Apple’s first smart display, HomeView, went on sale in Australia on Friday 13 November. It costs A$449 for either the tabletop or the wall-mounted version. The first independent reviews were published in the early hours of the same day, Australian time, and they broadly agree: HomeView is a polished, fast controller for an Apple smart home, but its new Siri AI assistant is still slow and less capable than rivals, and the wall-mounted model costs a good deal more than its sticker price suggests.
When Apple announced HomeView in October, we suggested waiting for independent testing before deciding. Here’s what that testing found, what HomeView really costs in Australia, and who should and shouldn’t buy one.
What Apple is selling, and what it costs here
HomeView is a small square touchscreen, about 7 inches across, on a speaker base. It recognises up to six people by face and shows each person their own messages, calendar, reminders and Find My information. According to Apple’s availability announcement, it went on sale on 13 November in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK and the US. It isn’t being sold in the European Union because Siri AI isn’t available on iOS there.
On Apple’s Australian online store, every colour of both models is listed at A$449. The tabletop version comes in silver, starlight, rose pink and space grey. The wall-mounted version comes in silver and space grey. That compares with US$299 in the US.
The catch is the wall-mounted model. Apple’s store says it “requires a mount and power solution to operate”, and neither comes in the box. iTWire lists Apple’s Australian prices for the three Schneider Home mounts:
- Power Mount USB-C Wall Connector: A$94.95. You screw it to the wall yourself, but Apple says it also needs a power adapter of at least 20W, sold separately
- Power Mount AC Wired: A$124.95. Apple says installation by a licensed electrician is required
- Power Mount PoE Wired (power over Ethernet): A$199.95, due in early 2027, and it needs Ethernet wiring in your home
So a wall-mounted HomeView starts at about A$544 before you add a power adapter or pay an electrician. According to iTWire, the tabletop model comes with a 1.5-metre USB-C cable and a 30W adapter.
You also need the right phone or tablet. Apple’s store says HomeView requires an iPhone running iOS 27.2 or later, or an iPad running iPadOS 27.2 or later. Each household member who wants their own profile needs an Apple Account and their own iPhone or iPad. Guests can still use shared features such as smart home controls, timers and music, according to The Verge.
What the reviews say works well
The strongest praise is for smart home control. HomeView has a Thread radio and a Matter controller built in, so it works as an Apple Home hub. The Verge’s smart home reviewer, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, gave it 7 out of 10 and found it turned on her entryway lights “as quickly as a regular light switch”. The Camera face can stream up to nine HomeKit Secure Video cameras at once, and she called HomeView “the best smart display for cameras I’ve tested”.
Reviewers also liked its kitchen features. HomeView turns a web recipe sent from an iPhone into step-by-step instructions, and adds timers to steps automatically. The Verge rated the speaker “very good for the size” and praised the customisable Apple Watch-style faces, including a photo frame mode and a Snoopy face. There are no ads on the screen, which The Verge contrasted with Amazon’s Echo Show range.
Where reviewers found problems
Siri AI is the weak point. Apple says Siri AI on HomeView is still a beta, available in English in Australia. The Verge found it helpful in the home but slow: “If Siri AI were a human personal assistant, I’d fire her for being too slow.” Tom’s Guide was harsher. Its verdict says HomeView “can’t do as much as rivals from Amazon, and Siri isn’t as capable as other AI assistants.” In its side-by-side tests, Siri offered to call a pizza shop or open the Uber app, while Amazon’s Alexa+ walked the reviewer through placing the order or booking the ride.
Privacy inside the household is another issue. Apple says personal content appears only when HomeView recognises someone’s face and their paired iPhone or iPad is on the same Wi-Fi network and has been unlocked recently. But The Verge’s reviewer wrote that she “could easily read my 15-year-old daughter’s text messages, and vice versa.” Her daughter’s verdict: “I’ll just use my iPhone.”
Other limits came up across reviews:
- There’s no App Store. Besides Apple’s built-in apps, HomeView supports CarPlay-enabled audio and video apps, such as Spotify and Apple TV, according to MacRumors.
- It only controls devices that work with Apple Home. The Verge notes that Ring doorbells and Nest cameras don’t work with HomeView natively, and only a handful of camera brands support HomeKit Secure Video, including Aqara, Eve and some eufy and TP-Link Tapo models.
- There are no physical volume buttons, according to both The Verge and Tom’s Guide, and The Verge notes there’s no mute button either.
- Tom’s Guide found few widgets are designed for HomeView yet. Tapping its Photos widget brought up a message saying the Photos app is only available on iPhone.
Apple also says some Apple Intelligence features that rely on its servers have daily usage limits, and that expanded access “will be available for a fee in the future”. Apple hasn’t said what that will cost or when.
What it means in Australia
HomeView arrives in a shrinking category. Australian analyst firm Telsyte’s Australian Smart Home Market Study found revenue from smart hubs, including smart speakers, fell 32 per cent in 2025, as fewer people replaced speakers and more devices connected directly over Wi-Fi. Google and Amazon lead the installed base of smart speakers in Australian homes, with Apple third. Telsyte said Apple’s hub could help revive demand. It also found 67 per cent of smart home users had struggled to get their devices working together, and only one in seven Australians had heard of Matter.
That compatibility point matters when choosing a screen. If your home already runs on Google or Alexa gear, HomeView won’t magically control it. If you’re weighing up the wider ecosystems, our comparison of Apple, Ring, Google Nest and Samsung smart home systems is a good place to start. And Apple’s new Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini 2 are the other pieces of the same Siri AI home push.
We haven’t tested HomeView ourselves. The impressions above come from the published reviews linked in this story.
Our read
Our read: the reviews suggest HomeView is already a very good screen for one specific household, one that is all-in on iPhones and already uses Apple Home accessories. For that home, the tabletop model at A$449 looks like a reasonable buy. For everyone else, the case is weaker. Siri AI is still labelled beta, and reviewers found it trailing Alexa+. Apple has also flagged future fees for some AI features without saying how much. The wall-mounted model is the one we’d be most cautious about: once you add a mount, a power adapter and possibly an electrician, it costs well over A$544, for a version with fewer speakers. If you aren’t sure, waiting a few months for Siri AI updates and third-party mounts costs you nothing.
Featured image: Apple’s George Street store in Sydney, April 2023 (not a HomeView launch photo; not supplied by Apple). Photo: Shkuru Afshar, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0; cropped, resized and converted to PNG. This adapted image is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
