in November 2026 Apple launched Apple HomeView, an all-new product line that expands its smart home offerings with a dedicated display for the home. Starting at £299, HomeView combines entertainment, home controls and Siri all into one device. But what exactly is Apple HomeView, and should you buy one?
What is HomeView?
HomeView is simply a smart home hub that can sit in a communal room of your house, such as the kitchen or living room, allowing any member of the household or even a guest to control smart home accessories, play music, send a message or simply ask Siri a trivia question.
In Apple's advertising, the product appears in a kitchen as a helpful assistant by showing a recipe, setting timers and answering random questions that appear in your head.
It has a 7-inch Liquid Retina display connected to a domed speaker base by a stainless-steel hinge, which allows the screen to tilt and offers Siri AI. Siri AI is an assistant thats always there allowing anyone to shout commands or questions into the air and get a response, without having to think about it.
This is different from your iPhone, which offers the same capabilities but may not always be conveniently ready for you in the home. For example, many people will move about their house without their iPhone, leaving it instead charging somewhere or at their desk.
HomeView keeps you connected whilst not needing to keep your devices on you at all times.
Additionally, your iPhone goes out with you and is something you carry around and use whilst working, shopping, studying or running errands. This makes it naturally a dirty device, which ideally you don't want to be using as your recipe machine when cooking in the kitchen.
HomeView can become an additional kitchen appliance that powers your recipes and cooking timers, offering a more hygienic experience.
However, if you don't do much cooking and don't think you'll find it useful in the kitchen, you may end up considering one if you just want to build an Apple smart home.
Apple HomeKit smart homes, through the Apple Home app, require a home hub to power it. This includes the Apple TV 4K, HomePod, HomePod mini 2 and Apple HomeView.
This makes HomeView the only hub with a display, where you can interact with home controls yourself which could prove genuinely useful simply as a control panel by your front door as you get home.
Apple even offers a wall-mounted version that I can see sitting on the wall by someones front door allowing them to turn on the lights, draw the curtains and turn the heating on when they get home from work after a long day.
This is something that you simply couldn't do before with a HomePod, where you might be there all day shouting commands at Siri trying to control your home.
Why buy HomeView?
Despite this, the argument still stands that you could just get out your iPhone or use the Apple Watch on your wrist to perform the exact same actions, perhaps more conveniently.
However, this is designed as a family device where not everyone might have an iPhone or Apple Watch yet. This includes children, who may currently only have an iPad that they can't just always have in their pocket or their screen time could be up for the day.
HomeView would allow them to stay connected to the smart home, such as turning on lights, and let them still have somewhere to ask their random trivia questions they may have throughout the day.
Additionally, if you currently use HomePods in your kitchen when cooking, a HomeView with the screen could be useful allowing you to actually following recipes and view how much time is left on your timer, without it being a guessing game.
Typically, I'd expect HomeView to only appear in Apple device-heavy households that already use the Apple Home app. This device could become the main hub in the kitchen, you could have an Apple TV in the living room and then a couple of HomePod minis in the bedrooms upstairs.
Should you buy one?
If you live with family, use Apple devices and currently use other companies’ smart home devices with a display, HomeView would be a reasonable purchase.
However, if you live alone, don't have a smart home or don't use Apple products, it'll probably be best to skip it. Apple has made this a family-first device, so if you're looking at it thinking what's the point of Apple HomeView, you're likely not the target audience the device was trying to appeal to anyway.
