MKBHD Says Apple’s HomeView Is a Skip for Most People

Apple’s long-rumored smart home display finally has a name, a price, and a ship date — and the world’s most-watched tech reviewer is not sold. In an impressions video posted October 15, 2026, Marques Brownlee, better known as MKBHD, delivers a blunt early verdict on the $299 HomeView: after spending time with Apple’s new hub, he says he cannot see who it is for.

The verdict: “a skip for most people”

Brownlee’s headline takeaway is that HomeView’s first showing is “not very convincing.” In the video, titled “Apple HomeView Impressions: Not Convinced!”, he says, “I cannot figure any group that this is actually ideal for.” His conclusion: for most buyers, the device should be “a skip for most people.”

That matters because first impressions from Brownlee have an outsized influence on launch-week conversation. Apple announced HomeView on October 13 at its “Welcome Home” event in New York, positioning the 7-inch smart display as the centerpiece of a broader Siri AI-powered home strategy. Preorders are open now, with the first units arriving November 13. Brownlee’s skepticism sets the tone for the review cycle that will follow.

Three reasons Brownlee isn’t buying in

1. It overlaps everything Apple already sells

Brownlee’s central complaint is redundancy. HomeView, he argues, sits in crowded territory inside Apple’s own lineup: the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and HomePod already cover the jobs a kitchen-counter display is supposed to do. A HomePod handles voice control and music; an iPad on a stand shows calendars, photos, and video; an Apple Watch is already on the wrist. Against that lineup, HomeView struggles to justify a dedicated $299 slot on the counter.

2. No App Store

The second knock is software. HomeView ships without an App Store, which Brownlee sees as a hard limit on its usefulness. Apple has said the display will support select third-party apps that already work with CarPlay — music and media apps like Spotify can appear automatically — but some of those apps require a compatible iPhone nearby to function. For a device meant to be a shared household screen, that dependency undercuts the pitch of a standalone hub.

Brownlee’s framing is that the missing App Store is why HomeView doesn’t deliver enough “extra value” over the Apple gear people already own. It is a striking criticism given that Apple’s entire smart home push this week — the HomeView, the $149 HomePod mini 2, and the $299 Apple TV 4K, all with the new Siri AI — is supposed to make the home a place where Apple’s hardware sets the terms.

3. The wall-mount math doesn’t add up

Brownlee also flags an awkward pricing detail: Apple sells both the tabletop and wall-mounted versions of HomeView for the same $299, yet they are not the same product. Both have speakers built into the screen, but the wall-mounted model loses the base of the desktop version — which is where Apple put a lower-frequency woofer. So the wall version sounds worse while costing the same.

Worse, the wall-mounted version ships without a mount or power adapter. Buyers have to add a $60 USB-C wall adapter, an $80 AC adapter, or a $130 Power over Ethernet adapter on top of the $299. As Brownlee’s math implies, the “same price” wall model is really a $359–$429 device once it can actually hang on a wall and turn on.

What he concedes: Apple needed this product

Brownlee is not dismissive of the strategy. He acknowledges that Apple definitely needed a product like HomeView to pull people away from Amazon and Google’s established smart home hubs. On price, he is measured: HomeView’s $299 undercuts nothing — Google’s Nest Hub Max is $229 and Amazon’s Echo Hub is $179 — but he says the price itself is not a deal-breaker.

The problem, in his telling, is the product-market fit rather than the price tag. Amazon and Google spent years embedding newer assistants — Alexa+ and Gemini for Home — into speakers, displays, and cameras, and both ecosystems already support Matter and Thread with enormous third-party device catalogs. Apple is arriving late with premium hardware and a smaller certified-device list, and Brownlee’s question is what HomeView does that an iPad mini on a stand does not.

HomeView at a glance

• Price: $299 for both tabletop and wall-mounted versions; preorders open now, first units arrive November 13.
• Display and chip: 7-inch Liquid Retina display, A18 processor, 12-megapixel Center Stage camera.
• Assistant: redesigned Siri AI powered by Apple Intelligence, with face recognition for up to six household members and a screen that adapts to whoever is in front of it.
• Apps: no App Store at launch; select CarPlay-compatible audio and video apps work, some requiring a nearby iPhone.
• Smart home: controls HomeKit and Matter accessories, doubles as a home hub; works with the new Apple Home Collection accessories from LG and Schneider Electric.
• Availability: initial markets include the US, UK, Canada, Australia, India, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Africa. The European Union is excluded at launch because Siri AI is not yet available in iOS there.

Why one review matters

Early impressions are not final reviews — the hardware most buyers will actually live with does not ship until November 13. Software can change before then, and Apple has room to expand third-party app support beyond the initial CarPlay-based approach. Brownlee himself framed this as a first offering, leaving the door open for a more convincing second act.

Still, his critique crystallizes the risk in Apple’s home strategy: premium hardware alone does not answer the “why not just use the iPad?” question. Apple is betting that on-device Siri AI, face-aware personalization for the whole household, and tap-to-set-up accessories will add up to something greater than the sum of the parts. Whether reviewers — and buyers — agree will decide if HomeView becomes the centerpiece of Apple’s home ambitions or an expensive lesson in ecosystem overlap. The first real test arrives November 13.