold nine live feeds. The accessories are the reason the hub exists. The hub is the reason the accessories have a screen that is not a phone. How This Compares With What Was Rumored Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman had the name, the mid-November ship, the A18, the four colors, and the two bases before Tuesday. He also had the Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini on October 30. The price was the open item. At $299, HomeView sits in the same band as a higher-end Echo Show and above a basic Nest Hub, and well below the “workstation” prices Apple has charged for recent screens. It is the first Apple home product in years that is not asking for a premium on principle. Whether that is enough depends on the software. A $299 screen that needs a current iPhone for every person in the house is a $299 screen plus a phone upgrade for anyone who is behind. There is still no App Store. The limited app set Gurman described held. Photos, calendar, reminders, music, FaceTime, and home controls are the product. A developer cannot ship a HomeView app on day one. That keeps the device a controller and a frame. It also caps it. An Echo Show runs skills. A HomeView runs Apple’s. What Shipped Around It The event also covered a new Apple TV 4K and a HomePod mini 2. The mini, in early notes, is not ready for the full Siri AI at launch. HomeView is the device that is. A house that buys the hub and the new speaker gets voice in more rooms and a screen in one. A house that buys only the hub gets the screen and the existing speakers. The Thread and Matter support is the bridge to the locks and sensors that are not Apple’s, which is most of them. Privacy is the claim Apple put in the first paragraph of the newsroom post. Face recognition stays the mechanism for switching users. Notifications and messages are supposed to stay with the recognized face rather than on a shared slab. That is the feature a kitchen screen has to get right. It is also the feature a review will test with a child in the room. What to Watch November 13 delivery, and whether the date holds. Battery-free, always-plugged reviews of the speaker against a HomePod mini. How face switching behaves with six users and a guest. A date for the LG doorbell, lock, and cameras. Whether $299 is the price in six months, or an introductory one. HomeView is official. It is $299, it has a 7-inch square screen, it recognizes faces, and it arrives November 13. Preorders are open. The wall version costs the same and comes in fewer colors. The house it is built for is a house where everyone already has a current iPhone. Digital8Hub will cover the first reviews after the November 13 deliveries.