HomeView reviews: The hardware is solid, the software less so
And Siri AI is great, when it answers, sometimes.
The HomeView reviews landed this morning, and I read a bunch of them with a mix of interest and jealousy. I didn’t get a review unit, so this is as close as I can get to Apple’s $299 smart screened speaker before mine arrives Friday. As of yet, I haven’t touched one. But I’ve been excited about HomeView for a month now, so I read these closely. Here’s my summary.
Everyone likes the hardware. 9to5Mac’s Chance Miller calls the HomeView “adorable.” Engadget’s Billy Steele thinks it’s better looking than any of its competitors, and puts the sound about halfway between a HomePod mini and a full-size HomePod. Six Colors’ Jason Snell is less moved by the speaker; he says it sounds like a kitchen speaker. I was hoping for it to sound insanely great, so that’s a bit of a bummer.
The HomeView has no buttons, and both Miller and The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison Tuohy miss having a hardware volume control they can touch. And the wall-mounted version is a strange deal: It costs the same $299, but loses the woofer and comes without a mount or a power adapter. Tuohy figures you’re at about $400 by the time it’s on the wall. Snell says he’s baffled by that, and that he still wants one. Given the improvements I expect in successive versions of the HomeView, I’m not prepared to mount anything on my wall on this front. Yet.
The software is where reviewers are less impressed. There’s no App Store. Beyond Apple’s own 14 apps, everything else gets beamed over from your iPhone, and only if it’s an audio or video app that already supports CarPlay. Snell thinks that was a very smart shortcut (which I also read as a stopgap), but also points out that the recipe app he actually uses doesn’t work on the HomeView.
Tuohy found that the New York Times app on her HomeView was only a podcast player, and that her Ring widget just told her to go get her phone. Miller really wants Notes, which is where he and his wife keep their recipes. Video plays in a skinny strip across the middle of that square screen, and Apple TV is the only video app anyway. Snell’s biggest gripe is with the faces, the Apple Watch-style screens the HomeView shows when it’s idle. He says the pretty ones aren’t useful and the useful ones aren’t pretty, and he can’t believe he has to open the Home app to dim a light. I am grateful for Jason’s review, and it also bummed me out. I’m choosing to hold onto optimism, though, with hope that Apple heeds feedback for some rapid UI iteration. I’m just surprised that they shipped it with what seems like glaring weaknesses.
Then there’s Siri AI, which every reviewer describes the same way: great, when it works. Snell described a painting he half-remembered, the one with the French Revolution guy dead in a bathtub, and the HomeView named it and put it on the screen. He also had to delete an app from his iPhone before the HomeView would agree to play music from Music. Miller says Siri sometimes hangs and never answers at all, which is a real problem on a device you mostly talk to. And also unsurprising, given how Siri AI keeps failing on my Apple Watch, and sometimes on my iPhone.
Tuohy’s husband asked how long his drive would be that weekend, and Siri confidently told him an hour and 47 minutes. It had guessed at the location. The real drive was five hours. That’s kind of a big miss. Tuohy still ranks Alexa Plus as the better smart home assistant and Gemini as the smarter one, but she says Siri talks a lot less than either of them. Terseness is good, but accuracy is better. I wish I had more confidence that Apple will fix this quickly, but the Siri track record isn’t awe-inspiring.
The oddest finding is The Verge’s. The HomeView uses your face, your voice, and your nearby iPhone to decide whose texts and calendar to show. Miller says that worked well for him, and that it locked him out when he tried to peek at his wife’s messages. But Tuohy could read her 15-year-old daughter’s texts if she got to the screen a few seconds after her daughter left it, and for as long as she liked if her daughter was still sitting across the room. (Her daughter was in on the test. Allegedly.) The daughter’s review of the HomeView, in full: “I’ll just use my iPhone.” Tuohy’s husband, who she says has never once opened the Home app, wants a second HomeView for his office. The Verge gave it a 7 and Engadget an 8.4. Snell says his Echo Show got sent back long ago and the HomeView is staying put. Miller says it earned its spot on his counter. I’ve liked (not loved) various Echo devices, including an Echo Show, so — again — I’m choosing optimism.
So I’m still excited, though perhaps more cautiously. I want to see my timers, the weather, and my next meeting, and I want all of that without Alexa shoving rotating promos in my face. Tuohy and Snell both bring up Amazon’s ads and upsells as the thing the HomeView fixes, and that’s a major motivator for me. The texts thing does give me pause. And Siri needs to answer every time, since talking to it is the entire point. But those are software problems, and Apple can fix software. The question will be whether Apple’s motivated to do so. Either way, I’m excited to experience my HomeView annoyances firsthand starting tomorrow.
