Apple has welcomed an entirely new product type to its ever-growing family of devices. The company unveiled the HomeView smart speaker at its Welcome Home event in New York on Tuesday — a long-rumored addition that looks like a hybrid between a HomePod and a giant Apple Watch.

The HomeView’s square screen is a seven-inch Liquid Retina display. This bold design choice will set Apple’s smart speaker apart from rivals on the market, most of which have rectangular landscape screens.

Apple’s home hub functions as a central portal for entertainment, connection and controlling your smart home devices, but also for interacting with Apple Intelligence and Siri AI.

HomeView will recognize your family members using built-in facial recognition, and will allow them to check their personal content in Messages, FaceTime, Calenda, Reminders and Find My. Furthermore, when paired with an Apple Intelligence-enabled device, HomeView will draw on your personal context to provide personalized answers to any questions you ask of it.

Your HomeView device can either sit on your tabletop or be mounted to a wall, depending on your preference. One thing to note is that you have to decide this when you buy — either you pick the wall-mounted option, or you choose one with a domed speaker base attached.

Customers in the US, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and the UK can pre-order the HomeView right now for $299, with devices available from November 13. It comes in silver, starlight, rose pink and space gray, so there’s bound to be at least one option that will fit your home decor screen.

Katie Collins

Principal Writer

Katie is a UK-based news reporter and features writer. Officially, she is CNET’s European correspondent, covering tech policy and Big Tech in the EU and UK. Unofficially, she serves as CNET’s Taylor Swift correspondent. You can also find her writing about tech for good, ethics and human rights, the climate crisis, robots, travel and digital culture. She was once described a “living synth” by London’s Evening Standard for having a microchip injected into her hand.

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