The HomeView nails everything I want from a smart display. It’s superb at controlling my smart home; it’s an excellent hands-free kitchen companion, a good speaker, and a gorgeous digital photo frame. It’s also the first Apple smart speaker with Siri AI, which is an improvement, if still slow at times. But Apple has fallen into the trap that hampers other smart displays I’ve tested: not content with doing its core functions well, it tries to do more, and that’s where the friction creeps in. .