Ultraloq U-Bolt Pro for $170: WIRED reviewer Julian Chokkattu also tested the U-Bolt Pro from Ultraloq, which uses the same app that the Fingerprint models do. He says it took a few attempts to connect to Wi-Fi, but once connected it worked well with no Wi-Fi issues during the year he tested it. It has built-in Wi-Fi, uses four AA batteries that last around two months (less in super colder weather), and has a hidden mechanical keyhole as a backup in case the battery dies when you’re not home, and you get two spare keys. There’s a charging port underneath so you can give it some juice during emergencies if the lock is dead and you don’t have the key, but we wish it was USB-C instead of Micro USB. It’s a good lock, but he prefers the Fingerprint models since it has a nicer build quality and it has eight batteries, so the lock lasts twice as long.
Photograph: Nena Farrell
Yale Assure Lock 2 Touch for $300: I’ve been testing this lock for a few weeks in tandem with ADT’s security system and Google Home. Unlike the other locks in this guide, I didn’t install it—an ADT tech did, and installation can be included in an ADT security package like the one I’ve been testing. For the lock itself, it’s worked well. It’s a full dead-bolt replacement, and came with a single key, and has both a keypad and fingerprint reader for entry options. The fingerprint reader is speedy and efficient, and my husband says the keypad has been easy to use (you activate the keypad by touching the Yale button, but if your finger is registered to the app, that’s also the fingerprint reader button). Instead of using the Yale app, I primarily control this app with the ADT+ app, but there are versions of this lock that don’t use or require ADT’s service. I do wish I could set it to lock after every 10 minutes, rather than three, but that’s the longest option the ADT+ app gives me to set it. I can also partially control it in the Google Home app, but only to lock and unlock it, not to dive into detailed settings like passcodes and auto-lock times.
Yale Assure Touchscreen Lever Lock for $240: I’ve been testing this no-dead-bolt lever door handle with its sleek-looking keypad for four months on the door to my house from inside my garage. Unlike Yale’s Approach Lock, it won’t sense you coming, but it awakens with even a light touch to the keypad. It’s easy to lock and unlock and view the activity log on the Yale Access app, or you can use a pin code to unlock. You can also create different codes for different people to know exactly who’s been coming and going and when. It works with Google Home, Apple Home, and Alexa, and has also got two physical keys for backup in case of battery failure. Setup wasn’t exactly a breeze, requiring the Bilt app to install and then the Yale app to configure, and online reviews are quite voluminous in their complaints of both battery life and the handle becoming loose over time. Neither of these issues has arisen during our test period; however, we will update this review with further observations as time goes on. —Kat Merck
Avoid These Smart Locks
We haven’t loved every smart lock we’ve tried. These are the ones to skip.
Defiant Smart Deadbolt
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
Defiant Smart Deadbolt Powered by Hubspace for $100: The shoddy build quality is a huge turn-off on this smart lock from Defiant. The buttons are mushy, it’s very loud, and what is the point of Wi-Fi connectivity if it never connects to Wi-Fi? I finally got it paired with the Hubspace app, but the lock never stayed connected to my Wi-Fi, so I had none of the benefits. —Julian Chokkattu
Eufy FamiLock S3 Max for $400: This lock is cool because it includes a camera, letting the device double as a digital peephole (convenient for smaller family members!) and has a super interesting biometric option that uses the veins in your palm for authentication. Unfortunately, once installed, the lock didn’t work on my door, even though it was the correct size and placement.
A big part of my job as a pet tech writer is setting up automatic litter boxes and observing my cats, ahem, do their business. It’s not glamorous work, but someone’s gotta do it. After testing over a dozen, I’ve learned that not all are created equal.
I’ve been impressed with all of the automatic litter boxes that I’ve tested from Petkit, but the PuraMax 2 is the litter box that I recommend to most people. (For more Big Deal Days bargains, be sure to consult our guide to the Absolute Best Prime Day Deals for October 2025 and check in on our Prime Day liveblog, where we’re tracking deals and trends all event long.)
Photograph: Molly Higgins
Photograph: Petkit
It’s the fairest price point for the quality of all I’ve tested. Regularly $500, it’s $150 off right now, making it well below the price point of many comparable models, like the Litter-Robot 4, which is regularly $700.
I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but the PuraMax 2 actually smells good. This box has triple odor control, a sealed waste bin, an odor eliminator attachment that sits in the waste bin, and a citrusy deodorizing spray that goes off after every cleaning and randomly throughout the day to ensure the litter box stays fresh.
The design of the large, forward-facing hole feels familiar to most cats, and both of my cats (including my large 17-pound tabby) took to this litter box easily. When it’s time to refill, the box rotates and the hole faces up to make litter filling easy with no awkward bending or refilling with smaller containers.
When the cat enters the box, their weight is displayed on the front, and the app logs every time it was used, for how long, when the cleaning cycle begins, ends, and when the deodorizing spray was emitted. Owners can also change settings manually via the buttons on the front.
I recently went down a bright, RGB-laden hole with a mission: to satisfy my curiosity about smart lights that try to rip the colors off your TV and splash them onto the wall behind it. I’ve been skeptical of such TV lights muddying filmmakers’ intent the same way modern TVs with motion smoothing and other AI image processing can. After toying with the Philips Hue Play Wall Washer, I wouldn’t say I’m sold on the idea yet, but the good news is that’s not all this little can full of LED modules can do.
Signify, the company that licenses and makes products under the Philips Hue brand, might mainly advertise the Play Wall Washer as a way to spice up your entertainment system. But it’s equally adept as wall-coating accent lighting or a wake-up light in your bedroom, using the same interface that works for other colorful Hue smart lighting. The Wall Washer itself is a small, upright lamp inside an aluminum enclosure that feels very sturdy. It projects light outward and upward from three rows of LED lights, each working to produce smooth gradients and colors that are rich without being garishly oversaturated, which I’ve always appreciated about the whole Hue smart light line.
It’s a versatile little product, yet I find myself jumping through a lot of mental hoops to justify the Play Wall Washer. At $219.99, it’s not the most expensive RGB light in the usually-spendy Philips Hue lineup, but you would still need to either have or create an ideal space for it in your home to make it worthwhile. And it takes a whole lot more money to make it work as a TV backlight.
Philips Hue Play Wall Washer
The Philips Hue Play Wall Washer is a slick, well-made can full of vibrant and responsive color-shifting RGBs to paint your wall with—if you’ve got the money and the space.
Signify calls the Play Wall Washer an “immersive surround lighting” experience for your home entertainment center. The smart light’s product page shows two Play Wall Washers standing astride a giant TV, splaying green and blue gradients over a broad, near-featureless white wall.
It takes a hefty investment—$384.99 for a two-pack of the smart lights; another $384.99 for the Hue Play HDMI Sync Box 8K; and $65.99 for a Hue Bridge—to achieve what Philips’ image shows, but it ain’t much easier on your wallet with just one Play Wall Washer. You can skip the Sync Box 8K (or the older $249.99 4K model) if you have one of the recent 2022 or newer Samsung or 2024 LG TVs, for which Signify has a standalone Hue Sync app. But because we can’t have anything nice, you’ll still be on the hook for a $129.99 one-time purchase covering a single TV or a $2.99 monthly subscription that’s good for three TVs. You don’t actually need a Hue Bridge if you’re not doing the TV-syncing thing—you can still use it as a fancy gradient-beaming light via the Hue app over Bluetooth—but you’ll also lose Matter support, limiting your smart home ecosystem options to just Google Home and Amazon Alexa.
I tested a single unit paired with the Sync Box 8K, which has four HDMI 2.1 inputs and one HDMI 2.1 output that can pass up to 4K content at 120Hz (or 8K at 60Hz) through to your TV using an included Ultra High-Speed HDMI cable. You can switch inputs via the Hue app, but I found I never needed to; its automatic input-switching when I turned on another device was flawless. It also supports Dolby Vision and HDR10 video.
Setup in the Hue app is fairly quick and painless, involving a little QR code-scanning and, for the Sync Box, tapping the button on your Hue Bridge and using a little graphic to drag the Play Wall Washer to its approximate location relative to your TV. After setup, controlling TV syncing—which you’ll do from the Sync tab in the app—is pretty straightforward, letting you do things like tweak the brightness of your lights and intensity of their effects.
The main advantage the Play Wall Washer has over covering the back of your TV with RGB integrated circuit (RGBIC) light strips—the kind with LED modules that can be controlled individually, making color gradients along the strip possible—is that physically setting it up is a breeze. You just plop it down behind your TV, plug it and the Sync Box into the wall, hook up your HDMI cables to the Sync Box, and you’re done. The disadvantage is that it being a single light source meansit’ll cast harsh shadows if there’s anything mounted on the wall above it. LED strips don’t really have that issue.
Once I cleared out some shadow-casting objects, the Sync Box and Play Wall Washer struck me as being good if what you’re after is more of a vibe than seeing colors bleed out from the edge of your TV, or perhaps bias lighting, which can make watching a screen easier on your eyes. Yes, it flashed its lights right alongside the lightning in the opening sequence of Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, when Kylo Ren first visits Exegol, and bloomed red and orange in the sunset sequence of The Incredibles, as Mrs. Incredible races to save a commuter bullet train from certain doom. But the light wasn’t as precisely positioned around my TV as that you’d get from an LED strip slapped on the back of your TV.
It seemed a bit more precise when I slipped it into gaming mode and played Donkey Kong Bananza on my Nintendo Switch 2, but the effect was still muted. Even so, this left me a lot more convinced by the whole TV backlight concept, at least for gaming—I’d even say I enjoyed the spectacle. Movies are presented as a piece of art meant to wash over you, but video games are inherently participatory—how you experience their stories is up to you, and for me at least, a synchronized light show feels more additive than distracting.
So, price and precision are the Play Wall Washer’s big weak points. I A/B tested it against the $149.99 Govee TV Backlight 3 Lite Kit (see the GIFs above), which uses an LED strip and two light bars, and the even cheaper $94.49 HDMI Sync Box from Wiz, another Signify brand—both produced much more localized lighting and aren’t just cheaper than the Play Wall Washer on their own, and neither requires you to buy anything else to sync with your TV. Their colors are a lot more in-your-face than the Play Wall Washers, which is a good thing for some people, and if you don’t like it, there are ways to tone things down in their respective apps.
They each have their own drawbacks, though: Govee’s kit requires hanging an ugly camera from the top of your TV to capture color information, and the lights lag behind the picture slightly (for what it’s worth, the company does sell a Sync Box with specs similar to the Philips Hue Sync Box 8K), and the Wiz Sync Box only has a single HDMI input and is limited to 4K resolution at 60Hz or 1440p at 120Hz. And sticking an LED strip to the back of your TV is a pain in both cases.
But maybe you’re only interested in the Play Wall Washer as a decorative item. Good for you; you’ll save a little money, and the Play Wall Washer’s ability to bathe a broad surface in colorful light is excellent. The sweet spot, to me, started at about a foot from a wall, letting me coat the it all the way up to the ceiling. You can go with static lights or gradients—the Hue app has a ton of nice pre-made ones, but you can also roll your own with a color picker in the app—or you can choose from several effects like those that other colorful Hue bulbs and lightstrips use. My favorite was Cosmic Gold, which alternately undulates light in front of and above the lamp, blasts color everywhere, and quickly dials the brightness all the way down in a fluid, repeating animation.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to find somewhere to actually put it. It’s meant to be stood on a hard surface—either your floor or a table—and with the light pointing upward, everything ends up being underlit, casting harsh shadows if the light encounters any texture or decorations, making it hard for me to find a wall it would work on. Its power cord is a generous 6.2-feet long, but it’s embedded, rather than using something like USB-C, so you need a bulky extension cord if it doesn’t reach. Also, there are no mounting screw holes, so you’d have to get creative if you want to put it anywhere other than the floor or a piece of furniture.
The only hope for it in my house was my bedroom, which is a converted attic with walls that are only briefly vertical before angling to follow the roofline. The light covered the entire 15-foot length of the wall with vibrant, smooth gradients, and the angled wall helped with furniture shadows and kept the light from fading as it climbed higher. But the Play Wall Washer was smack in the middle of my bedroom floor, right in the walkway and ready to trip me. Ultimately, if you don’t have tons of space and an Apple-like minimalist sensibility, it’s hard to see this smart light being practical for decoration outside of something like an art gallery.
Smart home compatibility Matters
If you have a Hue Bridge to connect it to, the Play Wall Washer gets support for Matter, the universal protocol that lets your device work across any of the major smart home platforms. That approach—using a hub instead of giving the light Matter compatibility on its own—means I didn’t have to do anything after setup to get it working in Apple Home, Google Home, my Flic Hub, and Amazon Alexa; it was just already there. Without a Hue Bridge, it’ll only work with the last two in that list. That could be fine in the short term, but if some slick new platform emerges down the road, there’s far less chance this light will be supported without Matter.
Whatever your platform of choice is, you’ll still want to use the Hue app, as it’s the only way to make the Play Wall Washer show gradients. It’s also where you’ll find Hue’s various automations, like presence-mimicking that can randomly turn your lights on and off at night when you’re away, or geofencing that toggles them off or on when you leave or come home. The Play Wall Washer is actually really nice with the Hue wake-up automation, which turns it slowly over a long stretch, because it can be both extremely dim and very bright. That long wall I mentioned earlier? It was nice to close my curtains and wake up to it totally bathed in the colors of a sunrise.
The $219.99 Hue Play Wall Washer is a really cool little smart lamp that’s small enough that it won’t call attention to itself beyond the lush colors it produces. It’s not cheap, but for home decor purposes, the price may be right, so long as you have a big ol’ wall to shine its light onto and the space to keep it from being underfoot.
As a TV-syncing light, it might be too subdued and imprecise for many people, and it’s limited to TVs that are placed a little away from the wall if you want even lighting from a single Play Wall Washer. But even if you do like its vibe and super easy setup, the costs ramp way up to unlock that functionality, requiring you to buy hardware that costs much more than the light itself or have one of very few specific TV sets that can do it for you, assuming you already have a Hue Bridge. Given that the market is absolutely lousy with TV backlight options, it may be best to save your money and skip the Hue Play Wall Washer.
Hot on the heels of Amazon’s own Ring and Blink security camera blitz, Google is announcing new Nest cameras with its Gemini AI chatbot as the main selling point in addition to improved image quality. Thankfully, there are only three new Nest products, and they’re relatively easy to understand, unlike Amazon’s entire lineup, which may require a PhD to figure out the differences between each model.
The three new Nest cameras are the $150 Nest Outdoor Camera (wired, 2nd-gen), $100 Nest Indoor Camera (wired, 3rd-gen), and $180 Nest Doorbell (wired, 2nd-gen). You have some neutral colors like Snow (white) and Hazel, but the most striking color is the “berry” red model for the Indoor Camera. I prefer my security cameras to blend into the walls and ceilings, but if you’ve ever wanted a bright, berry-colored camera watching you from above, now you can live out your wildest dreams.
On the hardware front, all three Nest cameras boast 2K-resolution image sensors with HDR. Google says the sensors greatly improve recorded video footage quality, especially for low-light and night video. Equally important is the new wider and taller field of view (152 degrees on the Indoor Camera and Outdoor Camera and 166 degrees on the Nest Doorbell)—essential for capturing more in video so that Gemini can have more information to process and understand. With older Nest cameras and the doorbell, they could only send notifications alerting you to motion or sound, but with Gemini, Google says users will be able to get more specific notifications that describe what’s happening.
For example, if a delivery person comes by your door to drop off a package, Gemini should send a notification describing their clothing and might even get as specific as telling you which delivery service they may be from if it can see a uniform logo or truck in the background. At home, with the Nest Indoor Camera and Outdoor Camera, Gemini could send a notification telling you that your cat knocked over a glass vase or perhaps your child named John (you need to allow face recognition) was playing in the backyard at 4 p.m. instead of doing his homework like you asked him to.
Gemini also has a feature called “Ask Home,” which combines computer vision from the cameras and natural language processing to find specific clips instead of you having to scrub frame by frame, through hours of footage. Google says you’ll be able to simply ask Gemini to find something from footage. “What happened to the vase in the living room?” is one example, the company shared.
There are some additional quality-of-life improvements for springing for the new cameras, including “Home Brief” (summary of hours of footage), the ability to zoom in a crop the field of view to focus on only one area for monitoring, and six hours of free event video history (up from three hours).
All of these features are accessible in the redesigned Google Home app that’s simpler, faster, and more stable. You can still use the Nest app, but Google tells Gizmodo that the Home app will be the primary smart home app for Nest devices moving forward. It’s only a matter of time before the Nest app is phased out sometime in the future, so don’t get too attached. The good news is, the new Google Home app has reached feature parity and stability with the Nest app. So, if the smart home app has left a bad taste in your mouth, like it has with me, I think we should give it another shot and then judge it.
I’ve not seen any of the new Nest Cameras in action, so I can’t say with what degree of accuracy Gemini is able to recognize people, vehicles, animals, packages, and other objects within footage in and around the home. But I’m hella interested in seeing how well the Ask Home feature works. I’d love to know which one of my two cats knocked over certain things in my apartment while I was at the office.
The new Nest smart home products are feature-packed, but if you have a tighter budget—like a lot tighter—you may want to consider some of Walmart’s new Onn-branded devices like the $23 Indoor Camera Wired and the $50 Video Doorbell Wired. These aren’t comparable to the Nest Indoor Camera and Nest Doorbell—they only record 1080p, and the field of view isn’t as wide—but it does provide a more basic security camera system that integrates nicely with the new Google Home app. If you want the Gemini features like intelligent alerts and event history, you’ll need to pony up for a Google Home Premium subscription, which is split into Standard ($10) and Advanced ($20) plans.
Over on the Show models, they now have a 13-megapixel camera for richer details on your video calls, with improved audio quality as well. Amazon says more and more companies are integrating with Alexa+, touting an Oura partnership that lets you ask Alexa about last night’s sleep with data collected from your Oura ring. More integrations are on the way, including the ability to buy movie tickets with Fandango.
All of these Echo devices are available for preorder today.
Alexa+ Is Still in Early Access
Alexa+ was announced back in February and began rolling out in early access by March. Not much is changing about this. Amazon says Alexa+ is now rolling out in the US “during an early access period” and in waves over the coming months. It’ll prioritize Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21 device owners in this period, and you can sign up for early access here. The fastest way to access it is to buy one of the new Echo devices announced today.
Alexa+ is an upgrade over the standard Alexa you’re familiar with. Powered by a large language model, it allows you to be more conversational with the assistant. Alexa+ is much faster at answering more topical and contextual questions, correctly answering things like “What’s that popular Soda Pop song?” You can read more here about our experience using it for a week.
Alexa+ is free for Amazon Prime subscribers, but costs $20 a month for everyone else. Amazon says Alexa+ is being integrated into other devices from Sonos, Bose, Samsung, LG, and BMW.
The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft
The Kindle Scribe is a relatively new entry in Amazon’s e-reader ecosystem, but now it’s already in its third generation. And for the third iteration, there are three new 11-inch Kindle Scribe models: Kindle Scribe ($430), Kindle Scribe With Frontlight ($550), and Kindle Scribe Colorsoft ($630). These devices are 5.4 mm thick, which is thinner than the new iPhone Air. They weigh 400 grams and are made from precision-milled aluminum. Panay says they’re 40 percent faster, though he wasn’t specific about what he was comparing them to. When you write, you should experience a reduced latency of under 12 milliseconds.
Beating Google to the announcement of new smart home devices by a day, Amazon today unveiled a family of new Ring doorbell cameras with “Retinal Vision”—all powered by its more intelligent and conversational Alexa+, of course. Amazon also announced new Bli
If you haven’t been paying attention to camera-equipped home doorbells and smart cameras that infused with AI and computer vision, new Ring cameras can send AI summary notifications that describe what’s happening in footage. No more parsing through hours and hours of footage to find a specific clip.
New products announced at Amazon’s event include the $180 Wired Doobell Plus 2K, $60 Indoor Cam Plus 2K, $200 Outdoor Cam Pro 4K, $250 Spotlight Cma Pro 4K, $$250 Wired Doorbell Pro 4K, and $280 Floodlight Cam Pro 4K. Yeah, that’s a lot of cameras.
Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, who rejoined Amazon earlier this year, said with “Retinal Vision,” Ring doorbell cameras will be able to see better in low light and come with 10x enhanced zoom. A feature called “Retinal Tuning” allows Ring’s new smart cameras to record even better video with color night vision.
“Ring reimagined what the doorbell could be, but it’s now redefining what home security should be,” said Amazon hardware chief Panos Panay.
On the Blink home security camera front, there’s the new $50 Blink Mini 2K+ and $90 Blink Outdoor 2K+. The cameras have 2K-resolution video, 4x zoom, color night vision, and improved audio capture with noise cancellation. Amazon says the batteries in the Blink cameras “last years.”
Then, there’s the $100 Blink Arc, a security system with two cameras that cover two high-res video feeds to create a 180-degree panoramic view. “No more blind spots,” Amazon claims.
The Ultrahuman Home is a futuristic-looking home environment monitor that tracks air quality, light, sound, and temperature. All this data flows into the Ultrahuman app on your phone, offering potential insights into your environment and suggestions on how you could make it healthier. Sadly, this mostly amounts to reminders to crack a window open, because most of the touted features are not yet present and correct, despite the rather hefty $550 price.
Ultrahuman made its name with a subscription-free smart ring that made biohacking more affordable (though it may soon be banned in the US due to a lawsuit from Oura). The Home monitor may seem like a strange sidestep, but if you’re going to hack your body, why not your environment? After all, we know air quality, light and sound exposure, and temperature and humidity can impact our sleep and general health.
Setup and Tracking
Photograph: Simon Hill
Taking a leaf from Apple’s playbook, the Ultrahuman Home is a 4.7-inch anodized aluminum block with rounded corners (it looks like a Mac Mini). There’s an Ultrahuman logo and light sensor on top, a power button and LED on the front, and a USB-C port on the back flanked by privacy switches to turn off the microphone or connectivity (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth).
Setup is super simple: Plug it in and add it via the Ultrahuman app. The Home gets its own tab at the bottom of the Ultrahuman app, alongside the ring, and if you tap on it, you’ll get a score out of 100, indicating how healthy your environment is. Scroll down for a breakdown of the four scores that combine to create your overall Home score (air quality, environmental comfort, light exposure, and UV exposure).
Ultrahuman via Simon Hill
Ultrahuman via Simon Hill
To compile all this data, the Ultrahuman Home is packed with sensors:
Air quality sensors to track things like volatile organic compounds (VOCs), typically released by cleaning fluids, and carbon dioxide levels (CO₂) that might indicate poor ventilation. They also watch out for formaldehyde (HCHO), carbon monoxide (CO), and smoke.
Particulate matter sensors to track tiny particles in the air, including things like dust, pollen, mold spores, and particles released by cooking. Covering PM1.0, PM2.5, and PM10 (the number refers to the size in microns), the Home warns if you’re in danger of breathing these particles in.
Temperature and humidity sensors to track how warm or cool it is and how much moisture is in the air. You get a chart of the temperature in your environment and the humidity level.
Light sensors to track the level of light and also its makeup, including the amount of blue light and ultraviolet (UV) exposure.
Microphones to track the noise levels in your environment, showing noise in decibels in a chart.
Ultrahuman via Simon Hill
The data is all easy to access and read in the app. You get notifications throughout the day, including alerts if VOC levels spike or there’s prolonged noise. I set the Home up in my office for a few weeks and then tried it for another couple of weeks in my bedroom, after I moved houses. This raises the issue of where to put it, because it must be plugged in and isn’t really designed to be moved around. The bedroom seems like the best bet, but you ideally want both, though I can’t imagine springing for two or more of these to cover all your bases.
Oversensitive and Alarming
Photograph: Simon Hill
The idea of combining body and environment tracking data seems smart, but the Ultrahuman Home doesn’t really do it yet. The touted UltraSync with the Ultrahuman Ring Air is limited to basic common sense advice for now. I don’t think anyone really needs a box to tell them they will sleep better in the dark and quiet, and the air quality advice mostly amounts to opening a window for better ventilation.
Nothing has a new pair of earbuds for you: the Ear 3. These AirPods-style buds cost $179 and are available now, following the Nothing Phone (3) and Headphone (1) the company released this summer. While they share the stem design aesthetic of Apple’s popular earbuds, the blend of aluminum and plastic sure makes them look unique.
The key feature in the noise-canceling earbuds is called Super Mic. Except it’s not in the earbuds at all—there are two microphones in the charging case. It supposedly cuts background noise, and you can talk into it by pressing the Talk button on the case, like a walkie-talkie. A double-press keeps the mic on continuously. (Keep an eye out for free Nothing earbuds case product placement in influencer videos soon.)
The earbuds still feature a three-mic array, but utilizing the Super Mic in the case should enhance your voice. Naturally, you can also use it to record voice memos, which are saved in the company’s Essential Space app on its phones.
These flagship Ear 3 earbuds also feature improved noise canceling, enhanced audio quality, a stronger signal connection, and longer battery life—5.5 hours with noise canceling enabled and 10 hours with it turned off. We’ll be giving them a spin soon, so stay tuned for our review.
Amazon’s Fall Hardware Event Is Coming
Courtesy of Amazon
It’s that time of year again. Not Halloween season, but fall gadget season. Apple kicked things off earlier this month, Meta unveiled new smart glasses this week, and now Amazon will close the month with its own hardware event. The company sent out press invites this week for an event on September 30 in New York City.
The other intriguing addition is the photo of a Kindle with a color screen. Amazon just announced new Colorsoft Kindles earlier in July, and it’s a little too soon to see yet another Colorsoft. It’s most likely a color version of the Kindle Scribe, just in time to compete with ReMarkable’s new Paper Pro Move. We’ll be on the ground on September 30 to relay the details. —Nena Farrell
ExpressVPN Debuts a Free VPN
ExpressVPN recently changed its subscription tiers, and now it has something else cooking: EventVPN. It’s a free VPN service available on Apple devices, including iOS and macOS. What makes it different? There isn’t a paid plan. EventVPN runs exclusively off ads.
Ads and online privacy are basically oil and water, but EventVPN claims it has an ad model that will allow it to stay afloat without compromising user privacy. It’s also operating entirely on RAM-based servers, which means that, even if it wanted to log your data, it would disappear the moment it’s flushed from memory.
Google has accidentally leaked its new Nest security cameras and video doorbell line. Setup options appeared in the Google Home app for wired versions of the Nest Cam Indoor (3rd gen), Nest Cam Outdoor (2nd gen), and Nest Doorbell (3rd gen), as reported by Android Authority. The options now appear to have been removed, but an eagle-eyed Redditor also found the new products locked up at Home Depot, ready to go on sale.
Google has already confirmed that it plans to unveil new information about the infusion of its Gemini voice assistant into Google Home on October 1, replacing Google Assistant. That’s likely when we’ll see the new hardware, too. These overdue updates are rumored to include a resolution bump to 2K, a new zoom and crop feature, fresh colors, and a switch to Gemini for Home. There’s also talk of a new subscription option as Nest Aware turns into Google Home Premium, and a new Google Home Premium Advanced plan. Details haven’t been confirmed, so take all of this with a pinch of salt.
As for the design of the new lineup, they look almost identical to the existing range, aside from the colors, which include an eye-catching red. Perhaps in preparation for the new releases, the Nest team recently updated the Home app to provide preview images from the last event before the live view loads, swiping between timeline and events, and better notifications with a static thumbnail expandable to a large animated preview. There was also a raft of performance improvements and some much-needed polish. —Simon Hill
Sony’s Xperia 10 VII Won’t Launch in the US
Courtesy of Sony
Sony stopped selling its flagship Xperia phones in the US last year, and that seems to be continuing with the latest midrange Xperia 10 VII, announced on Friday. It’ll launch in Asia, Europe, and the UK, and it debuts a fresh design language with a horizontal camera bar, much like Google’s Pixel phones (and even the iPhone Air).
It has a 6.1-inch screen, which may sound nice and compact, but it’s slightly bigger than the 6.1-inch iPhone 16. That’s probably because the bezels at the top and bottom of the screen are a little chunky for a modern phone. Still, you get a 120-Hz refresh rate, and some folks will be excited to see the 3.5-mm headphone jack and microSD card slot. It’s powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 chip with a 5,000-mAh battery in tow, and no wireless charging.
As for the cameras, Sony has a 50-megapixel main camera paired with a 13-MP ultrawide, and you can use the dedicated shutter button on the side to snap pics. It’ll cost £399 or €449 in the UK and Europe and goes on sale September 19, the same day as the latest iPhone 17 lineup.
Qualcomm Debuts Quick Charge 5+
This week, Qualcomm announced the next evolution of its fast-charging technology, known as Quick Charge 5+. Qualcomm calls it its “fastest and most versatile charging solution,” which can recharge phones from 0 to 50 percent in five minutes. That was true of the original version of Quick Charge 5, though, which is now more than 5 years old. The advances in Quick Charge 5+ revolve around “advanced thermal control” and “intelligent power delivery” to the standard. It’s less about increasing charging speed and more about maintaining that speed sustainably.
For example, Quick Charge 5+ doesn’t just flow all that juice to the device uninhibited; instead, it “dynamically” regulates that power using a “reduced-voltage approach.” This means it can lower the voltage on the fly to prevent overheating while charging, without impacting performance or battery health.
Qualcomm says its fast-charging technology powers over 1 billion devices, but we’ll have to see if Quick Charge 5+ picks up more mainstream adoption in phones and accessories in the US. Qualcomm’s annual Snapdragon Summit is coming up on September 23, and the company says devices announced at the conference will support Quick Charge 5+. —Luke Larsen
Ultraloq Enables NFC Unlock for Android Phones
Courtesy of Ultraloq
Smart-lock brand Ultraloq is adept at adding support for the latest smart-home standards into its devices, from Matter to HomeKit. Now, Android users can share a similar experience to Apple Home Key users with an update to its Bolt NFC smart lock ($200), allowing it to work with NFC-enabled Android devices for a tap-to-unlock feature, much like how you tap to pay. It’s a feature often touted for iPhones, and usually, you can’t switch between ecosystems when a device is compatible with both. The Bolt NFC lock will allow for both Apple and Android devices to wirelessly unlock this smart lock with a tap.
I remember when I had a car. I was living in Queens, and avoiding tickets was an absolute nightmare—that is, until I was informed of a neighborhood cheat code. There was a street sort of near where I lived where I could just leave my car—no alternate side parking, predetermined hours, nothing. Naturally, I went straight there and parked my car and tried my best to forget that I had one until I needed it. I thought about that car every single day. Was it still there? Had it been smashed to pieces? Abducted by aliens? Did a pack of wild rats chew their way in and declare it “Ratopia”? My point is, there’s an anxiety to leaving your car places, whether we want there to be or not, and though we can’t be omnipresent, a watchful eye would be the next best thing.
In that vein, a new solar-powered security camera from Baseus—the same company that makes these intriguing wireless headphones and earbuds launched at IFA this month—seems specially designed for people who want to leave their car for long periods but also keep an eye on it. Baseus is billing the PrimeTrip VD1 dashcam (which is actually two cameras for the front and back of your car) as the first to offer a “hardwire-free parking monitor.” That’s thanks to what it calls a “Solar Sync System” that uses a small, high-efficiency solar panel to juice up the camera’s battery, allowing it to remain powered without being charged by a car battery.
It’s not completely set it and forget it, though. According to Baseus, the PrimeTrip VD1 has 14 days of standby parking monitoring, which is still a pretty solid amount of juice for a camera that doesn’t even need to be plugged in. To help give it longevity, Baseus equipped the camera with a motion sensor, so it’s not recording all the time. Instead, it will flick on when motion or impact is detected, and will then automatically record 30-second clips from both front and rear cameras. Baseus says its camera can store up to 20 events, or a total of 40 clips. That footage can’t be watched remotely (there’s no 5G on this thing), but it can be downloaded via Wi-Fi to an app. You should also know that there is a difference in front and rear camera resolution; the front is 4K, and the rear camera is 1080p.
I don’t own a car anymore, but if I did, this feels like a solution I may actually opt for, especially because I can’t really afford a car with built-in security like the kind Tesla puts in its EVs. It may not give you total peace of mind while you’re away from your vehicle for long periods, but a helping hand (or at least confirmation that someone stole your catalytic converter) doesn’t hurt.
We test each tool on a range of hair types, lengths, and textures, including fine, curly, and color-treated hair. Our testers live in varied climates and span different routines, so we see how these tools perform in different environments.
We time how long it takes to dry freshly washed hair of different thicknesses and lengths. We pay attention to heat distribution and airflow strength across settings, and we note how comfortable the tool feels during styling sessions. Weight, cord length, and dual-voltage compatibility are also factors we consider.
We test every attachment as it’s intended, and we judge ease of use, durability, and styling results.
Beyond our initial two-week testing period, we continue using each tool for several months. This lets us track motor wear, filter maintenance needs, and any overall performance loss.
As much as I love my makeshift smart home, the idea of a house where everything is internet-connected sometimes borders on the absurd. In today’s age, we have smart everything: smart fridges, smart ovens, smart vacuums, smart microwaves, smart coffee makers, and, of course, the venerable smart toaster. It’s tales of this last one that I’m going to regale you with today, since I know you’re simply burning up inside (pun intended), not knowing whether you should throw your tried-and-true toasting machine of choice in the trash and take one giant, crumb-laden step into the future.
To help us explore said future, we have before us Revolution’s R180 Connect Plus Smart Toaster. Like any smart gadget worth mentioning, the R180 centers around a giant touchscreen slapped on the front of the toaster. This is where the smarts come in. Here you’ll find all sorts of options for toasting that include an eye-watering 38 bread types, all with seven levels of doneness displayed in varying shades of brown. To be honest, I didn’t even realize how many different things there were to toast until I started tapping through the pages on the R180. There’s an option for white bread, of course, but also waffles, hamburger buns, English muffins, bagels, and (my favorite) LARGE bagels. There’s even an option for pancakes, which I’m told can be bought frozen at the store, a fact I did not know. And speaking of frozen stuff, there are options when you’re getting toasty to cook something that’s fresh, frozen, or to reheat.
Revolution R180 Connect Plus Smart Toaster
You don’t need a smart toaster. No one does.
Pros
It toasts bread!
Lots of settings
No more jump scares with toast
Cons
It’s $400!
Some smart features don’t pertain to toast
It’s hard to say what separates all of these options from one another, but it’s clear that Revolution did actually focus on the heating element of the R180 and not just the flashy screen stuff. That’s evidenced by the fact that this toaster has a copyrighted heating tech called InstaGLO, which Revolution claims “heats in seconds” and sears bread rather than roasting the life out of it. The subtlety of the R180’s heating coils is meant to toast the outside of the bread without drying it out, according to Revolution, and I will say, at first glance, the coils do look different than your run-of-the-mill toaster. Namely, they’re more slight and spindly, which may be how they get so hot so fast. And as to the claim that it toasts bread without drying it out, I think it does a decent job, though not all the time.
For your bread-and-butter white toast (I’ll see myself out for that double entendre), it does a good job. The brioche I cooked with the “white bread” setting was nice and browned on the outside using the default doneness setting, but was actually a little steamy on the inside. When I switched that setting to “gluten-free,” however, it kind of burned the crap out of the bread, though maybe that’s more to do with the bread than the toaster. It did an okay job with Pop-Tarts, but let’s be honest, that’s pretty hard to mess up. Unrelated to the toasting process, I did wind up with a tummy ache, but I think that’s what’s supposed to happen when you put that many preservatives in your body. This level of variability between toast outcomes, while not ideal if you don’t choose the right setting, is kind of a sign that the toaster is working. There are differences in the preset toast settings, and they have a demonstrable difference on the final product. I’ll give you an example.
For shits and giggles, I decided to try and toast a piece of the brioche bread under the artisan bread setting. I mean, what is “artisan,” anyway? How do I know who made this bread? Maybe it came from a family of bakers in Brooklyn. Maybe there’s an independent bread seller going door-to-door trying to grow their gluten empire. Whatever. Maybe I was bending the rules. The important part is I tried it, and the results were… smokey. Trying to toast the brioche under the artisan bread setting was not a good idea, since it started to burn the toast to the point that I cancelled the function early for fear that I would smoke my office kitchen out. On one hand, yikes, but on the other, there’s clearly a major difference in heat and timing between settings that makes presets more tailored to certain things. And that’s the whole damn point.
Altogether, I tested three different things: Pop-Tarts (since there’s a specific pastry setting for that), gluten-free bread (there’s also a setting for that), and brioche white bread. It did a pretty decent job toasting all three of those and was responsive when I selected the browness level. I’m not sure who needs to optimize their Pop-Tart toasting, but if that’s your jam, then your time has finally arrived. An unexpected perk of toasting with this thing is that there are no jump scares. When you press “start” on the screen, the bread descends into the depths of the toaster like Han Solo post-carbonite. Similarly, when the toast is done (there’s a circle countdown on the screen, and it flashes the last 10 seconds like the ball in Times Square is about to drop), it rises, born again as slightly burned bread.
Again, as with any proper smart appliance in 2025, there are lots of things you absolutely do not need, but since the internet is inside this thing… why not, I guess. One of those things that you don’t really need is the weather. By entering your city into the toaster, you can get local weather. Revolution claims that this toaster does not collect data on you, though I can’t verify if that’s true or not. If you’re buying this smart toaster, you’re going to have to just take their word for it. Another frivolous but fun (I guess?) smart feature is a digital photo album that you can set to cycle through pics when you’re not busy toasting stuff. I uploaded some of myself to the toaster using the provided QR code, and, honestly, this screen is kind of nice? No one needs this, but this toaster panel is not total garbage. Good job, Revolution!
One thing I don’t love about the smart features is that there’s no way to do certain stuff via an app or some kind of web-based interface. Using the touchscreen works surprisingly fine, but sometimes there are things you’d rather do on your phone, like enter your Wi-Fi network. When I went to enter my office Wi-Fi into the toaster, it said that it was connected, but I couldn’t actually go online because of added security. With a phone, I may have been prompted to enter the necessary credentials and would have been able to get online without using my colleague’s hotspot. That’s a minor complaint, to be clear. Most people won’t encounter that problem since they’ll be setting these things up at home, but the option to use a phone or another device would have been nice.
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what anyone wants out of a smart toaster or if anyone wants anything at all. There are mostly two camps of people when they witness the R180. One of them is intrigued (i.e., wow! what is that?) and then mildly entertained by the existence of a smart toaster. The other is near-viscerally offended that smart appliances have gone this far (i.e., did we really need to reinvent toast?). One friend of mine told me he “had to go to the doctor” after seeing me post about it on my Instagram. No matter which camp you belong to, both share one thing: they’re equally as disgusted by the price.
This, at the end of the day, is a $400 toaster, and there’s just no getting around that. For everything that it does right, or does uniquely, no one needs a smart toaster, and no one needs to spend hundreds of dollars toasting bread. Okay, maybe if you buy one of those fancy Japanese ones that steams at the same time (those are notably $100 less than this, by the way). But if you want one, who am I to stop you? You can tap and swipe your way into a bready bliss. I’ll be on the sidelines turning bread into that nice crumbly stuff the old-fashioned way, one toasty jump scare at a time.
A tennis-playing robot, a projector in a party speaker, and a whole bunch of new AI-powered wearables. Here are some of the best gadgets we saw at IFA 2025.
Is your current smart lock frustrating you endlessly, like mine is? The Yale Approach Smart Lock (8/10, WIRED Review) is currently marked down to just $164 on Amazon, a healthy 32% discount on our editors’ top pick for smart locks. This sale comes at a perfect time, because I was just complaining about the fingerprint reader on mine no longer working.
Photograph: Nena Farrell
Courtesy of Yale
The Yale Approach uses part of your existing deadbolt, which is great news for renters who don’t want to make major changes. You’ll also get to use your existing keys to unlock the deadbolt, which can save you a trip to the locksmith. There’s also a wi-fi bridge that needs a nearby plug to provide other services, but that’s not uncommon for smart locks. Our reviewer, Nena Farrell, even said it “works perfectly,” which is great news, because I have to unplug mine and plug it back in at least once a week.
Approach isn’t just a name, as this smart deadbolt’s standout feature is auto-unlock. By setting up your location in the Yale Access App, you can set the bolt to unlock as your get close to home, which our reviewer said “worked smoothly”, as long as she got far enough away from home for it to recognize her return. There’s an auto-lock, too, using timers from 10 seconds to 30 minutes.
This version of the Yale Approach includes the touchscreen keypad, which needs its own flat space to either stick or screw to. In exchange, it lets you set codes for yourself or friends, with options for time and access limits if you need to manage entry to your home more carefully. It also gives you an easy button to press to lock the deadbolt as you leave the house, and a biometric fingerprint scanner.
No matter what smart lock you buy, there’s going to be a little bit of hassle, that just comes with the territory, unfortunately. The Yale smooths out a lot of the worst parts by adapting to your existing hardware, and mostly stays out of the way afterwards. The auto-unlock feature isn’t totally unique to the Approach, but it is currently our favorite implementation. The price is normally a bit on the high side, so the discount here makes this a very appealing pickup for anyone ready to relegate their old front door lock to the garage door, like I’m about to.
Dyson has big changes coming. The company just announced its biggest batch of new products yet during IFA Berlin, with new appliances coming to both its floor cleaner and air treatment lines. From the already-announced PencilVac to an AI-powered robot vacuum and reimagined V8 Cyclone stick vacuum, the Dyson family of household appliances is about to get a lot bigger. There’s also a brand-new air purifier to come, plus updates to Dyson’s existing fan and space heater models.
While all of these items were announced today, only the new air purifier—the HushJet Purifier Compact HJ10, which will retail for $350—will be available in 2025, by the end of this month. Everything else will arrive sometime in 2026, with pricing still a mystery until closer to each product’s release. Here are the details of everything Dyson’s got in store.
New Classics
COURTESY OF DYSON
A lot of new floor care is arriving in 2026 from Dyson. The PencilVac was announced back in May, and there are three more related gadgets coming, plus a revamp of an old favorite. Pricing is still to come, as are the exact dates of when each of these will be available.
To start with the old, the popular V8 cordless vacuum from 2016 is getting new life 10 years later as the Dyson V8 Cyclone. Dyson says the updated stick vacuum will have 30 percent more suction power with 150 air watts and twice the run time—an hour over the original V8’s 30 minutes. It’ll have a triggerless power button and a self-emptying docking station, which is a feature I love on cordless vacuums. It’s a nice update to a popular vacuum that brings it up to speed with the technology and features we like to see in current stick vacuums.
The Dyson V16 Piston Animal is a new cordless stick vacuum with Dyson’s latest motor, a cleaner head that can sense the floor type, and a wet roller head. It promises 315 air watts of power and a 70-minute run time. The All Floor Cones Sense cleaner head will detect what type of floor it’s on and adjust the suction and brush bar speed for optimal performance, and it has LED illumination to help spot dust. You’ll also be able to attach the wet roller head, which is an updated version of the Submarine head—named the Submarine 2.0—that works with the Dyson V15 Detect. But I especially like the wipe-clean mechanism that helps get stubborn dust and long hairs out of the vacuum’s bin. There will also be a compatible self-emptying docking station that can be purchased separately (disappointing that it’s not included, and it sounds like the docking station might come after the vacuum’s initial release).
Cleaning Expanded
COURTESY OF DYSON
Dyson didn’t just announce stick vacuums. There are also a few other interesting related appliances coming to the lineup, but like the rest of the vacuums, pricing and availability timing aren’t available.
Never mind your homeowner’s association’s guidelines. Why shouldn’t our homes be permanently bedecked in colorful mood lights and not just in the days leading to Christmas? Govee’s coming out of the gate of IFA 2025 with a set of permanent outdoor lights that create a prismatic pattern over your home’s dull siding.
Compared to Govee’s other permanent outdoor lights, the new Outdoor Lights Prism creates a tricolor lighting effect from each custom LED unit on the light strip, cascading a gradient of three distinct colors at a downward angle. Govee’s system supports 16 million colors, so depending on the time of year, you could theme your home lights to purple and orange hues during Halloween or bright pinks and yellows in time for spring.
Like its other outdoor lights, the Outdoor Lights Prism is rated to work in temperatures between -30 degrees and 140 degrees Fahrenheit. They’re also rated IP68 for surviving dust and the odd rainstorm. Govee says the lights should last a total of 50,000 hours. Unfortunately, Govee still hasn’t shared pricing yet. The Light Prism should be available around Sept. 22. None of the company’s other lights shown off at IFA, including its bright and beautiful Galaxy Light Projector Pro with a built-in speaker, have official pricing yet, either.
Govee’s TV backlight uses ‘cinema quality’ lenses to match your screen
Let’s say you don’t have a backyard, but you’re a couch potato who wants a gadget that will watch your TV as intensely as you do. In comes the TV Backlight 3 Pro. Govee’s backlight has a few extra features that push it over the top compared to similar devices like those from Nanoleaf. The camera you mount to the TV uses a triple-sensor HDR camera array to capture the colors of your screen. That high dynamic range is important, according to Govee, as it allows for a wider range of imaging for perfect color matching.
Maybe the TV Backlight 3 Pro could match the slimy, dark tones of a Xenomorph from Alien: Earth. The other end of the device is the light strip that you adhere to the rear of your TV. Govee says this setup is brighter than its other strips, specifically 337 lumens compared to the Backlight 3 Lite at 120. The device supports the Matter smart home standard, but it will also sync up with Google Home and Amazon Alexa. Govee still hasn’t shared pricing details, but the TV Backlight 3 Pro will hit the scene on Sept. 29.
Amazon’s Eero is getting into the cellular hotspot router business… sort of. At IFA 2025, the company announced the Eero Signal, a device that can back up your Eero network with cellular data, kicking in when it detects an internet outage.
The Eero Signal is an upright little device with a USB-C splitter that plugs into your existing Eero router’s USB-C port, powering both devices. If you’re paying for a $99.99 annual subscription to Eero Plus, you’ll get 10GB of cellular backup data per year. Eero will also roll out a $199.99/year “Eero Plus 100” plan that, you guessed it, gives you 100GB of data to use. Eero spokesperson Connor Rice said the Signal will work with any USB-C Eero router that supports Wi-Fi 6 or higher.
Eero Plus subscribers already have access to a built-in backup internet feature—called, uh, Eero Internet Backup—that can automatically switch your network over to a nearby hotspot or alternative Wi-Fi network. But if you’d rather not pay separately for another company’s mobile hotspot data and don’t just have another Wi-Fi network lying around to use, you can pick up a 4G LTE version of the Signal for $99.99 early next year. Eero says that later in 2026, it will release another one that uses 5G RedCap, a newer cellular protocol meant to provide low-latency, low-bandwidth service, primarily for things like IoT and wearable devices. The 5G model will set you back $199.99, according to Rice.
Eero is “working with multiple major cellular carriers to enable backup data if there’s an internet outage,” according to Rice. He said the throughput customers can expect when using the Signal’s cell backup will be up to 150Mbps, while the 5G RedCap version will get up to 220Mbps. He added that those are “theoretical maximums,” and actual speed will depend on several factors, like how close users are to cell towers and what cellular spectrum is available.
The company also announced the Eero PoE 7, a tri-band Wi-Fi 7 power over ethernet router that works with its existing mesh systems and can get both power and data from a single ethernet cable. This one won’t be available to the general public—instead, it’s intended for “businesses and residential properties that use wired infrastructure and have high-bandwidth needs.” The PoE 7 has specs similar to the Eero Max 7, with the company promising wireless throughput up to 3.9Gbps and wired up to 9.4Gbps. Each device will have two 10GbE ports and can cover up to 2,000 square feet, according to Eero. The PoE 7 will be available in the U.S. and Canada in November for $499.99, from “select internet service providers and professional installers.”
Turning your house into a smart home is easier — and more useful — than ever. From automating your lights and climate to securing your front door, smart home tech has come a long way in making everyday life more convenient, energy-efficient and secure. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to upgrade your setup, there are plenty of gadgets that work seamlessly together to make your home feel a little more futuristic.
The best smart home gadgets can help you control everything from your light switch to your smart thermostat with a tap on your smartphone or a quick voice control command. Whether you’re setting routines with a motion sensor, managing entry with a smart lock, or keeping an eye on things with a full security system, modern home automation puts you in charge — often with options for remote control when you’re away.
Table of contents
Best smart home gadgets for 2025: Smart speakers
Photo by Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
Our recommendation for the best smart speaker is the Sonos Era 100. It’s compact enough to fit in most areas in your home, but more importantly, it delivers excellent audio quality that’s superior to a lot of other smart speakers out there. When tuned properly to the acoustics of your room — which requires the iPhone app — the sound is fantastic, with punchy bass and clear highs. Unfortunately, the Android app doesn’t have TruePlay tuning (Sonos has not said whether it’s in the works), but the speakers should still sound admirable. It’s also compatible with a slew of streaming services to play music, including major ones like Spotify and Pandora.
The main benefit that a Sonos speaker brings over the competition is that it’s a gateway to a multi-room audio setup that you can build out over time. It’s also convenient if you plan on building a home theater setup later on, as the Era 100 integrates well with Sonos soundbars.
For those with tighter budgets, there are a handful of smart speakers around $100. We recommend picking up one of the three latest smart speakers from either Google, Amazon or Apple. Out of the three, we think the Echo has the best audio quality. Our colleague Nate Ingraham said its bass is impressive and the mid-range frequencies are pretty powerful. You can also pair two together to get even better stereo sound.
That said, the Nest Audio and HomePod mini are no slouches either. The HomePod mini sounds balanced, while the Nest Audio has pretty good bass tones. Again, it all comes down to which assistant you prefer.
The best Alexa-powered smart display is the Echo Show 8. The Echo Show 5 is a little too small, while the Echo Show 10 and its rotating screen take up too much space. The Echo Show 8, on the other hand, is perfectly sized for a living room and most other rooms in the house. Like other Alexa-powered smart displays, it supports plenty of video streaming services including Amazon Prime, Hulu and Netflix and it comes with a couple of built-in browsers that you can use to surf the web on its touchscreen. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support YouTube, which is a pretty notable omission considering how ubiquitous the service is. As a workaround, you can access it via the aforementioned browsers, but the experience isn’t as smooth as if it were a native app.
You can use the Show 8 to make video calls with any phone or tablet with the Alexa app. Alternatively, it supports Skype, Zoom and Amazon’s own Chime service. Like the Nest Hub Max, the Show 8 also has an optional face-tracking feature that follows your movements around the room during a call.
Our favorite Google-powered smart display is the second-generation Nest Hub. It has a 7-inch screen, which makes it just big enough to fit in most rooms in the house. The size also makes it work well as a digital photo frame. You can set it up to pull in pictures of friends and family from your Google Photos library, and there’s a smart algorithm that automatically uses the best shots while avoiding the blurry ones. As you might expect, you can also use the display to watch YouTube, Netflix and other streaming services.
Plus, a smart display without a camera is great if you want to place it in more intimate places like the bedroom, where you might be more protective of your privacy. If you place it by your bedside, the Nest Hub also has a sensor that can track your sleep patterns, if you opt in.
If you prefer a display with a camera, we recommend splurging on the higher-end Nest Hub Max. Its built-in camera can be used for video calls with Google Duo, Google Meet and Zoom. This smart gadget also has an optional face-tracking feature that lets the camera follow you around during calls. One benefit of the camera is that it gives you the option for Face Match, a feature that automatically recognizes individual members of the house and then displays the information that’s pertinent only to them, like calendar alerts.
Additionally, the camera adds a unique gestures feature that lets you play and pause media simply by holding up your hand to the screen, which is convenient if you need to stop the music without having to shout across the room. The Google Nest Hub Max also has better audio quality than the Hub thanks to its larger speakers.
One of the easiest ways to introduce smart home technology into your home is to swap out your existing light bulbs with smart ones. Smart light bulbs let you control your lighting remotely, either via an app (via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth) or with your voice. They add automation and scheduling to the mix, so you can have them turn on and off at certain times of the day. Some also let you adjust the smart bulb’s brightness and color temperature, or even let you create a custom light scene.
Our favorite smart lighting products come from Philips Hue, and the White and Color Ambiance LED Smart Button Starter Kit is a particularly good entry point as it includes three Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance 60W LED smart bulbs; a Hue hub that lets you control up to 50 lights; and a Smart Button if you want to have the option of turning off the lights without having your phone around.
This kit offers lots of versatility in lighting styles; you can change not just the brightness of the smart light bulb but also the color temperature and experiment with all different shades of the rainbow, decking out your room in whatever light scene you desire. If that seems a little too daring, Philips offers alternatives: The Hue White Ambiance Starter Kit lacks the color option, while the Hue White Starter Kit won’t let you adjust the color temperature.
The main reason we prefer Philips Hue bulbs is that they’re widely supported across smart home ecosystems. Not only can you find them pretty much anywhere, but they’ll work with Google, Amazon and Apple’s HomeKit. Since all the bulbs connect to the Hue hub via the Zigbee protocol (and not your home’s WiFi), it tends to be more reliable and it won’t slow down your home internet connection either.
TP-Link makes a bunch of affordable IoT gadgets and we liked the Kasa Smart WiFi light bulbs enough to name them our favorite budget devices in our smart lights guide. They’re easy to install and remain reliably connected, plus their companion mobile app is clean and easy to use. These are full-color smart bulbs and we like how changing up the color of your lights is as easy as dragging your finger around a color wheel in the app. Of course, you can stick with different temperatures of white light too, adjusting from warm to cool as needed.
You can also set schedules, allowing your lights to turn on and off at specific times throughout the day, and the app’s “usage” section shows you each bulb’s energy use over time, plus an estimate of how much energy you’re saving by using a smart light instead of a regular one. Ultimately, we like how much value these bulbs pack into an attractive price tag — a four-pack typically costs $40, but you can sometimes find it on sale for as low as $30.
Best smart home gadgets for 2025: Security cameras
Blink
Blink’s latest wireless security cameras may be named “outdoor,” but they’re some of the best to use as home security for both the interior and exterior of your home. These battery-powered cameras run on two AA cells, so you can place them anywhere you want, and they have a battery life of around two years before the cells need replacing. Blink Outdoor 4 home security cameras are weather resistant and support night vision, motion detection and two-way audio. You can store clips in the cloud via the Blink Subscription Plan or you can also save events locally to a Sync Module 2 via a USB flash drive (sold separately). Unfortunately, Blink works with Alexa only, which could be a non-starter for some.
If you want a camera specifically for your front door, a doorbell camera makes more sense than a standalone option. We like the latest Arlo Video Doorbell 2K, which is compatible with Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. It delivers high-quality 2K footage along with a 180-degree view so you can see a person from head to toe and it can ring your phone with a video call whenever someone rings the bell. There’s also two-way audio so you can talk to whoever’s at the door.
A highlight of this doorbell is that it comes with a 30-day trial to Arlo’s Secure subscription service, which includes a motion detection feature that can tell the difference between a person, package, vehicle or animal. Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar said that he really appreciated the package alerts when he tested out a previous version of the doorbell; it did a good job of telling him whenever UPS dropped off a box. It’s such a useful feature, in fact, that we recommend keeping the service beyond the trial period.
In addition to the improved 2K video resolution, the latest Arlo Video Doorbell includes an integrated siren, enhanced night vision, an IP65-rated design and the ability to install it wired or wirelessly. There’s also an HD version that’s a bit cheaper (the 2K model typically goes for $130, but you can snag the HD version for only $80) if you want to save some money upfront.
This model is an updated version of the Roomba 694, a previous favorite budget robot vacuum. Not much has changed here aside from a few design tweaks that result in a simplified silhouette and a larger battery. Otherwise, you’re still getting an excellent, entry-level robot vacuum that has powerful suction for the price, smart navigation for more efficient cleaning and app connectivity. iRobot’s app is really easy to use for luddites and the tech savvy alike. And just in case you don’t have access to the app — maybe you left your phone in another room, for example — this Roomba has a couple of on-device buttons for quick controls.
One of the reasons this model cleans so well is that it has a three-stage system that tells it to suck up dirt while also navigating around obstacles. When it encounters an especially filthy area, it focuses in on it, making sure it’s clean before moving on. You can also manually instruct it to clean a specific spot in case you need it. And if you prefer to talk to your robot vacuum cleaner, this Wi-Fi-connected Roomba works well with both Alexa.
The Roomba Combo j9+ has everything we want in a combination robotic vacuum and mop. It offers incredibly powerful suction, deep floor scrubbing and a slew of smarts to avoid obstacles (including cat and dog poop!). It’s a better vacuum than its predecessor, the Roomba Combo j7+, and it also features a new Clean Base that can automatically refill its liquid tank. More than any Roomba before it, the Combo j9+ can make your floors sparkly clean with very little intervention on your part.
While it’s expensive, the Roomba Combo j9+ certainly beats paying for a professional cleaning service. It’s one of the best robotic vacuums and mops for pet owners, especially for its ability to avoid pet waste. In fact, if the j9+ ends up making a poopy mess due to cat or dog droppings, iRobot will send you a replacement unit for free. (That offer only works for the first year, and it only applies to solid waste from cats and dogs, but it’s still a helpful guarantee for pet owners afraid of the havoc that a robo-vac might wreak.)
The Roomba Combo j9+ features home mapping and can accurately map your home far faster than any previous Roomba, and you can also use the iRobot app to specify room borders. You can also create cleaning routines and label objects to help it clean exactly where you’d like. The j9+ works with smart assistants from Amazon and Google as well, so you can just shout out cleaning requests to your smart speaker. While it’s not a completely magical cleaning robot – you’ll still need to clear up your floors to help it run well – it’s certainly the closest we’ve seen yet to the ideal robotic vacuum and mop for whole-home deep cleaning. — Devindra Hardawar, Senior Reporter
Smart plugs are the easiest way to add a bit of connectivity to your home without spending a ton of money. Connect your regular non-smart lamp and voila, it’s internet connected and you didn’t have to spend a fortune. The best one we’ve tried is from TP-Link: the Kasa Smart Plug Mini. Out of all of the smart plugs we tested, this one was the only plug that provided a truly seamless experience from the jump. It was easy to set up, thanks in part to the Kasa mobile app’s clean and intuitive UI, and it supports all of the features you’d expect from a smart plug: timers, schedules, vacation mode and custom scenes. The updated version of the Smart Plug Mini supports HomeKit in addition to Google Home, Amazon Alexa and Samsung SmartThings, so it should fit into any existing smart home ecosystem you have.
TP-Link’s Deco XE75 Wi-Fi 6 router system strikes a good balance of user-friendliness and power. The three-pack contains a trio of unassuming white columns that provide up to 7,200 square feet of Wi-Fi 6 coverage, which should make it enough (and possibly even overkill) for most homes. The system offers try-band speed with a dedicated Wi-Fi 6 band that you can use as either a dedicated backhaul or a network for you to directly connect your Wi-Fi 6 devices. In our testing, we found the setup to be painless and the connection to be stable and reliable. On top of that, the tree-pack is adequately priced, especially compared to some overpriced and overpowered competitors out there.
How to pick the right voice assistant before you buy smart gadgets
While plenty of the best smart home devices are platform agnostic, there are some — smart speakers and smart displays in particular — that require you to choose your voice control assistant. Currently, that means deciding if you’ll use the Google Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa on a regular basis (I’ll address Siri in a moment.)
They’re both compatible with various smart home tech products from light switches and bulbs to robot vacuums, but there are certain devices that work best with either Google or Amazon. Nest products, for example, are more compatible and have more functionality with Google-powered speakers and displays. They can still work with Amazon devices, but certain features might be disabled. The same holds true with Amazon products: They work better if they’re in the same ecosystem.
Amazon Alexa
So how do you choose between Alexa and Google Assistant? It really depends on your personal preferences. Do you listen to Audible, watch Prime Video and tend to do a lot of shopping on Amazon? Then you might lean toward an Alexa-powered home automation setup. Alexa supports a wide range of devices — including smart locks, smart thermostats and motion sensors — and many of its speakers and displays include remote control functionality for lights, plugs and other smart gear.
Google Assistant
If you want a voice assistant that’s great at answering questions, Google Assistant tends to be better than Alexa. Amazon’s helper, on the other hand, currently supports more smart home products. The company’s smart speakers and displays also support the Zigbee smart home protocol, and some devices even have built-in smart home hubs. Both Google and Amazon devices can sync with your calendar, though Google’s tend to work better with Google services. Plus, if you already have an Android smartphone, you might be more comfortable with Google Assistant anyway.
Siri
But what about Siri? Apple’s assistant supports voice control as well, but it doesn’t have as many compatible devices as Google or Amazon. The HomePod mini and the full-sized HomePod are the only Siri-compatible speakers on the market at the moment, too. That said, it’s not too hard to find Apple HomeKit-compatible gear as more third-party companies add support for it, but you currently have a smaller pool of devices to choose from.
Smart home cameras are just better when they’re wired. Yes, it’s a pain in the ass to install them, but if you can manage it, you’ll never have to change a battery or climb a ladder to get a camera down and charge it, or wait very long for its video feed to load in an app. If they’ve got a wired internet connection, all the better, but as Wi-Fi cameras with wired power go, the $220 Reolink Elite Floodlight WiFi camera is one of the best.
The Elite Floodlight WiFi reminds me a lot of Google’s Nest Cam with floodlight, at least as looks are concerned, thanks to its curvy white plastic and two articulating floodlights with frosted white covers. One big difference is that the Elite Floodlight WiFi uses two separate camera sensors, their footage stitched together to form one long, 180-degree field of view.
Reolink Elite Floodlight Floodlight WiFi
Reolink’s Elite Floodlight WiFi is a easy to install wired camera with seemingly endless customization and no need for an internet connection.
Pros
Crisp, clear video
Tons of customizability
Local video
No subscription or internet connection required
Easy setup and installation
Stable, reliable Wi-Fi
Cons
No microSD card included
No cloud storage options
FTP storage requires managing
No wired internet connection
Limited smart home support
It also uses 5GHz Wi-Fi, which means it can transmit clearer, higher-bitrate video to your phone for its live feed and to your local FTP or real-time streaming protocol (RTSP) server, if you’ve got such a thing on your home network. If you don’t, not to worry: the camera also saves footage to an SD card that you can access from the Reolink app.
Initial setup involves powering the camera with an included USB-C cable, then downloading the Reolink app to your iOS or Android device and scanning a QR code on the Elite Floodlight WiFi. The app walks you through connecting to the camera and configuring its Wi-Fi setup—it uses 2.4GHz or 5GHz Wi-Fi 6—for a few minutes, then you’re ready to install the camera.
The camera’s app-guided installation is clear and straightforward, and very doable if you’ve set up cameras or floodlights before. It involves screwing a base plate onto the wall or soffit, hanging the camera from a hook on the plate, connecting it to your home using color-coded wires—ideally after you’ve shut off power to those wires so you don’t electrocute yourself!—and then screwing the camera onto the plate. All in all, I got the camera up and running within about 30 minutes.
After setup, I ran it through some paces and found that the Elite Floodlight WiFi consistently delivered motion notifications from the Reolink app within about four seconds. That’s way faster than any of the battery-powered cameras I currently have installed, including the Reolink Altas that I recently reviewed, which all frequently take 10 or more seconds to tell me they’ve spotted something or someone.
4K resolution never means you’re getting the kind of video quality you’d see in something like a decent smartphone camera, but the Elite Floodlight WiFi gets closer than most. Reolink bills it as a 4K camera, but you can ignore that as marketing speak—it records 5120 x 1,552 resolution video, which is not an apples-to-apples comparison to, say, a 4K monitor. Still, the image it shows you, even when streaming straight from the camera, is crisp enough to see details through the patio table in the screenshots above, day and night.
My backyard is always lit thanks to a bright street light next to my house, which makes it hard to tell much of a difference between the Elite Floodlight WiFi’s footage with and without infrared. That said, Reolink’s software brightens the dark area from the screenshots (below) enough that you could at least tell if a person is moving in that area. And the floodlights do a good job of lighting the space in front of the camera almost as well as daylight, although it can wash out details depending on where an object in view is, so you’ll want to be careful how you choose to angle them.
The Elite Floodlight WiFi is nice and sturdy, with an IP66 weather rating that should mean it’s safe from dust intrusion and jets of water. Two violent wind-and-rain storms pummeled it during my testing, and it’s no worse for the wear; the camera portion didn’t even seem to budge on its ball joint. It also reliably sent me notifications while I was away on a camping trip—mostly about a rabbit that took our absence as an opportunity to dig around in our garden for tasty vittles.
If you live somewhere with actual winter temperatures, you might pause on hitting the buy button—the Elite Floodlight WiFi is rated to operate up to as high as 131 degrees Fahrenheit, but only as low as 14 degrees. Incredibly—as I have learned (not first-hand, thankfully) since moving to the upper Midwest—break-ins still happen when the season is at its most treacherously cold.
No cloud subscription required—or available
Most of the big-name smart home cameras rely heavily on cloud services for their features, and in many cases that includes accessing your recordings. While some—but not all—offer local recording too, you may still need a subscription to access machine-learning-powered (or AI-powered, if you must) detection features that let you choose what actually triggers the camera’s notifications and recordings. That’s not the case with the Elite Floodlight WiFi, which handles all of that on-device, and isn’t covered under any of Reolink’s cloud subscription plans in the US.
That makes this camera a boon if you’re looking for a way to capture what’s happening around your home without shipping the footage off to some distant server you have no control over. Of course, you’ll want to at least put the Elite Floodlight WiFi on your home network if you want easy access to its recordings and live feed via the app, and it does need an internet connection for smartphone notifications.
As for storing the Elite Floodlight WiFi’s monitoring and recording, you’ve got options. The camera’s underside has a microSD card slot tucked behind a screwed-in panel that’s accessible in software using the Reolink app. You can configure the camera for exclusively events-based recording or for continuous recording, and there’s an option to encrypt its video files so that if someone happens by with a screwdriver and steals the card, they wouldn’t be able to view its recordings.
The Elite Floodlight WiFi also supports saving files to a computer or network-attached storage (NAS) via FTP, but you’ll need to consider storage space. The app can overwrite one file or alternatively overwrite between two files, but there’s no built-in mechanism for, say, overwriting the oldest file once your FTP server’s space has filled up. Instead, you’re left manually deleting files or hunting down scripts that can automate the process for you.
Setting the Elite Floodlight WiFi up to use RTSP requires using a PC or Mac; you can’t configure with the smartphone app. Still, that’s better than the Altas, which requires you to buy a $99 Reolink Home Hub to get RTSP operational.
While it’s nice that this camera is so useful without a cloud storage service, there are conveniences you’ll miss out on, like having a professional monitoring service that can contact the police on your behalf or even employ call center reps to try to ward off would-be intruders by talking through your camera to them. And although you can remotely access recordings saved to a microSD card inserted into the Elite Floodlight WiFi, that won’t work if your home internet happens to have gone down when you try to look. Then again, you also don’t necessarily have to worry about the camera volunteering your recordings for unpleasant police state-style surveillance, either.
The Reolink app is about as user-friendly as security camera software gets, with a main screen that shows you its live feed, complete with current bitrate and buttons for things like turning on the floodlight or manually recording a clip.
Go into the Elite Floodlight WiFi’s settings, and you’re treated to a staggering number of options. Like its battery-powered Altas sibling, the camera allows you to customize seemingly every aspect of its detection and recording, from the resolution of the videos to when you’d like it to record, alert, or notify you—and what triggers each of those things to happen. Video too bright or dim? You can tweak that. Think the floodlight is too intense or overly cool? The app has brightness and warmth sliders, too. You can even record your own custom audio for the siren, which is a very fun feature that I wish every piece of smart home tech that makes any noise had. The siren isn’t especially loud, but anyone in the Elite Floodlight WiFi’s field of view should be able to hear it.
With such a wide camera feed, it’s hard not to point the Elite Floodlight WiFi outside of the area you actually want to record, something Reolink handles with a feature it calls Smart Event Detection Zones. With it, you can set the camera to record or blare its siren only when someone crosses a virtual line, enters an area you’ve defined, or even loiters in a region of the camera’s view for longer than an amount of time you determine. And if you want to be a good, privacy-respecting neighbor, you can exclude specific areas from recording or even black out portions of the feed.
At the risk of making the Elite Floodlight WiFi sound like a person trying to describe their greatest weakness in a job interview, Reolink almost offers too many options. The menu system feels a little convoluted—some of the options, like for the floodlight, should all be in one place, yet they aren’t—and it’s hard to remember where everything is, but easy to make a change that has an unintended consequence. I wouldn’t give up any of the options, but they stand to be better organized.
Also, if you’re hoping to connect the Elite Floodlight WiFi to the smart home system of your choice, prepare to be disappointed. This camera only connects to Google Home, which is a shame if you, like me, are already too deeply invested in a different ecosystem to turn back. Still, Reolink offers a robust enough set of features in its own app that I only sometimes missed having all my camera feeds in one app.
Worth it if you’re tired of the cloud
The Reolink Elite Floodlight Camera is a great, reliable way to cover a huge region of your home’s yard or the area around a business. Its onboard object recognition, speedy delivery of notifications, fast Wi-Fi connection, and deep well of customization combine with its cloud subscription-free and internet-not-required operation to be one of the best wired security cameras you can buy today.
Those who like the convenience of cloud storage may not find everything they want here, but they also might want to try anyway. Yes, it’s pricier, at $219.99, than similar floodlight alternatives offered by Arlo and Ring, but considering the ever-increasing price of those companies’ subscriptions, it may not be long before you make up the difference. Plus, with local storage via a microSD card that’s accessible even away from home, you may find that the experience of using it is nearly identical to that of more well-known brands, minus some of the trappings of cloud-based AI features or remote monitoring.
Amazon’s Eero mesh range is tough to beat for folks seeking a set-and-forget mesh Wi-Fi system for their home. Simplicity, with a side of smart home support, makes the Eero Pro 7 a compelling prospect. It strikes a nice balance in Eero’s Wi-Fi 7 lineup, offering the faster 6-GHz band and better all-around performance than the entry-level Eero 7, while costing far less than the top-of-the-line Max 7.
While I experienced teething troubles with systems like the Max 7 when Wi-Fi 7 was new, my time with the Pro 7 has been plain sailing. Quick to install, easy to use, and reliable, this is an easy mesh to recommend, but there’s plenty of competition. At $700 for a 3-pack, the Eero Pro 7 is not cheap, and you need to shell out for an Eero Plus subscription to unlock all its features.
Easy Life
Photograph: Simon Hill
Eero systems have a well-deserved reputation for being easy to set up and use. Download the Eero app, sign in with your Amazon account, and follow the onscreen instructions to get your network up and running in minutes. The app keeps things simple, with a home page showing your internet connection, mesh routers, and connected devices. You can dig into the full list of devices and review activity, but everything else is hidden in the settings.
I tested a 3-pack of identical shiny white plastic routers, featuring the same tower design as the Max 7, just slightly smaller. They blend in easily and plug into power via the USB-C port on the back. Each unit sports two 5-Gbps Ethernet ports. The app guides you on placement, and it’s best to think of your mesh as an internet spine for the home, so rather than placing a node in a dead spot, set it up halfway between your main router and the room you’re trying to cover.
My Eero Pro 7 testing spanned a house move, so I was able to test it in a modern home where two units easily blanketed every corner and in an old Victorian house with much thicker walls, where all three units were required. While speeds using Wi-Fi 7 devices in the same room as the main router were as fast as I’ve recorded, there was a significant drop-off one or two rooms over. This is because the 6-GHz band doesn’t penetrate as well as the 5-GHz or 2.4-GHz bands we are used to.
