Apple just announced something Google hasn't managed in over five years: a brand-new smart display. The HomeView costs $299 (£299), packs an A18 chip and a 12MP camera, and looks a lot like the Gemini-powered Nest Hub successor Android fans have spent years asking for. The problem for Google? It's made by Apple.
What Apple just announced
Apple unveiled HomeView on October 13 as its first dedicated smart display. According to Apple's spec sheet, it pairs a 7-inch, 1088 x 1088 Liquid Retina touchscreen with an A18 chip, a 12MP Center Stage camera for FaceTime, and a speaker base with a down-firing woofer.
Apple says HomeView can recognize up to six household members by face and show each person their own calendar, reminders, and messages. It comes in tabletop and wall-mounted versions, both at $299 (£299), though the wall model needs a separate Schneider Home mount starting at $59.95 (£54.95). Either version doubles as a smart home hub for Matter accessories.
Pre-orders are open now in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, India, and New Zealand, with both models arriving November 13. The EU misses out for now. Apple says it can't sell HomeView there because Siri AI isn't available in iOS in the EU.
Apple didn't stop there. A $149 (£149) HomePod mini 2 with an S10 chip lands October 30, and a $299 (£299) Apple TV 4K running the A19 follows on November 13. Apple also announced an Apple Home Collection of cameras, locks, and thermostats built with LG and Schneider Electric, with the cameras starting at $199 (£179.95) when they arrive in December. That's a full smart home reset in one afternoon.
Google's smart displays are stuck in 2021
Google's side of the shelf tells a very different story. As Android Police points out, the company's current smart displays are the second-gen Nest Hub from March 2021 and the Nest Hub Max, which dates back to 2019. In smartphone years, that's practically geological.
Google hasn't ignored them entirely. It rolled Gemini for Home onto every speaker and display it has sold in the last decade, but 9to5Google argues that very little has changed functionally on a Nest Hub in years. Swapping the brain while keeping 2021 hardware only gets you so far, especially when the Hub Max already lost Zoom support and Meet's link-based meeting joins back in 2023.
The one recent bright spot was the Google Home Speaker, which hit shelves in June for $100 as the first speaker built around Gemini. It's a welcome sign of life, but it also exposed the gap, because the device that would show Gemini off best is the one with a screen.
Google has been teasing this for a year
None of this should have caught Google off guard. Back in October 2025, Google Home's Chief Product Officer Anish Kattukaran called the smart display the “ultimate form factor” for a great home experience, as 9to5Google reported. He stopped short of confirming new hardware, though.
The clues have piled up since then. A “Google Home Display” appeared in the Google Home app's code in May, and by July Android Authority had found strings pointing to a Hub Max-style camera with Nest Cam features. Five months after that first sighting, there's still no product, no date, and no price.
Why this matters more than one device
A smart display is where an AI assistant stops being a voice in a puck and becomes something the whole household sees and uses. Apple says HomeView's Siri AI can hold natural conversations, pull answers from your iPhone's calendar and messages, and describe what your security cameras have spotted.
That's almost exactly the pitch Google has been making for Gemini for Home. The difference is that Apple now has purpose-built hardware to run it on, and Google is still running Gemini on screens designed before it existed.
Timing matters too. HomeView lands right as holiday shopping ramps up, and Apple's fully refreshed lineup gives shoppers a clean, modern ecosystem to buy into. We've seen this pattern before with Apple's iPhone Duo putting pressure on Samsung's foldables: arrive late, arrive polished, and steal the conversation.
Has Apple really taken the lead?
Not in sales, at least not yet. Amazon refreshed its Echo Show 8 and Echo Show 11 last fall, and HomeView costs three times the second-gen Nest Hub's $99.99 launch price. It also won't be sold in the EU at launch.
It's also a non-starter for anyone reading this on an Android phone. HomeView requires an iPhone or iPad running iOS 27.2 or later, so it isn't stealing Google's existing customers so much as making Google look slow to everyone else.
Where Apple has taken the lead is momentum. It now has the newest smart display, the newest smart speaker, the newest streaming box, and a first-party accessory lineup, all built around one AI assistant. Google's equivalent display is still a line of app code.
Takeaway
If you own a Nest Hub, there's no reason to rip it out today. It still works, Gemini for Home keeps improving, and HomeView isn't an option without an iPhone anyway.
If you were about to buy a Google smart display, though, I'd hold off and see whether the Google Home Display finally appears. Paying for five-year-old hardware in late 2026 is hard to justify when a replacement is clearly in development.
Apple's Siri AI launches in beta on HomeView, with daily limits on some cloud-powered features, so it'll be worth seeing how it holds up in real-world use once units ship in November. On paper, though, Apple has just announced the smart display Google should have built, and we can't wait to see Google's answer.
