Apple has stopped leaving the smart home to other companies. At its Welcome Home event in New York, it introduced the Apple Home Collection, six devices co-developed with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric: a video doorbell, a smart lock, three security cameras and two thermostats. Third parties manufactured them, but they are the first smart home products Apple has helped design for its own Apple Home platform.
Think of it as a starter pack. Everything pairs by tapping it with an iPhone, the way a HomePod or AirPods does, using Bluetooth and NFC. No third-party app or account is needed. Apple says the accessories are managed by Apple devices such as an iPhone or an Apple Home Hub, and that communication is end-to-end encrypted.
The lock and the doorbell
The LG smart lock costs $349 and supports Apple Home Key with hands-free unlocking over UWB, so it opens with the phone still in a pocket or bag. It is only the third lock on the market to offer that. It also has a PIN keypad, a hidden physical keyhole and a thumbturn. A full replacement for a US-style deadbolt, it runs on AA batteries, uses Matter over Thread and supports the Aliro standard. It arrives in the US and Canada in December.
The $249 video doorbell has two cameras up to 2.5K, one aimed at visitors and one pointed down at packages, plus a motion-activated light. It must be wired into existing doorbell wiring and can ring HomePods as a chime. With HomeKit Secure Video it sends alerts for familiar faces, pets, packages and vehicles. It will be sold in the US, Canada and the UK, with no release date yet.
Cameras and thermostats
The indoor camera, $199, records up to 2.5K and can tilt itself down when you get home. Paired with Secure Video’s habit of switching off recording when someone arrives, that is meant to reassure you that nobody is watching. The wired outdoor camera costs $299, or $399 with floodlights. None of the three cameras has a release date.
Footage is processed locally on a Home Hub and sent to iCloud encrypted. If you turn on Apple Intelligence on the camera, using an iPhone 15 Pro or newer, you get text descriptions of what the camera saw, via Private Cloud Compute and a higher iCloud storage tier. The cameras also work with Apple’s new HomeView smart display, which can show up to nine live feeds.
The two thermostats, a round LG and a square Schneider Electric, each cost $199. They work with or without a C-wire, support Matter and include remote temperature and humidity sensors. Both land in the US and Canada in December.
The Verge noted that easy setup is welcome, but the real headaches with cameras and locks are installation and dropped connections, and it will not know whether Apple has fixed those until testing. The collection does give Apple what Amazon has with Ring and Google with Nest: products it can point to as its own.
