The Wall HomeView Needs a Charger It Does Not Include, and a Weak One Will Not Do

The wall-mounted HomeView ships without a charger or cable. Apple says you need a USB-C adapter of at least 20W that supports 9V at 2.22A or more. Use a weaker one and the device can show an “insufficient power” warning.

We have been here already with this product: the wall version does not include the bracket either. Now it does not include the power. At some point a list of optional extras stops being a list of extras and becomes the product being sold incomplete.

The word that does the work in these announcements is “optional”. A bracket is optional in the sense that you could put the thing on a table instead. A charger is not optional in any sense. Without it, the device you paid $299 for does not run. Calling that an accessory is a choice of vocabulary, not a description of what it is.

And the requirement is specific enough to matter. Not any USB-C charger: one that can deliver 9V at 2.22A. Most of us have a drawer full of chargers and no idea which of them can do that, because it is not printed in large type on anything. I do not have one, and finding out whether a charger in your house qualifies means reading the small print on a brick.

So, do I buy it? This is the one that takes it off my list. A $299 device that needs a bracket you buy and a charger you may not own has a real price that nobody printed, and a product that will not tell you what it costs to use has already told you something about how it will be sold to you later.