Apple's $299 HomeView Is Here — Plus a $149 HomePod mini 2 and the Priciest Apple TV Ever

In 60 seconds: Apple's "Welcome Home" event is over, and the rumors were mostly right — but the prices aren't what anyone hoped. The all-new HomeView smart home hub is $299, the HomePod mini 2 is $149, and the new Apple TV 4K costs a staggering $299, more than double its price at the start of the year.

Apple finally moved into your walls, your front door, and your thermostat. At its "Welcome Home" event in New York, the company unveiled not just the expected smart-home hub but an entire home ecosystem — a screen, speaker upgrades, a new TV box, and a line of cameras and locks co-designed with LG and Schneider Electric. It's Apple's biggest push into the home since the original HomePod flopped. Honestly, it feels like the company decided the living room was the last room it didn't own.

What happened

Apple used a press-only event in Tribeca (no livestream, just Newsroom releases) to announce HomeView, the HomePod mini 2, a fourth-generation Apple TV 4K, and the Apple Home Collection of cameras, locks, and thermostats. Pre-orders opened the same day. The HomePod mini 2 lands in stores first, on October 30; HomeView and the new Apple TV 4K follow on November 13.

Latest verified facts

HomeView — $299. A 7-inch square Liquid Retina display on a domed speaker base with a stainless-steel tilting hinge; a wall-mounted version costs the same $299 (mounts sold separately, $59.95 to $129.95). It runs the A18 chip, recognizes up to six people by face, and dims to 0.3 nits — the lowest of any Apple display. Siri AI ships in beta at launch.

HomePod mini 2 — $149. Up $50 from the original's $99 launch tag. You get the S10 chip, Wi-Fi 6E, five new colors, and a "Sound Glow" top that pulses with your music. The catch: Siri AI is not included at launch — it arrives "in a future software update," with no date. The speaker's headline feature is, for now, a promise.

Apple TV 4K — $299. The A19 chip (up to 50% faster CPU), three built-in microphones for hands-free Siri, Wi-Fi 7, and a redesigned Siri Remote with Find My and a built-in speaker — sold separately for $59. There's now a single 128GB configuration, so the $129 budget model is gone and the entry price more than doubled from January.

Home Collection — from $39.95. Cameras ($199.95–$399.95), a video doorbell ($249.95), a smart deadbolt with walk-up auto-unlock ($349.95), and thermostats ($199.95) — set up with one iPhone tap, no partner apps. The killer detail: 10 days of event video history sits in iCloud+ with end-to-end encryption. No Ring-style monthly fee. They ship from December, with ADT professional installation at Apple Stores for extra.

Why it matters

This is Apple playing offense in the smart home instead of nibbling at the edges with HomeKit. The no-subscription camera storage is a direct shot at Ring and Nest, which have spent years training customers to pay monthly just to see yesterday's footage. And the face-recognizing HomeView is Apple's answer to the Echo Show and Nest Hub — devices that have dominated kitchens for half a decade with no real response from Cupertino.

The fine print matters too. Apple buried a line in the footnotes saying server-side Apple Intelligence features have daily usage limits, and "expanded access" will eventually cost a fee. That's not a confirmed paid Siri tier — but it's the first time Apple has said the quiet part out loud. Love it or hate it, the era of unlimited free AI assistance from Apple looks like it's ending.

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Impact on the USA and the world

American buyers get everything first: pre-orders opened October 13 in the US, with the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and India in the first wave. The deadbolt, thermostats, and ADT installation are US-and-Canada-only for now — a very North-America-first launch.

The real headline for US shoppers is the money. $299 for a streaming box that started the year at $129. $149 for a speaker that launched at $99. Apple points at memory-chip costs from the AI boom — the same reason your next iPhone got $100 more expensive. The question isn't whether Apple can charge these prices. It's whether the smart-home market, which Apple has never cracked, will pay them.

And Europe? HomeView isn't being sold there at all — Apple's release says Siri AI is "currently unavailable in iOS in the EU." So while Americans mount $299 hubs on their kitchen walls next month, Europeans get to watch from the sidelines while Apple works things out with regulators. Again.

What happens next

Our take: the next 60 days are the whole ballgame for HomeView. If the Siri AI beta feels genuinely smarter than what's on your Echo — and the face recognition doesn't creep people out — Apple has a holiday hit. If the beta feels half-baked, $299 is a lot of money for a screen that pulses in sync with your music.

Three things to watch. First, the Siri AI update for HomePod mini 2 — no date means the pressure's on, and reviewers will hammer the speaker for shipping without its signature feature. Second, the December Home Collection launch: if the no-subscription camera pitch lands, Ring and Nest have a serious problem, because nobody loves paying $10 a month to see their own front porch. Third, Black Friday: Apple's new prices look aggressive for holiday shoppers, and I wouldn't be shocked to see the first discounts on the TV box before Christmas.

One more prediction, grounded in that footnote: by this time next year, Apple Intelligence will have a paid tier. The company just told us in writing that unlimited access won't last forever.