Apple Home Collection puts Matter control local with HomeView

HomeView costs $299 and goes on sale November 13, with preorders open since the October 13 announcement. A wall-mounted version without the speaker base costs the same $299 and supports three ways of getting power: a plug, in-wall power, or power over the network cable (known as PoE).

It launches in eight countries, including the US, the UK and Canada, plus India, Australia, South Africa, Singapore and New Zealand. It is not being sold in the European Union. You need an iPhone with Apple Intelligence support, which means an iPhone 15 Pro or newer, to get the most out of it, and you can’t set it up with an iPad.

HomeView is a 7-inch square touchscreen on a small aluminum speaker base, joined by an adjustable steel arm. It runs Apple’s A18 chip and the new Siri AI assistant that arrived on iPhones with iOS 27, so you can ask general questions, control devices by voice or touch, and pull up info from your messages, calendar and email.

A built-in 12-megapixel camera handles FaceTime calls and face recognition. HomeView can tell apart up to six people in a household and shows each person their own view, so a child can’t read a parent’s texts over breakfast. There’s a condition: your iPhone has to be nearby on the home Wi-Fi, and you must have unlocked it not long before.

The screen also works as a photo frame, a clock or a widget board, and it can dim very low for use on a nightstand. Apple’s own apps such as Messages, Calendar, Music and FaceTime are there, plus some audio apps like Spotify. There is no App Store. Third-party apps that support Apple’s CarPlay system can show up if they’re on your iPhone, but early reports found no video apps yet.

Under the hood, HomeView is a home hub, a Matter controller and a Thread border router. In plain English, Matter is a shared standard that lets smart gadgets from different brands talk to each other, and Thread is a low-power wireless network those gadgets use. A border router connects that Thread network to your home Wi-Fi.

Because HomeView does all three jobs, it can run your supported devices, scenes and automations locally. Lights, locks and thermostats on Matter respond inside the house rather than waiting on the cloud. It also stores camera footage through HomeKit Secure Video and can show up to five camera feeds at once.

Every Home Collection device supports Thread and joins the Home app with a single tap from your iPhone, with no LG or Schneider account. Most outlets listed these US prices:

• LG Indoor Cam, $199.95: tilts itself away when you’re home so it isn’t watching you, and back down when you leave, based on your location.
• LG Outdoor Cam, $299.95: color night vision in low light and a mount that angles several ways.
• LG Floodlight Cam, $399.95: twin lights that switch on when motion is spotted.
• LG Video Doorbell, $249.95: one camera faces visitors and a second points down at packages, with a chime through HomeView or a HomePod.
• LG Smart Deadbolt Lock, $349.95: unlocks as you walk up with your iPhone or Apple Watch using ultra-wideband, a short-range radio that measures distance precisely. It also has a PIN keypad and a hidden backup key slot.
• LG and Schneider Electric thermostats, $199.95 each: both support Adaptive Temperature, with $39.95 room sensors for temperature and humidity.

One early report listed different prices for the lock, doorbell and outdoor camera, so check Apple’s store before you buy. The cameras record up to 2.5K video, recognize people, familiar faces, pets, vehicles and packages, and save history to your existing iCloud+ plan, so there’s no separate camera subscription.

Not everything here is open. The lock, thermostats and sensors are Matter devices, so you could run the LG thermostat from an Echo speaker or an Android phone. The lock also supports Aliro, a new door-access standard, which lets its main functions keep working locally even without internet.

The cameras and doorbell are different. They rely on Apple’s own system for local buffering and encrypted uploads, which Matter doesn’t support today, so they only work with Apple products. If your household mixes iPhones and Android phones, that matters.

If you already live with iPhones, HomeView plus a few Home Collection pieces gives you one app, one setup routine and fewer cloud dependencies. If you don’t, the cameras and doorbell are a poor fit.

Availability is uneven. The Home Collection starts arriving in December, with some accessories pushed to early 2027. Cameras come to the US, the UK and Canada, but the lock and thermostats are built to North American standards, so they’re limited to the US and Canada. In the US, Apple Retail will also offer paid professional installation by ADT starting this fall.

If you want a head start, HomeView ships November 13 and works with existing HomeKit and Matter gear, so you can begin with it now and add Home Collection devices when they land in December.