{"id":2013,"date":"2026-10-14T03:17:06","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T03:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.batteryone.co\/blog\/?p=2013"},"modified":"2026-10-14T03:17:06","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T03:17:06","slug":"apple-unleashes-new-smart-home-lineup-homeview-homepod-mini-2-and-apple-tv-4k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.batteryone.co\/blog\/archives\/2013","title":{"rendered":"Apple Unleashes New Smart Home Lineup: HomeView, HomePod Mini 2, and Apple TV 4K"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For years, Apple<\/a> has been carefully cultivating a refined and understated HomeKit ecosystem, while the living room screen market has long been dominated by Amazon and Google. At yesterday’s “Welcome Home” event, Apple shattered that status quo with its own hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time, Apple introduced an entire lineup of new smart home products: the all-new Apple HomeView, the upgraded HomePod mini 2, the fourth-generation Apple TV 4K, and the Apple Home Collection, a series of accessories built by partners and certified by Apple, covering cameras, door locks, thermostats, and sensors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apple is trying to use Siri AI as the connective thread, making the smart home as tightly integrated as the iPhone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apple HomeView: An New Home Screen<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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HomeView was the most anticipated product of the event. Priced at $299, it combines a 7-inch square Liquid Retina display with a curved speaker base, and its design pays homage to the classic iMac G4. The tabletop version comes in four colors: silver, starlight, rose pink, and space gray. The wall-mount version is available in silver and space gray. The Schneider Home stand is sold separately, starting at around $60.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the hardware side, it runs on the A18 chip, can recognize up to six faces, and automatically switches between a shared family screen and a personalized home screen that shows your information, calendar, and widgets. It upholds Apple’s longstanding privacy policy: personal content is displayed only when your face is detected and your recently unlocked iPhone or iPad is nearby. All data captured by the camera and microphones is processed within the Secure Enclave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of functionality, HomeView is remarkably versatile. You can view up to nine camera feeds at once, make FaceTime calls with Center Stage, play music with Spatial Audio while lyrics display in sync on the screen, turn recipes into step-by-step timers, or control lights, thermostats, and door locks through touch and voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Siri AI supports natural conversation, answering all kinds of questions while also drawing on personal information from your phone. Note that it only supports English at launch. Due to the pace of Siri AI’s rollout in the European Union, this product will not be sold there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HomeView is now available for pre-order and will officially arrive on November 13.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HomePod mini 2: Smaller, Smarter, and Pricier<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The HomePod mini 2 retains its distinctive spherical design and adds soft new colors that echo the new iMac: pink, green, blue, white, and midnight. It goes on sale first on October 30 at $149, noticeably higher than the original’s $99.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inside is the new S10 chip, with support for Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 6, Thread, and Matter. The new Sound Glow feature lets the top light display colors that match album artwork or shift with the rhythm of the music. It can serve as a Mac’s default speaker, and for the first time it can pair with the new Apple TV 4K to form a four-channel surround sound system with automatic room calibration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Siri AI will arrive on this speaker later via a free software update. Until then, it remains a highly capable smart speaker and home hub: it can announce visitors’ identities through facial recognition, play doorbell chimes, sense indoor temperature and humidity, and work with your thermostat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apple TV 4K (Fourth Generation): The Living Room Hub, Upgraded Again<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The new Apple TV 4K is priced at $299 and launches on November 13. It’s powered by the A19 chip, which Apple says delivers up to 50 percent faster CPU performance than the previous A15 chip and twice the GPU performance. Every unit also comes equipped with a dedicated AV1 decoder, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three far-field microphones let you use Siri without picking up the remote. The updated Siri Remote gains Find My support with Precision Finding and can play a sound, a feature you’ll appreciate when the remote slips between the couch cushions. Siri AI can help you discover films you’ll enjoy and offer personalized recommendations. Older Apple TV 4K models released in 2021 or later will also get this feature through a software update.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For home theater, it can pair with up to four HomePod mini 2 units or second-generation HomePods to create a calibrated surround sound system. It also doubles as a full-fledged home hub, displaying camera feeds and doorbell notifications directly on your TV screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Apple Home Accessory Collection: Partner-Made, Apple-Certified<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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This time, rather than developing all the hardware on its own, Apple partnered with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric to create the Home accessory collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lineup includes: an indoor camera (starting at around $200), outdoor cameras and floodlight cameras (priced up to nearly $400), a dual-camera video doorbell (around $250), a UWB-enabled smart lock (around $350), a thermostat (around $200), and room sensors (around $40).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These accessories will begin arriving in December, though some products may not ship until early 2027. The first wave is primarily aimed at the United States, Canada, and parts of the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Setup works much like Apple’s existing tap-with-iPhone pairing experience, and the accessories perform best when paired with the new smart home hubs, enabling doorbell alerts, face-recognition voice announcements, and camera viewing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Does It All Mean?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It’s clear that Apple has finally started treating the smart home as a core platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Siri AI is the heart of the entire system, but its rollout is staged: it’s still in beta on HomeView and Apple TV, and the HomePod mini 2 version will have to wait for a later update. The languages and regions it currently supports are also quite limited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On price, these new products are generally more expensive than comparable offerings from Amazon<\/a> and Google<\/a>. But for users already deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem, this smart home lineup may fill in exactly the piece of the experience that was missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Home accessory collection will roll out over the coming months. Can this new product line ultimately make Apple Home a smart home system people genuinely want to use every day? By this time next year, we should have our answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For years, Apple has been carefully cultivating a refined and understated HomeKit ecosystem, while the living room screen market has long been dominated by Amazon and Google. At yesterday’s “Welcome Home” event, Apple shattered that status quo with its own hands. This time, Apple introduced an entire lineup of new smart home products: the all-new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[7,246],"class_list":["post-2013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guide","category-news","tag-apple","tag-apple-homeview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.batteryone.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.batteryone.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.batteryone.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.batteryone.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.batteryone.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.batteryone.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2018,"href":"https:\/\/www.batteryone.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions\/2018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.batteryone.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.batteryone.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.batteryone.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}