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Apple HomeView review: An adorable smart display that earns its place
Apple’s HomeView smart display is here. It combines a 7-inch display with Siri AI and an all-new software experience that actually feels really familiar.
I’ve spent the last ten days living with HomeView in my kitchen. Here’s everything you need to know.
HomeView is an adorable little thing. That’s the best way to describe it. A 7-inch square display sits atop a rounded aluminum speaker base. A small, polished metal arm connects it and lets you tilt the display forward and backward.
HomeView comes in four colors: Starlight, Rose Pink, Silver, and Space Gray. My review unit is Starlight, and it’s very subtle. I had to double-check the box to make sure it was Starlight, not Silver.
The decision to make the display square is interesting. Between that design and the software experience centered around faces and widgets, HomeView really does feel like an oversized Apple Watch for your home.
I really appreciate the square display. It makes HomeView look less like an iPad propped up on a stand and more like a dedicated, purpose-driven device.
In terms of specs, the 7-inch display has a 1088 × 1088 resolution, equating to a pixel density of 220 pixels per inch. Max brightness is 500 nits. It can also dim all the way to 0.3 nits, which means it can go in a bedroom without being a nuisance. It also has True Tone to match your room’s lighting temperature.
For the past ten days, my partner and I have been living with HomeView on our kitchen counter. The square display and aluminum base look great in that setting. I don’t think an iPad-style display would look nearly as intentional. We also don’t have much spare counter space. If HomeView were any bigger or wider, I’m not sure we’d have room for it.
In the lead-up to HomeView’s launch, I was skeptical of how usable a 7-inch display would be. In practice, I’ve found this to be (mostly) a non-issue. Apple has done a great job optimizing the interface for the display. Text is readable at a glance from a few feet away, timers are nice and large, and the interface adapts to show more information when you’re closer.
Sometimes I wish it were bigger. Viewing a recipe requires a bit more scrolling than I would like. It’d be nice to fit a couple more widgets on the Modular face. But those trade-offs are easier to accept when I consider how much I appreciate HomeView’s compact footprint.