Today is the day Apple’s living room push finally becomes something you can buy. The HomeView smart display and the fourth-generation Apple TV 4K both go on sale Friday, November 13, at $299 each, with the first preorders already reaching customers in Australia and New Zealand. Reviews landed the day before launch, and they agree on two things: the hardware is lovely, and the software is not finished yet.
HomeView is Apple’s first smart display, a 7-inch square screen on a speaker base, built around Siri AI, the smarter voice assistant that debuted in iOS 27. The new Apple TV 4K is the more familiar product, a faster streaming box with hands-free Siri, but at $299 it costs more than double the 2022 model’s original starting price. Both are on sale today in the US, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and the UK. Neither is available in the European Union, because Siri AI is not offered there yet.
HomeView: $299, and the wall version costs the same
HomeView runs on Apple’s A18 chip and has a 7-inch Liquid Retina display at 1088 by 1088 pixels. It comes in a tabletop version with a speaker base, in silver, starlight, rose pink or space gray, and a wall-mounted version in space gray or silver. Both cost $299 in the US, which is roughly Rs 26,500 at current exchange rates, though Indian buyers should check apple.com/in for the local price. The catch is that the wall-mounted version needs mounting hardware sold separately, so the same $299 buys you less in the box.
Preinstalled apps include Alarms, Calendar, FaceTime, Find My, Home, Intercom, Messages, Music, Podcasts, Reminders, Safari, Settings, Timers, Weather and World Clock. There is no App Store, but it supports CarPlay-enabled audio and video apps such as Apple TV, Spotify and Apple Music Classical. Apple also opened preorders today for the first three accessories in its Apple Home Collection: two security cameras and a video doorbell made with LG.
What the first reviews actually say
Engadget gave HomeView 8.4 out of 10, praising its design and sound, but noted that it depends heavily on a nearby iPhone or iPad and is not great for watching videos. Stuff’s review was warmer and blunter at once: “full of promise but there are these two key frustrations,” calling Siri “underbaked” and flagging irritating software quirks, while concluding it will be a great product once the software catches up. MacRumors spent a week with a review unit and published its video verdict the day before launch.
The Siri complaints are specific, not vague. Tech journalist Joanna Stern wrote in her newsletter that Siri AI on HomeView once gave her a strange answer to a simple question, and Apple itself released a HomeView software 27.2 update the day before launch, then said a further update is coming next month to fix a Siri AI issue that stops Siri from controlling smart home products like locks. Buying a $299 smart home hub whose smart home controls need a fix is the kind of thing worth knowing before you buy, not after.
On privacy, Apple published a detailed explanation of how Secure Exclaves protect camera and microphone data on HomeView, the iPhone 18 Pro and other products. The camera data is processed in a hardware-isolated environment, which is a genuine differentiator against cheaper smart displays, even if it is not the reason most people will buy one.
Apple TV 4K: faster chip, hands-free Siri, harder sell
The new Apple TV 4K runs on the A19 chip, the same one in the iPhone 17, which Apple says delivers up to 50 percent faster CPU performance and twice the graphics speed of the prior A15 Bionic model. Three built-in far-field microphones enable hands-free Siri commands without the remote or a paired HomePod, and the new Siri Remote, sold separately for $59, has a Find My speaker and Precision Finding support with supported iPhones.
Reviewers praised the hands-free Siri and the speed, then questioned the value. The Verge’s TV reviewer noted that four years of waiting produced a box that still lacks 4K/120Hz output, audio passthrough to AV receivers, an HDMI input or digital optical out. At $299, roughly $200 more than a Roku Ultra and several times the cost of basic streamers, it is a polished box for Apple ecosystem users and a hard sell for everyone else. CNET and Engadget reached the same conclusion: the faster chip and microphones are welcome, but the price jump is hard to justify unless you specifically need the new audio or voice features.
| Device | Price | Chip | The headline feature |
|---|---|---|---|
| HomeView (tabletop or wall) | $299 | A18 | 7-inch display with Siri AI at the center |
| Apple TV 4K (4th gen) | $299 | A19 | Hands-free Siri, up to 50% faster CPU |
| New Siri Remote | $59 | n/a | Find My speaker, Precision Finding |
Siri AI is also coming to your old Apple TV
The launch has a bonus for existing owners. An upcoming tvOS 27.2.1 update will bring Siri AI to the second- and third-generation Apple TV 4K models, according to an Apple support document, and it could arrive as soon as Friday. Siri AI on the older boxes requires a nearby paired Siri AI-enabled device, like an iPhone 15 Pro or later. If you already own an Apple TV 4K from 2021 or 2022, that free update is the best value in today’s launch.
Should you buy one today
HomeView makes sense if you are deep in Apple’s ecosystem, want a bedside or kitchen display for timers, FaceTime and smart home controls, and can live with software that is still being finished. It does not make sense as a video device, and it does not make sense at all if your home runs on Alexa or Google Assistant. The Apple TV 4K makes sense if you want hands-free Siri and the fastest Apple streaming box, and much less sense if you just want to watch shows, where the 2022 model or a $100 streamer does the same job.
Both devices are in stores today, and the early verdict is consistent across reviewers: beautiful hardware, unfinished software, premium prices. Apple has a month to fix the Siri smart home bug before the holiday buying peak, and that fix will matter more to HomeView’s future than anything in today’s launch. Code in iOS 27.3 points to ChatGPT and Claude apps running on HomeView, which would change the value equation considerably, and Siri AI is now available to everyone without a waitlist. For now, though, the honest summary is the one the reviewers keep writing: full of promise, not quite there yet.
