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Apple unveiled a slate of new smart home gadgets at its aptly named “Welcome Home” event today, including its first (and highly anticipated) smart home hub. That flagship announcement came alongside much-needed refreshes for Apple’s HomePod Mini and TV 4K devices, and a selection of new smart home and security accessories designed together with trusted third-party manufacturers. Catch up on all of Apple’s new hardware announcements in our roundup below, or click through for more detailed coverage on each.
HomeView is arguably the company’s first major Apple Home launch since releasing HomeKit in 2014. It gives you a dedicated display to monitor and control compatible smart home gadgets and security devices around your living space — something that Amazon and Google have long offered for their own smart home platforms in the form of Echo Show and Nest Hub devices. The $299 HomeView is available in four colors: silver, starlight, rose pink, and space gray.
It features a 7-inch, square-shaped, Liquid Retina display on a rounded speaker base (or it can be wall-mounted), in a design reminiscent of Apple’s 2002 iMac G4. The HomeView display can automatically adjust light levels to suit its surroundings, and can be dimmed down to just 0.3 nits of brightness so it can comfortably sit on your nightstand without blinding you at night. A 12-megapixel camera can be used for FaceTime calls, and enables the device to recognize up to six different users — automatically adapting from a shared household screen to a personalized hub when perception and recognition features are enabled.
Feature-wise, HomeView has all the usual smart home hub capabilities you’d expect: you can manage lighting, thermostat, and other smart device controls, and monitor a live view of up to nine security cameras. There are also some Apple Intelligence-powered Siri AI features such as personal context and text descriptions for video feeds, but these are leveraged via an iPhone connection. In fact, HomeView requires every user in a household to have an iPhone with the latest OS, which may cause problems in mixed iOS / Android households, or for anyone with an older iPhone.
It’s available to preorder today, with availability starting from November 13th. We’ve been expecting Apple to drop a refreshed version of its petite pod speaker since sparse details leaked in September , but now the update is official. The $149 HomePod Mini 2 is $50 more than its six-year-old predecessor and retains many of the same design features, but it’s still cheaper than the larger second-gen HomePod , which launched in 2023 at $299.
It has the same familiar ball shape, but the previously vivid color options are more muted: pink, blue, green, white, and midnight, color-matched with the current iMac models. The colorful lighting swirl on the top panel also makes a reappearance, but Apple has upgraded it with a “sound glow” feature that matches the illumination to the color of album cover art and other pretty soundscape designs. The HomePod Mini 2 is powered by the same S10 chip that’s found inside the Apple Watch Series 10 , and includes support for WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 6, and both Thread and Matter.
Support for Siri AI via a connected iPhone will be coming in a “later” software update, according to Apple. It can be used as the default speaker for your Mac, and multiple speakers can be connected together to provide a surround sound experience: either four HomePod Mini 2 speakers, or two second-gen HomePods with two HomePod Mini 2s. The HomePod Mini 2 can also automatically calibrate with the new Apple TV 4K to understand where the devices are positioned in the room, and relative to each other, tuning audio to best match the space.
You can preorder the new HomePod Mini 2 today, with shipping starting on October 30th. This is the fourth generation of Apple’s TV hardware, and comes with some minor but appreciated quality-of-life upgrades compared to its predecessor , released in 2022. The new Apple TV 4K is $149 ($20 more than the third-generation at launch) and comes with four far-field microphones built into the set-top box — meaning you no longer have to speak into the remote or a connected HomePod device to control it via Siri.
It doesn’t respond out loud, however, so any answers will be displayed as on-screen text. You can also pair the new Apple TV 4K with a compatible iPhone to use Siri AI features, such as leveraging personal context to surface a TV series suggested by a friend over text messages, and asking the AI assistant to recommend shows to watch on Apple TV (the streaming service, not the device). If you lose your remote, you can ask Siri to locate it using Bluetooth Channel Sounding and make it play a sound.
Preorders are available starting today, with shipping expected on November 13th. Apple also announced a new range of smart home hardware , designed in collaboration with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric . The Apple Home Collection includes multiple cameras from LG: a $199 indoor camera that automatically tilts down when you arrive home to provide some personal privacy, a $299 outdoor security camera with optional motion-activated floodlights (raising the price to $399), and a $249 video doorbell.
These are all HomeKit Secure Video cameras, meaning they can detect people, pets, packages, and vehicles, and support Apple Intelligence features via a connected iPhone. The collection also includes an LG door lock and two thermostats — one from LG and the other made by Schneider. All of the listed devices use NFC and are designed to be set up easily, similar to the experience of pairing AirPods.
Just approach them with your iPhone, follow the on-screen steps, and the device is automatically added to your Home app. Apple hasn’t mentioned a release date for this smart home gadget collection, only that it’s “coming soon.” Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates. Jess Weatherbed
Source: The Verge
