Apple Enters the Smart Home Display Market with £299 HomeView

Apple's first home assistant display, HomeView, is available to pre-order at £299 ahead of a 13 November 2026 release. The device pairs a seven-inch Liquid Retina screen with adaptive brightness that dims to a soft glow for nightstand use, housed in the company's signature aluminium. A domed speaker base connects to the screen via a stainless-steel hinge that adjusts viewing height, and a wall-mounted edition is also offered. Colour options are silver, starlight, rose pink and space grey, with USB cable colours matched to each case. Facial recognition surfaces personalised content for households running several Apple accounts, while a proximity sensor keeps text bold at a distance and shifts to a more detailed layout up close. Siri AI and Apple Intelligence underpin cross-device conversation continuity, playlist and calendar recall, and awareness of who is using the device. An iCloud+ subscription is required to unlock the full feature set, including new devices in the Apple Home Collection. Recipes can be broken into bullet-point steps with embedded timers. Two speakers plus a bass woofer in the stand support music and podcasts, with Handoff moving playback from car or phone and AirPlay syncing to compatible speakers. Snoopy personalisation returns alongside swappable clocks, weather panels and photos. Amazon's Echo Show arrived in 2017, Google's Home Hub the following year; Apple's entry raises the quality bar and keeps existing users inside its ecosystem.