From sleek new security cameras to mugs that keep your coffee hot all day, here are some of our favorite smart home gadgets from the year’s biggest technology show
The new indoor camera from Hive, a UK-based smart home system, will turn heads for its style as well as its security capabilities. The sleek device comes in white and champagne or black and copper to more seamlessly blend with your decor, and works with Amazon Echo, Google Assistant, and IFTTT. Our favorite feature? The head of the Hive View can pop off the base and hold an hour-long charge if you need to put it in a different room to monitor the kids.
Hunter Advocate; pricing available in March 2018
Add voice control to your ceiling fan by installing one by Hunter. Their line of connected fans expanded to five this year, with the announcement of the Hunter Advocate, coming this March. Each of the ceiling fans has a different style, color choices, and a light, making it easy to choose the right one for your home while adding the power to control the fan and light with a voice assistant or timer. Plus, we hear that installing one into your home isn’t too hard to DIY — their team says it can be completed in 15 minutes.
SimpliSafe third generation; kits start at $229
A smart tiny house with cozy cottage vibes? You would find us at the SimpliSafe Tiny House at CES even if it wasn’t smart. This little home hids its smarts in the most clever way. Instead of the minimalist backdrop you’d imagine for a smart home, it was full of cozy linens, wall art, and paneling that still worked with SimpliSafe’s third generation home security system, which includes security cameras, motion sensors, water leak sensors, glass breaking sensors, a keypad control, base station, and a slim remote for your keychain that can activate the system while you head to the car and includes a hidden panic button. After ten years in the home security game, their newest line brings design choices from IDEO that make everything, from the keypad and base to the various sensors, blend nicely together and in the home.
Ever pick up your cup of coffee and discover that amidst your work, it’s gone cold? While it sounds like a silly problem to fix, the Ember Ceramic Mug does a beautiful job keeping coffee and tea warm at your preferred perfect temperature. It’s a little piece of daily life that is genuinely improved, and even comes in a travel mug version for keeping your drink warm during a commute. The only downside with both versions is the battery life isn’t long, but the travel mug’s battery allows for a steady warming for a single morning commute, and the desk mug has a charging saucer you can place it on throughout the day.
Belkin BOOSTUP Wireless Charging Stand; pricing available in spring/summer 2018
Wireless chargers has finally come to the latest iPhones, and Belkin has launched a new line of them to add to your home this coming summer. Their Boost Up Wireless Charging Stand comes in four colors, and the sleek lines make it a high improvement over a loose wire or charging base sitting on a desk or bedside table. You can also build it straight into a countertop or side table with their Boost Up Wireless Charging System. The system comes with options for top-mount, flush, or sub-surface, to add to any tabletop that you have in mind, and is possible to DIY onto a tabletop already in your home if you’re so inclined.
Well folks, someone finally made it: a device that will fold clothes for you. The FoldiMate claims it can fold a load of laundry in under four minutes. The device can fold any average-sized clothing items, but only folds kids’ sizes for ages five and up. The FoldiMate can’t take socks or undergarments either, or large items like sheets. You’ll need to individually place each item flat into the device to get it folded, and the bottom drawer will pop open when it’s full of folded clothes. So while it might not truly get you away from doing any folding at all, it’s a step in that direction.
Lenovo Smart Display; $249.99 and available in summer 2018
The Google Assistant was everywhere at CES, with integrations in everything from Hunter’s smart ceiling to cars through Android Auto. The next big thing on the horizon, though, is the voice assistant’s jump into smart screens. With partners like Lenovo and Sony making smart displays that rival the Echo Show, the screen provides an experience similar to the Google Assistant app, and allows you to ask Google to show you videos, a map of your directions, and recipes as you cook.
Delta Voice Innovation Faucet; pricing available sometime in 2018
You can control your lights, music, and so much more in the home these days through Amazon Alexa - and now you can add faucets to that list. Delta has launched a connected faucet that allows you to ask Alexa to do anything from dispensing certain amounts of water (imagine asking for Alexa to dispense two cups of water into a cooking pot instead of finding a measuring cup, measuring it out, and then pouring it into the pot), or heating up or cooling the water if you’re cooking or worried about tiny hands getting in the way. It adds a little ease to the kitchen, and avoids the annoyance of messy hands smudging the faucet handle. Plus, Delta is working on how folks with recent faucets from Delta can upgrade to voice innovation without needing to purchase a brand-new model.
Smoothies sound healthy, but with a heavy hand they can creep up to thousands of calories. NutriBullet has launched a new connected blender that, using the internal sensor, can weigh and measure out a smoothie recipe to keep it healthy and delicious. The internal technology connects to an app to show you real-time nutritional details as you add each ingredient, from calories to protein and sugar. The app has recipes you can choose from, or you can concoct your own and use the app to track the nutritional details as you go.
Vivint Streety App; available on iOS and Android in March 2018
Bring together smart home security and your neighborhood with Streety, a new app by the smart security savants at Vivint. Streety allows folks in your surrounding neighborhood within 300 yards (designed to target the neighbors you truly know) to share footage from their outdoor cameras. That way, if there are car burglaries at 3am, everyone can compare footage within the app, or if a pet goes missing, a neighbor can request to check the footage of your front yard’s vicinity in hopes that Fido passed that way. Our favorite utility, though, is for packages — if you ask a neighbor to grab a package for you while you’re out, you can give them access to see when it arrives and safely pick it up.
Gro Water Sensor; starter kit $99
After acquiring garden tech startups Blossom and PlantLink, Scotts launched a new connected yard line called Gro that brings that technology to a robust set of sensors with the gardener in mind. With an irrigation controller, water sensors for soil, and watering kits for sprinklers, sprayers, and potted plants, it’ll be easy (and affordable) to both control your water bill and make sure your plants are getting the hydration they need.
Samsung’s “The Wall” Modular TV; pricing to come
The modular TV has arrived, making it possible to create a TV to perfectly fit a living room space. Pricing and more details are still to come, but the bezel-free and customizable design of Samsung’s “The Wall” TV caught our eye for the possibilities it brings to the living room. Plus, it brings incredibly high resolution and uses micro LEDs to make the responsive screen possible. As the name hints, it’s made to hang straight onto the wall, whether it’s just to hang over the mantle or take over an entire wall. We’re curious to see what DIY’ing a wall-sized TV will look like.