The Vergecast - Your front door is the key to the smart home

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy joins the show to discuss a bunch of updates in the smart home world, including what's new from Google Home and in iOS 18, plus some big news in the world of smart locks and video doorbells. Then, The Verge's Chris Welch comes on to test some new earbuds, and see which pair has the best sound – and the best mic. After that, a new take on the Vergecast's chaotic wearables theory. Further reading:  Ki is bringing wireless power to kitchen appliances The Eufy Smart Lock E30 is the company’s first Matter device The Ultraloq Bolt Mission from U-tec is the first smart lock with UWB Assa Abloy buys Level Lock to bolster its smart lock business TP-Link Tapo D225 Video Doorbell Camera review Ring’s entry-level wireless doorbell gets a head-to-toe view iOS 18 lets you control Matter devices without a smart home hub The Thread 1.4 spec is here, but it will be a while until we see any benefit Google TV gets a big upgrade Google is set to supercharge Google Home with Gemini intelligence And on wireless earbuds: The best wireless earbuds to buy right now Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 Pro are its best earbuds yet Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 review: big upgrade, much smaller earbuds Bose’s new QuietComfort Earbuds offer top-tier ANC for under $200 Apple AirPods 4 review: defying expectations Nothing’s first open-ear headphones keep you aware of your surroundings Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of powered front doors, which is a thing that I just learned exists thanks to this episode. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am cooped up inside and have been for several days. Obviously, a lot of people in the U.S. have been really horribly affected by Hurricane Helene. I hope you're all doing okay. Our thoughts are obviously with everyone dealing with all of that. Where I am, it's been fine. It's just basically been raining for four days. and my kid has been out of daycare and he's been sick.

And so it's just been a lot of inside time. It's been a lot of running around in the basement. It's been a lot of watching the same old McDonald how to farm YouTube video over and over. It's just been a lot. You just grow to appreciate outside more and more. I'm in a real, like, touch grass moment, except it's still raining. So there will be no grass touching for a little while. Even the dog over there is starting to lose it a little bit, I think.

But anyway, luckily, we have the first. to keep us on track and doing stuff. Today, we have two things we're going to do. First, we're going to catch up with Jen Toey about all things smart home. There's been a lot this summer. She was at EFA looking at smart home gadgets. We have some protocol news with matter and thread. We have a bunch of stuff going on with Google and Apple and software updates everywhere and

all kinds of fun stuff to talk about. So we're just going to kind of play round robin and catch up with her. Then we're going to talk to Chris Welch about this new run of earbuds that we have this year. Apple just released some new ones. Google released some new ones. Samsung released some new ones. Bose released some new ones. I'm missing some. Oh, nothing just released some new ones that I'm interested in. So we're going to talk to him about this new slate of earbuds, but also we're going to do a mic test because as I continue to say and really strongly believe microphones matter. The way we talk to AI, the way we talk to the assistants on our devices, the way we talk to

each other, microphones in these earbuds matter a lot, and they don't get talked about enough. So we're going to do what we occasionally do on this show, which has put some really, really bad audio into the podcast. And I'm sorry in advance, but, you know, we do it for the greater good. We also have a really fun hotline question. Lots to get to today. Super fun episode. But first, I have to, I have to go outside. I'm just going to go, like, stand in the rain, like a 1990s rom-com star and just like stare upwards for five minutes. And then we're going to get to it. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Retool.

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Welcome back. All right, I've been outside, I breathed in the air, I got all wet, overrated, very happy to be back indoors looking at screens. Anyway, let's get to it. First up, we're going to talk about smart home stuff because it's been a minute since we talked about smart home stuff. And normally I like to have the Verges Gen 2e on every once in a while just to basically sadly ask her why matter isn't better and why the smart home isn't fixed. And we're going to do a little bit of that today. but there's also been a surprising amount of interesting smart home news that kind of points to something bigger going on. There have been a lot of new gadgets for your front door, which I find fascinating, smart locks and video doorbells and that kind of stuff.

So I think that whole space is really interesting. I want to talk about that. We've seen some new software from Google and Apple that makes it easier to administer your smart home, which I think is a really big deal. And we have some protocol news because matter continues to be chaos. We have to talk about the chaos that is matter. Let's get to all of that with Jen. We're just going to bounce through a whole bunch of news. I'm very excited about it. Let's get into it.

Jen, hello. Hi, David. Pleasure to be back. It's been too long. It has been too long. You're going through a hurricane right now. We should just tell the people that if you suddenly disappear in this segment is four minutes long, it's because you're like deep in hurricane times.

Are you holding up okay? Helene has been paying us a visit this morning. Thankfully, we're not as bad off as the poor people in Florida, but it's been a bumpy ride so far. So fingers crossed, we'll make it through. For sure. I find myself very curious in the middle of all this, what happens to your smart home situation

when your power goes off and then comes back on? Like, is it just full insane chaos every time the power blips in your house right now? Yeah, because everything talks to me. It is kind of scary, actually, especially when it happens in the middle of the night. Because so many things will be like, you know, connection restored,

offline and voices from every corner of the house. Robots in particular, robot vacuums, you know, cameras, security systems, a lot, yeah, it gets a little chaotic. And then obviously the notifications on my phone are like, ding, ding, ding, ding, you know, offline, offline, offline. You can turn those off, but because I obviously am testing these things, I always turn on all the notifications. And then I have, you know, it gets a little crazy, especially cameras. because when they go offline, they send you alerts, and then when they come back online. So this morning, I was woken up numerous times

throughout the night when the power went out. Thankfully, though, smart lights have managed to fix the problem where they all turn on automatically when the power comes back. And that used to be a terrible issue where, you know, they would reset to default, and all the lights in your bedroom would turn on at 2 a.m. when the power came back on. That's no longer a problem, thankfully.

That is really, like, the first act of a horror movie is all of that stuff happening. happening. All going crazy. Well, I'm glad it seems to be settling, so I'm glad I'm glad everything's okay. Yes, I'm doing good. We have some stuff to catch up on. We do. We have not done our Jen, why isn't matter solving all of my problems check in in a while, so we're going to do that. But you mentioned right before we started recording that you're working

on a smart lock thing. And I just want to start, I want to run a theory by you. And then I want you to tell me what you think, and then we're going to talk about some new stuff around it. Okay. I think you could make. a pretty compelling case that your front door is the most interesting space in the smart home right now between what's going on with video doorbells, what's going on with smart locks, that stuff is like mainstream and very good and suddenly like super interesting in a way that I feel like everything else in the smart home is like kind of cool, kind of a mess. And it's like your front

door is like where cool, interesting, good smart stuff is happening right now. What do you think? Good theory, bad theory. No, I agree. I think the front door always sort of, as you always has been a really key part because it's something that appeals to everyone. I mean, smart lights are really fun. Robot vacuums have large appeal, but, you know, they are still niche. But the concept of just easy access to your home, not worrying about losing keys, being able to let people in, lock, unlock your door remotely, know who's at your front door. You know, the front door is the gateway to your house.

And having the capability to sort of remotely monitor it, always know what's going on. having control over the entrance to your home, is something that everyone is interested in. Even people that live in apartments, you know, there's smart entryways, you know, because smart home quite often apartment dwellers sort of get left out a little bit, but not when it comes to smart locks and smart doorbells. There's lots of devices tailored to those types of living scenarios. And it is an area that there's a lot going on right now. There's a lot of change happening. But there's also, it's also an area that's always had quite a lot of challenges. primarily because of power.

And that's an area we've seen more sort of innovation in. I think it will take a while. There was the smart door that came out a couple years ago that was wired for power, which everyone kind of laughed about a little bit. But, you know, I think ultimately most homes, new homes as they're built or homes as they're remodeled, wiring your door for power is going to make more and more sense, both for lighting, for powering video doorbells, for powering your door lock. Because battery power in the door lock is probably one of the biggest pain points with smart doorlocks.

You know, most sort of ordinary people who decide to get a smart door lock, you know, when they realize they have to start changing the batteries every three to six months, it's like, this is not smart. This is a pain, especially if it locks you out because, you know, you've ignored the warnings after the seventh or eighth time that they've sent them to you. So it's interesting to find, you know, to see the solutions that are coming around there. And then we've also got UWB is a new technology we're seeing in doorlocks. Apple quite recently announced that they were adding capability for unlocking smart doorlocks using UWB chip in the iPhone. So we're starting to see sort of a real shift there. What's interesting about that is the sort of the hands-free notion of, you know, being able to access your home without even having to even tap your watch to the door, let alone pull your key out, because the UWB

radio will automatically sense that you're there, connect your door and unlock it for you. So there's so much interesting going on, but you need the power. And actually, something I've been testing recently, which sort of ties into all of this, is wireless power. I'm testing something called We Charge, which is a wireless power transmitter, and it can wirelessly power a door lock that I've been testing, which is by a company called Alfred. Wait, this has been around forever, right? I feel like I've been hearing like science project things about wireless power for like the entire time I have been covering technology.

Is this for real now? Like, is somebody actually going to ship this thing to me at some point? Yeah, well, you can buy this right now with this door lock. Okay. It is, it's not sort of off the shelf. You kind of have to get in touch with the company and they can arrange for installation. So it's a little laborious. But I was talking to the founder and he said they've actually developed a retrofit.

design so that you can just plug a little transmitter into power, put it on a shelf, and then plug a receiver into your power port of, say, your door locks. A lot of door locks have power ports, and then that can actually end up allowing you to wirelessly power your door. Now, wireless power, I think, is maybe not the solution ultimately to all of these issues. I think wired is always generally going to be more reliable, but it requires so much much more effort for installation. So I feel like there is, you know, there's always maybe going to be a middle ground, you know, especially for retrofit. You're going to, you know, having the options to do something other than use, I mean, have you used, do you have a smart door lock?

I don't. It's actually the one and only smart home device that I think my wife would allow me to install. But you haven't. So I'm going to do it. It's just like we're, I'm at the point where I'm procrastinating painting the thing. So I'm not sure I'm a good like version of, you know, being ahead of things on home projects. But it's on the list. It's on the list. Well, and the battery is an issue. I mean, the August is a great smart lock, for example. But, you know, you have to change the batteries every two to three months. That's too often. Some smart locks will go at least a year. And a year sounds great. But actually, that's still, that's still a lot. I mean, it's like, do you remember to change your smoke alarm batteries

every year. I remember when it beeps at me at 2 o'clock in the morning. That's when I remember to change the smoke alarm. Yeah. So, I mean, and that if we could have wireless power or wired for power built into our homes so that you can have, you can power your video doorbell, you can power your door lock, you can power some lighting around your door, maybe even your security panel. You know, it just, I can see sort of a much easier transition to these types of devices rather than having to constantly mess with them and recharge or put new batteries in. And so I go through so many batteries and I hate it. I'm like, ah, this e-waived. Yeah.

So it's an interesting space for sure. Too many of these devices also make that part really complicated. Because I think the battery life thing is really interesting to me because I think like I, I've owned a home for three years now and I'm still discovering all the things you're supposed to do on like a routine basis. And I just like I have furnace air filters, right, that I just am supposed to change every three months. And I more or less remember every three months, that's fine. It's every three months.

It takes 30 seconds. It's fine. But I feel like the problem with way too many of these smart home gadgets is not just that you have to charge it or reinstall batteries or whatever. It's that that process is annoying. And this has probably gotten a lot better with these gadgets over time. But it feels like you basically have to like unmount the thing, charge. the thing, reinstall the thing,

reconnect the thing, which probably won't work the first. So there's just, there's all these little pieces that it's like, if I could just walk up to it with a double A battery, like pull a thing down,

stick the battery and put it back on, I'm good. I will do that three times a year. Yeah. But that is not what the process is. That's generally not all the processes. And it feels like that to me

is the solvable problem, right? Like wireless power is like a miracle of chemistry that I hope we accomplish sometime, but just like make it easier to change the batteries. That seems easy. That is true.

There are some way you have to get like a special tool and it's like, no. Yeah, that's just silliness as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, although, but speaking of wireless power, I was just at EFA in Berlin and they, the Wireless Power Consortium have launched the first spec for key wireless power. That's wireless power for kitchen appliances. Now, not necessarily ovens and fridges because you don't really need that. But for your countertop gadgets, so air fryers, microwaves, blenders, kettles.

that, you know, you, it's basically induction power. You have induction coils underneath your counter, which can be retrofit. Also, we can work with retrofitted induction cooktops. There are some new ones coming out that have this capability built in. And your countertop or induction cooktop can power your blender or air fryer. And they showed me a demo at IFA where you just basically put the appliance on the countertop and it will turn a it on and it will blend or cook or whatever it is you need it to do. And what's when, you know, power in the kitchen is a challenge. There's, you know, never enough outlets. The cord never goes far enough where you are trying to reach. I really do think the thing where everyone has three gadgets

and two outlets is like a completely universal experience of being a person in the world in a kitchen. Like, I can, I can picture in my head the Tetris I have to do every time I make coffee, just in order to have the grinder and the kettle and the milk frother, which is my favorite fancy gadget of all time. I have to just, I know which one is which by feel. I could do all that like in the dark now. And it's ridiculous and bad because it's three things and two outlets. And if you can solve that problem for me, I'm in. I love this idea.

Yeah, a happy person. I know. Me too. I have the same issue. And I also got recently read in my kitchen. And just still, even though I asked the electrician to put. in as many outlets as you could. I still don't have enough outlets.

And this, you know, again, a lot of this fills very much in the future, but there are, I can see a lot of benefit here, especially in the way that your new, obviously does require all new appliances, but the way that they are manufactured, because they don't need cords, which means they don't need any open access to them. They don't have batteries in.

It's not a battery charging. like Chi charging, which powers the battery. This is just direct power transfer. So the device itself still kind of weighs the same. There's not a giant battery in there, but it's completely sealed. So the gentleman I was talking to, Eiff, was like, you know, manufacturers can design, say, your blender so that you could just put the entire thing in the dishwasher because there's no open ports. And that also could reduce things like wear and tear because quite often it's the power supply that goes first on a lot of these devices and these gadgets in your kitchen. And they also said there's only 10% less efficient than wired power.

So it's pretty good. Yeah. I think the future of no wires anywhere in our house is kind of an interesting one. Oh, I agree. I also think I admire your optimism and also I feel like I've been burned by wireless power at this point too many times that I'll believe it when I see it. But I do think the kitchen as a thing with like mostly stationary things feels like a good use for that. as opposed to, like, you can charge your phone wirelessly. And it's like, that's a lot harder than you think it is.

But I can just like, I can set this down and it will power it feels more doable. Yeah. I'm excited about that. It feels pretty smart. Yeah. That's very cool. I will say we should switch gears. But the fact that we now have key, chi, and we charge.

No, this is bad, everybody. You have done this wrong. Let's all come together and figure out one rhyme that we can do together for wireless power. Yes. I agree. So you're doing a big update to the smart lock buying guide, right? Give us a preview. What's your favorite one right now? I'm still a big fan of Yale. The Yale Assure 2 because it comes in so many different flavors. It kind of fits everyone's needs. So Yale, if you're not familiar, has these swappable modules. So if you decide to change your smart home setup, you know, you've gone from Z wave to Apple Home or Google Home.

home, you can easily pop in a different module and be able to have compatibility, which is nice. Although a lot of the locks I tested do work sort of universally with different platforms, but there also matter is slowly coming into the smart lock space, which will help with compatibility. Although, I mean, a lot of people who buy smart dot locks, it's really just for that. It's easier for me to get into my house. I don't have to have my key. So you don't necessarily need to set it up with your smart home platform.

But that's again what I like about Yale is it gives you multiple options. You've got fingerprint access. You've got keypad access. You've got lock key, if you really insist on using the key. And then also it has the auto-onlock feature. So if, which is again this hands free concept, which I've never found work that well for me. But that's also because I have poor cell service and poor GPS in my name. Fair enough. And it relies on that. But it is nice the concept of having your door automatically

unlock as you walk up to it. Yeah. And so Yale has that feature which actually got from August, which Yale is the sister company of August now. And we haven't had a new lock from August for a while. So I think Yale is kind of now the main sort of smart lock space that we're going to see from what was Asa Abloi, now owned by fortune. The whole smart lock space has got quite complicated. But Yale has some really good stuff. They actually just released a new retrofit locks, which kind of replaces the original iconic August retrofit lock, which has been my, long been my number one pick for your best retrofit lock. And just to clarify what retrofit means, there are two types of smart locks. There's a full deadbolt replacement, which is what most of the Yale

is sure two locks are. So that replaces your entire lock. So you're going to have a different lock on the front and on the back. A retrofit. lock just replaces the back so that you still can use your regular key. And Yale's come out with a new retrofit lock called the Yale approach, and you just replace the back portion to add smarts to your lock. And that's really helpful for people who are renting and can't swap out their lock. And also if you have a nice lock set and you don't want a kind of ugly looking smart lock on the front of your door.

And they've come out with a good solution. And we've seen this a lot now. and I've tested a lot of these for the new update to the buying guide, key pads that go with retrofit locks so that you can still use a key code or a fingerprint to unlock the lock without, because that was always an issue with retrofit locks. You couldn't actually control it from the outside other than using a key or an app. And when you get to your front door, you don't want to have to pull out your phone to unlock your door. No, by then just pull out your key. It's actually simpler to have keys at that point. It's easier to fill out your key.

Right. So now, so the Yale approach comes with a keypad that has a fingerprint reader and a keypad built in so you can use either of those options. And the nice thing about these keypads is you don't have to put them like on your door or next to your door. They have quite long range so you can kind of have it tucked away and still have your front door look like a normal front door. And so, and I've seen there's a couple other companies, Akara has a new retrofit lock that I've been trying. And the Switchbot also has another one that all come with these. Bluetooth keypads, which I think is really kind of a nice upgrade. And a lot of those also work with Apple Homekey, which is new again in the retrofit space, being able to use Homekey,

which people that use it swear by it, they say it's the absolute favorite way of getting into a smart lock because you can put your home key on your watch up to the lock, or you can use your phone. Obviously, phone, again, not necessarily easier than key, but watch quite easy. So, yeah, lots of great. great options in the lock space right now is seeing new smart locks come out almost daily. It's kind of a bit overwhelming. It really does seem like that. Well, and I think part of me thinks it's, it's because of the thing you just mentioned a minute ago is that these are not devices that have to like have a grand vision of how they fit into an ecosystem and like tell you a big story about

routines in your smart life. And like, you can build that stuff if you want. But this thing is just like it's, it makes it easier to get inside of your house, which is just like the single most mainstream home use case that anyone has. Everyone needs to get into their house. Yes. That is a thing that happens when you have a house of any kind. And so I think that stuff is very cool because it's like in a in a sort of increasingly messy idea of how everything works together. That's one thing that just doesn't have to. It can it can completely do its job completely on its own. And I think as we get through this messy matter phase, I can see why that would be very enticing to any company that wants to build this stuff. But let's talk about Matter. You mentioned where we are with some of

the protocol stuff. And I think Google has made some big changes. Apple has made some big changes. It feels like we've had some good momentum on the how you control all of this stuff and how it all works together. But let's start with the protocol stuff. There was a big threads update this summer. Thread. Don't put the S on the end because that just confuses everyone and everyone thinks I'm writing about meta. Just the one thread. There was a big thread with a D. at the end. Update this summer. There's been some ongoing matter news.

Catch us up. Where are we in the protocol world? Yeah. Well, okay. Just before we jump into those protocols, there is one protocol I should mention before we move on from smart locks. Is it another wireless charging protocol?

How much where's the wireless power coming from this time? No, no, no. This is a Lero. So this is tied to matter, but this is the new smart lock protocol. David's just put his head down. Someday you're going to come on the show and just make all of this stuff up, and I'm not going to know.

And I'm going to feel very stupid at the end. But now, this ties into what we were just talking about and what we're about to talk about. So it's a good segue. But Alero is the new access control standard from the CSA, which is the organization behind matter, the connectivity standards alliance. And this is why we're seeing so much movement in the lock space, because it's actually going to help standardize the way we access smart locks, not just in our homes, but maybe even. in like our businesses and apartments and everywhere. So we're waiting for the standard to actually be released. It's likely to involve UWB, which we've discussed, as well as NFC, which is the TAP,

which is what Home Key uses. And we actually just saw our very first UWB supporting lock get released this last month, although it won't work with Eliro. So it's like we're seeing a lot of parts before. So we're just doing this again. Yeah, we've seen a lot of cuts before horses at the moment. But it's an excitement in the space. And Apple is a huge part of developing the Eliro standard, as are the big smartphone companies,

because basically the idea here is that you'll be able to use your phone or watch to unlock any door. And no matter which operating system you're using or which platform you're using, it's the universal access, just like Matter is the universal standard for the smart home. This is like a universal standard for the smart lock, which is kind of connecting. you into the smart home. So it's separate from, but connected to. And so this is a space we should be watching quite closely. I think we'll get a lot of movement around CES, especially since Apple announced that it's supporting UWB unlocking in Apple Home. So anyway, that was just to wrap up smart locks and now into smart home. No, it's good. The answer I've always said is let's invent

more protocols. That's what I'm glad that we're continuing on the trend of more protocols. I know. I know. But it gives me stuff to write about. I know, it's true. If everybody figures this out, we'll be out of jobs. So, like, this is for the best. So, but yeah, the talk to me about thread with a D and no S, just the one, one single thread. Okay, so thread is, as I've written about in the past, is one of the two main wireless protocols of formatter.

So Wi-Fi and thread. Thread's been around for a decade or so prior to matter, but it is. and it was originally developed inside Nest, along with a few other companies. And it is a low bandwidth, low power protocol developed specifically for IoT devices, which actually is a sort of a first. Whilst we've got things like ZWave and Zigby, they weren't necessarily designed for the smart home, and thread is designed specifically for the smart home. And so it was sort of relaunched with big fanfare when Matter launched a couple years ago.

I was like, this is going to solve all our problems. because talking about battery life, this is something we've see throughout the smart home. Smart home devices constantly running out of battery, needing to be charged. Thread is low power, so supposedly should, especially things like smart door locks, should not need to be recharged or have their batteries replace frequently if they use thread. But we've been having a lot of issues with threads since it kind of launched into the broader smart home space in the last year or two. And just last, no, two weeks ago, just around EFA when I was at the tech show in Berlin, and the Thread group launched Thread 1.4, which is basically their panseer to all the problems that we've seen so far with thread.

Specifically around interoperability, which is one of the main points of matter, that we're supposed to be solving here, the idea that anything you buy for your smart home, your smart lock, your smart lights, should all. work together no matter which phone you use or which platform you use. And so thread uses something called thread border routers to help communicate from your thread device to the internet and to whichever platform you want to use. And this wasn't necessarily the thread group or the thread protocols problem. I'm trying to avoid saying threads problem. Sorry. Thread apostrophe. Yes. Yeah. Because every border router is made by a different

manufacturer. So you have border routers from Apple. So like your Apple HomePod, your Apple TV is a thread border router from Amazon, your Echo, your Echo Show 10, number of devices from Amazon the Eros are thread border routers. Same for Google. But unfortunately, these thread border routers didn't talk to each other. And this was causing all sorts of problems because your devices, you'd think you'd connected your device to your smart home, but it was on a different network from, say, your smart lights might be on a different network from your door lock. So it was causing headaches and problems. And so this 1.4 should, they say, fix that specific issue. But we have to wait. This is the thing with these protocols. They come along promising all these great solutions.

And then it's all down to the manufacturers and the platforms to then implement them. So we're going to have to wait for that. So, I mean, I think with, you know, being optimistic, which is definitely my preferred method. of approaching. We should see some movement by around CES. I think we'll see a lot of products that are coming out with thread 1.4. But still, that's a long way away. It is. But I will tell you, here is the thing that gives me optimism is I think the last time you and I talked, my worry was starting to become that this was moving so slowly, that everyone is essentially just going to give up on all things matter. And it would be kind of a thing that existed but nobody really cared about

and thus kind of languished. And it actually doesn't seem like that's the case. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm missing it, but it doesn't seem like there has been sort of reverse momentum where everybody has just decided to go back to doing their own things. It's just that it's moving slower than we hoped. But it still seems to be actually moving in the right direction, which gives me optimism about the fact that we will get where we want to be.

It's just going to take a lot longer than anybody hoped. Yeah, I think that's spot on. but the problem has been, I think, around expectation. And a lot of companies kind of jumped on the bandwagon with thread and matter and we're like, this is our solution. We're going to make everything work with thread and matter and ship it to our customers. And it's going to be a great experience. And specifically companies like Nanoleef and Eve,

who are quite well known in the smart home space, but not broadly very well known. And they were sort of seen this as their opportunity to become more, sort of household names because their products can be so much easier to use. And they've really been burned by these protocols not working in the way that it was predicted or promised. And so we have seen a lot of companies kind of walk back from these protocols, at least Nanoleaf specifically created its own protocol. Another one.

Oh, no, it did. Oh, no. Because it's like we can't rely on thread. It's not that we can't rely on the protocol itself. It's a great protocol is what their CEO, Jimmy Chu told me, but it's the way it's implemented by the platforms. And this all comes back down to this interoperability issue and something you and I've talked about a lot. The different manufacturers, the different platforms playing nicely with Amazon, Google playing nicely with Samsung. We all

worried that that could be the issue eventually. They all got together to start with, but when they all going to start going their separate ways and causing issues, and that's where the thread border router issue came from. But they've come back. They said they're going to work on it. This should hopefully be fixed. But yes, right now, if you went all in on thread or if you went all in on matter, it's not the sort of panchaire that we were hoping for. But we're getting there and people aren't giving up. You're right. There is momentum. It's just not ready for the real world yet. It's not ready for the people that want a good door lock and a good video doorbell. And we are definitely past the point where a lot of these companies promise.

us, it would work by now, and it doesn't. Right. But it will. I still, I still believe that someday it will. And speaking of, last thing we should talk about before I let you go is, there's been some big software changes on that front, right? Like you mentioned Homekey with Apple. There's some stuff in iOS 18 that I think has been really important to the smart home things. Google is doing a bunch of smart home stuff right now with its TV products. I have a TV streamer right over there that you and I both really like. Yes. That feels like. it's moving in a really good direction, right? Like the stuff is getting built into the devices it needs to get built into. So yes, so the iOS 18 has an update that's specifically designed to

address this problem, this problem of thread and border routers, because people were buying a thread device, bringing it home, and it wasn't working because they didn't have a border router. They didn't know they needed a border router. Because you shouldn't have to know that. No one should have to know about border routers. Right. And so, as you may recall, all iPhone 15 pros and newer have thread radios in. And with iOS 18, Apple released an update that allows you to add matter devices directly to your Apple home app without requiring any hub, either a home hub or a thread border router. So Wi-Fi devices and thread devices can connect using your phone directly.

I mean, this isn't a solution for the long term because if you want a smart home, you do need a hub. for orchestration, but it does solve the problem of, I just bought this cool new smart light and I want to set it up and I don't want to have to go buy a threadboarder router. And that's also an answer to sort of why Apple decided to put thread chips in their iPhones. They are also... Which you kind of called. You should take just a mini victory lab on that one because you were way out in front of that whole story.

Well, it did make sense. It's confusing a bit, though, because people are like, oh, doesn't that make your phone a hub and a thread border rack? It's like, well, no. it's not, but it's like a temporary connection that you can use if you don't have anything else. It's like a fallback. But if you do want a threadboarder router, that's getting easier. There are more and more devices, like you mentioned. There's the Google streamer that just came out. This is Google's new answer to the Apple TV. And that is a smart home hub as well as a streamer.

It has threadboarder router and matter capabilities. And also great smart home controls, which I was my favorite thing about this device. We said we both tested out and reviewed it. And we try all the streamers in our house. And most of my family just ends up using the regular Samsung remote and going to the built-in OS. Like, no. But they all love the streamer. And they've all set up their own profiles.

And it's like it's been a huge success in my house. But it's great to see more devices like this. that kind of have a good use case in your home, but for every day, like you would go by this because you want a good TV streamer, but it's also going to help if you do want to use the smart home to give you a bit more infrastructure built into your home so that when you come home with that shiny new thread light bulb,

it will work and you didn't have to worry about it. But what I'm most excited about right now, overall with the smart home, is where we're going with generative AI, because, and this is something that Google, talked about a lot at its event, at what was the last big event they had. Made by Google. Made by Google. I think that's what they call it. Yeah.

Basically, both Apple and Amazon, we know, have kind of struggled in this space. Google says it's about to release some really interesting updates. I'm interested to see who gets there first. But where I see the most interesting use case of generative AI in the smart home is making the smart home easier. It's that natural language that we're being promised, being able to. to just say, oh, I'm a little cold and it's too dark, and your smart home voice assistant knows

that it should raise the thermostat and turn the lights up for you. And Google has promised with some new enhancements through Gemini for Google Home and the Google Assistant that it's going to be bringing these kind of features to the smart home, along with interpretive notifications, which is another thing I'm interested in. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this chat that my smart home, when my smart home cameras send me notifications nonstop and it's really annoying. So what's happening with Google Home is they're using Gemini to sort of filter through your video footage and only send you relevant notifications.

Like you can say, I only want to know if this person shows up at my front door or this car shows up at my front door. Those kind of, you know, specific notifications rather than just, oh, there was a breeze and plastic bags. And then back the other way and then back the other way. Yeah. Wake you up at 1 o'clock in the morning. So these kind of sort of quality of life make the smart homes so much easier to use, less annoying and more intuitive. I think will really sort of push smart home adoption because there are so many benefits.

But like you said at the beginning, just trying to unlock or figure out how to replace a battery. There are too many parts of smart home and home automation that require a lot of time and attention and reading and Googling and watching YouTube videos and reading my articles, which is a good thing. But I think we've seen both Google, Amazon and Apple and Samsung all trying, you know, using generative AI to make this experience a lot smoother and therefore hopefully encourage more people to kind of reap the benefits of what I think is. is a great experience in your home when it all works. I agree. I mean, and it seems like we're presumably only weeks away from Amazon launching the generative AI underpinnings of Alexa, which we've been hearing about for a long time ago. We were at the event, was that a year ago at this point?

They were the first ones to promise that. Yeah. Yeah. And is that the same kind of stuff that you think we're going to see? I think, honestly, if Google Assistant and Alexa both get even kind of a pretty good version of what you just described, that instantly upgrades, like, many, many millions of people's smart home lives, which I think is very exciting. Very much so. Yeah, I mean, Amazon Promise, you know, they launched all of this a year ago, and it's taken a long time. It's not here yet.

So this is why I'm interested to see when Google's actually going to implement what they've promised. And Apple hasn't even mentioned the smart home. You know, none of its Apple intelligence or Siri improvements are specifically for the smart home. It is a difficult space. You get, you know, you get hallucinations in the smart home and it can go really, really wrong. And this is what, speaking to all of the companies involved here, I hear a lot. It's like, it's complicated and hard. So I think we're going to see baby steps. We're going to see, I'm hoping we'll see something from Amazon here. I mean, it's fall. We normally have a full event. It's kind of later than normal last year.

I think it was this week. But we know there's been a lot of reporting on the struggles the companies had to really nail this down. And every time I've spoken with an executive at Amazon about the new Alexa, they said, well, we're working on it, but it's very complicated. So, yeah, I think it's a struggle. But if and when we can see these solutions, I really do think it's going to be a game-changing. for the smart home. It's going to just make it, takes it from being something you have to

program and fiddle with to something that just works if they get it right. Yeah, it remains the biggest question. Yes. All right, well, we'll have you back on after all this Amazon stuff happens because I think in a very real way with all of this stuff, the proof is in the pudding. And by the pudding, I mean your house. So we will come back and we'll do this. Jen, thank you as always. Thank you. All right, we got to take a break

and then we're going to come back and we're going to do a mic test. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard. It can be really scary too. So much work goes into this thing that you're not entirely sure

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And instead of getting buried in resumes, you get a focus shortlist that actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. All right, we're back. So if you've been listening to the Birchcast for a long time, you know that a thing we like to do occasionally is test the microphones on a bunch of different kinds of headphones.

The last one of these, I think we did, was the face gadgets, the meta-ray bands and the Vision Pro and that kind of stuff. And that I thought was actually really interesting. The Rayban meta-smart glasses might be the best, like, body-worn mic we've tested yet, which is pretty cool. But this time, I want to go. through all of the new headphones that have come out from kind of the major headphone companies in the last few months. Because for people who just want

like a normal set of wireless earbuds, you're suddenly spoiled for choice, right? There's the new PixelBuds Pro 2 from Google. There's the AirPods 4 from Apple. Samsung has some new Galaxy Buds Pro. Nothing has the new ear open. Bose has some stuff. There's just a lot of new options on the market. Chris Welch has them all, as he has want to do. And so we sent him to a coffee shop, and we're going to talk a little bit about the audio quality and his feelings about them overall, but mostly I want to test the microphones, because my running theory is that microphones really matter. I mentioned this a bit in the intro, but right now so much of using your headphones is using them to talk to people or to make

videos or to talk to Siri or to do this increasingly multimodal AI stuff that these companies are talking about. Microphones matter, and we don't talk about them enough. And I think to some extent that lets these companies off the hook from building better microphones. Like, it's not impossible to build a very good microphone. It's just hard. And a lot of these companies care a lot about noise cancellation. They care a lot about sound quality. I think they should care more about mics.

So we're going to talk about mics, and we're going to see who is doing the best job. Right now, Chris Welch is sitting in a coffee shop. I assume with lots and lots of headphones around confusing everyone else in the coffee shop. So let's do some testing. Chris Welch, hello. Hello again. Where are you right now? I feel like I'm growing to like learn the different spots that you are when we test your buds.

Where are we? This is my go-to coffee shop in my neighborhood that I come to a fairly often and work from. And it tends to be pretty loud as most Brooklyn coffee shops are. Do they know you there by now? You're like the guy who shows up with a pile of gadgets and takes a bunch of pictures. Like is that they just understand when you walk through the door? Yeah, yeah. That's good.

I'm glad. So we're here because we're kind of at the end of this year's cycle of new earbuds. You just published the PixelBuds Pro 2 review. You have a bunch of them, so we figured this is a good moment to test them. Before we dive in, just give us the list. What are we going to try here? What do we have? We've got the AirPods 4, which I have right now in my ears.

That's what you're going to start. We've got the Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro, the PixelBuds Pro. the PixelBuds Pro 2 the new Bose quiet comfort earbuds that just came out as well and the nothing opens very funky open style

earbuds that were just announced as well I'm very excited about those I have developed an unnecessary attachment to an obsession with these open earbuds so I'm very excited to see if those running good and I'm glad you started with AirPods so this is actually good

this is a good first test because I feel like AirPods are a useful control in a lot of this because they're just like the one that everybody has. Yeah. They sound fine. I described them to somebody the other day as like the nice thing about AirPods is that you can get them to sound like a C plus in almost any situation. The downside of the AirPods is you cannot get them to sound better than a C plus in any situation. Like perfect scenario they're going to sound just like this.

That's fine, I guess. Yeah. So like here's their like normal modes. But on phone calls you can do like the voice isolation feature, which is using the machine. learning to make you sound even clear. We're not getting that fear, unfortunately. But it does get a little bit better on phone calls. Yeah, because the voice...

The voice isolation you can only do... It's like phone calls and FaceTime, right? Yeah, exactly. Not here. But, you know, they sound fine, which is all you really need, like 90% of the time. You just mean if they'd shot someone. Yeah, they do the job. All right, well, let's...

We've got enough of this. Let's switch to the next one. Let's do Google next. Yeah, Google. That's the most so, too. Good. If I remember correctly, Google has outperformed my expectations several times on these tests over the last couple of years. So I'm curious about this. So let's do it first. Yeah. All right, I'll do it. All right, hit me. We're back again. These are going to some buds pro to, they're smaller and lighter.

And the mics have gotten mixed feedback so far. I'm going to go decidedly lower. than mixed on this one. Really? That much of a difference from the AirPods. Do you remember when we did a test on the ferry in New York, and it was just blindingly obvious how hard some of them were working? Even though they were kind of working,

and I could kind of hear you, you could hear how hard it was for them to get to that point. That's what I'm getting here, too. It's like one of the interesting things that just happened was between recordings here, just to let everybody in on how this works, we use this app called Riverside and you have to stop and start recording

every time you want to change devices. So we have to stop each time. So I get to hear the natural audio coming out of your Mac. And there was music playing that I didn't really hear on the AirPods. There was more noise than I expected that I wasn't really hearing on the AirPods.

I'm hearing all of that now. Interesting. There's like no cancellation whatsoever. Almost, I mean, there's some. And it's like it's coming and going. It's kind of like they're raising and lowering the volume as time goes on. and your voice sounds fine.

It's like it's picking up more of everything. So I'm actually like, your voice is a little richer than I was hearing through the iPod or through the AirPods, but so is the background noise. Not great. But I guess that's a tradeoff

from getting smaller and lighter. They're even further away from my mouth when I'm talking, obviously, so it's harder to kind of separate voice from background noise. But these also have like clear calling on phone calls, which again, you can't do on like video chats, unfortunately. So like, it should be a little bit better

when you're actually talking to someone on the phone, but if you're in a coffee shop, this is what you're going to get. You know what this makes me like of? Do you ever do the thing where you're wearing noise-canceling headphones, like over-the-ear noise-canceling headphones, and you just kind of take them on and off your ears and you can sort of hear it pulse the noise in and outside?

It feels a little like that as you're talking. It's like it's sort of constantly picking up and letting go of the background noise in a way that it is. is like, it works, but it's also like a little unnerving as I'm listening to it. I think if I was just holding up my phone to my head, it wouldn't really bother me. But I'm on like pretty good headphones in a pretty good situation here. And it is like, I'm hearing stuff that I was not hearing the AirPods. Yeah, it's really interesting.

So yeah, this is we're going to give Google like a like a gently passing grade, I would say. This is not like a disaster. I can hear you. But I can safely already say Google is not going to win. evaluation. They do look good though. They're super small in your ears. That's, it's really nice. And they're, they seem very comfortable from what I saw in your review. Very comfortable. They still got that Mentos look, which is what it is. But yeah, you can barely seem in your ears anymore. It's nice. Yeah, when you're head on, I can basically

not see them at all. That's really cool. All right. Let's switch to the next one. Let's do, uh, I don't know, you pick. Surprise me. What are we doing? Uh, let's do Samsung. Okay. The big three out of the way. Yeah, I love it. All right, let's switch. All right, Samsung Buzz. How are we doing? These are the Buds 3 Pro. They have stems now, just like the AirPods.

Pro do. So hopefully that makes them a little bit crisper. Clear. Oh, my, that was loud. I didn't hear that at all. This is, okay, this is the opposite of what we just heard from Google. This is actually super fun. I'm glad we did this in this order.

Because basically, the AirPods are the middle. Google is all the way at the end of the spectrum of like, let's make this sound kind of as natural as possible, even if it means getting noise in. And you are just compressed to within an inch of your life, but there is no background noise. Like it sounds like you are in a silent room. Yeah, it's super large.

Someone's like funking dishes and stuff over there. So if you can't hear that, that's impressive. Do I sound like intelligible though? Intelligible, yes. You almost don't sound like yourself. Like it sort of sounds like if you like held up a pillow to your mouth and then had a phone call. Like, that's kind of what you sound like right now.

I can hear everything you're saying. Yeah. But, I mean, you are processed to death. But again, I cannot overstate the extent to which I'm not hearing anything but your voice right now. That's kind of wild, actually. Yeah. Yeah. And it's been pretty good so far from my voice calls and lots of people.

I've heard, like, similar feedback to that that I sound processed, but clear. So. Yeah. And this is, this is a fun test case because, Normally with these headphones, at least my experience has been that they process your voice less when they're having to process less background noise. So in theory, when you're in like a perfectly quiet space, they should all sound better. Right. But they'll sound worse in worse.

So we tried to pick this is a pretty good like normalish use case to like test them but not overly so. But yeah, this is this is solid. I take this over Google 10 times out of 10. Like, it's just more pleasant to listen to you, even though you don't sound amazing, just because there's not that kind of roller coaster volume of background noise. Interesting. There was a lot of noise. So you can't hear you that.

That's nice. But yeah, these are great. They sound really nice. They have lights on the stems. So you can have them light up in your talking people, you know? These are the ones that Samsung just went full AirPods, right? Like, they just did AirPods, but like the Samsung way. Yeah.

Silver. I don't even mean that as an insult. Like, it just is what it is. That's just what Samsung does. Yeah. Yeah, in terms of, like, pleasant to listen to and wear all day, which has been your favorite of the bunch?

If you're going to just, like, do your life wearing headphones. Do you have a favorite? I'd probably say it's a tie between these and the pixel boats, honestly. Those are newer. So I'm still just going to use to those. But these I've used a ton.

And, yeah, they feel like AirPods Pro. You know, they're stable. They fit well. It sounds really nice. They do a lot. all the little Samsung ecosystem tricks. So they're not super original, but at this point, they're all the same.

Yeah. But yeah. Okay. Yeah. You can hear that you can hear me very clearly. I'm impressed. Yeah. Like, you sound very clear, but you don't sound very good.

And if I have to make that trade, I'll make that trade. You know what I mean? Like, I'd love to have it both ways, but I will pick this over the alternative. All right. All right. Let's switch. Let's do, let's do, uh, let's do Bose next. You tell me.

Yeah, let's do it. All right. Let's switch. All right, Boz's time. How are we doing? And it's a brand new quiet comfort here for those second generation. You're already laughing. That's not a good time.

Was I just very loud in your ears just then? You're startled as I said to me. Oh, okay. Okay, just making sure. Okay, just make sure. The system out this podcast week. And they have really good, super good noise cancellation from those air buds through small our conversion cost of your buds.

It's cheaper, 479, same as the AirPods. work. You said tips, obviously, whereas the Air Class 4, you're not. But so far, I like to be quite a bit. Okay.

I have, I don't, I don't want to be hyperbolic here. This is awful. It's so bad. This is the first time I can't understand some of the words that you're saying. And,

and again, I wonder if an experience I've had, so I have a pair of Bose's, like, over-ear quiet comforts, and the, the, The impression that I get every time I use them is kind of what I was saying before, that the mic is, it's never good, but it's fine when there's not a lot of noise.

But Bose seems to so aggressively prioritize noise cancellation over audio quality that when you get into bad sound, it will just destroy everything else in the name of noise cancellation. So I'm guessing you're sitting there and it's like not very loud to you and it all sounds fine. It's just ruining it. Yeah. It's doing a decent job of suppressing the background noise. It's actually, like, it's better now than it was when we started, which is interesting. It's like it took the processing a minute to, like, figure it out, but it seems to have cut a bunch of the background noise.

But you sound like trash. It's really bad. Important meetings. That's good time. Yeah, this is not the one to take a Zoom call and a coffee shop with. That is like, basically the two reasons we do this test are like, are you the worst if you're on a video call with these? And, you know, grand theories about how we talk to AI and all that stuff. Like, I really do believe microphones matter.

This one will fail at both of those tests, and I feel very confident about that. Big yikes. Okay. Well, they're doing that everything else so far. Yeah. These are good listening headphones. Like, Bose makes very good headphones to listen to. Please don't call me from these headphones ever again.

Okay. All right, let's get off this one as quickly as we can. Yeah, let's go to the next one. What are you next? Oh, let's do the nothings, the funky open ones. Sweet, love it. It'll be that right now. All right.

Nothing, the nothing ear open, that's what they're called, right? It is. Yeah, at least the first call I've actually had on these period. It's an honor. It's been a great experience for us full. I kind of like how those look in your ears. I have to say, it's a little, they're a little more like deliberately space agey than anything else you've tried. They've got the sort of ear hook.

and Slate, yeah, they just look like you're wearing some kind of futuristic Star Trek-y headset, which is not the worst thing in the world. Some people love this for like bike riding, that kind of, those kind of activities. I'm not an open your buds guy, but I can see the appeal. Like, I can hear everything in this room right now. That's just kind of absurd.

So, like, you sound pretty quiet compared to, like, all this racket and move. But how does the voice quality compare it to... Pretty solid. actually. I would put this kind of right in the AirPods range. I'm getting a little bit of the background noise. Like I can tell you're in a coffee shop, unlike

the Samsung's where it was like truly just deathly quiet. I can, it's clear you're somewhere, but I'm only catching kind of bits and pieces of the background noise. Like I can tell there's a woman talking somewhere near you. But I'm only catching like snippets, like

syllables of it instead of like the whole conversation. And I can hear you pretty clearly, actually. I'm sort of impressed by these. See, I'm not sure where the mics are in this particularly. There's a stem that runs down here. So who knows. But they're pretty funky.

They're fun. They're interesting. But it's good to know if you're going to make phone calls on your bike or wherever you might be or in these. People will be able to understand you. I'm getting so many looks in what this coffee shop doing this call. Being that guy who I think every day. Yeah, we'll only keep you a couple more minutes, I promise. But I think part of the reason I'm interested in these is like, I hear from people all the time who are like, yeah, I'm trying to do more phone calls while I'm walking, right?

It's just the like, like, I work from home now. I sit in my basement all day and I'm trying to do more of that too, just get out. And it's like, oh, we're going to talk for a half hour. I'm going to just wander around the neighborhood for a half hour. And that's one reason that, A, open ear is useful. Like, I think for this particular case in a coffee shop, open ear headphones are actually the wrong answer. So like for this purpose, you probably wouldn't use these, even though they sound okay. But for like general sort of day-to-day life, like it's the same reason I like the Rayban meta smart glasses, right?

Like I can just sort of have a conversation into my sunglasses in a way that sort of works. And I feel like this is appealing to me for the same reason. And they sound pretty good. It's not the best one, but it is it's kind of right in that sweet spot middle with the AirPods that I'm sort of impressed with. Interesting. Okay. Good to know. Should I switch back to the AirPods for the conclusion?

Yeah, let's switch back. Now that I've heard all of them, let's go back to the AirPods and we can pick a favorite here. Let's do it. All right. All right. So we're back on the AirPods four. We are. And these still sounds pretty serviceable?

Yeah, this, it's such a boring answer, but I think of this round, this is actually probably my favorite. I think there's a little more background noise here than there will. was on the nothings. But it's also a little less. I'm realizing, like, a little bit of consistent background noise is actually less annoying than kind of inner-brant background noise. Yeah. It's like, this, you just kind of have that low tone behind you all the time.

And so it's actually easier for me to pick out your voice, whereas, like, the pixel buzz, which kept coming in and out, were, like, giving me a headache trying to figure out what was going on. But I'm curious, Eric Gomez, our producer, hi, Eric, is here. Hello. You have been listening to and making all of this work. What do you make of all of this? You're the audio expert here.

Definitely impressed by the Samsung, but the quality is, yes, it's being squished and compressed to death, but at least you're not picking up anything going on in the background at all. And it's pretty, you know, it's clear enough and it's coherent enough to be able to have a good conversation. and I'm really surprised by the pixel buds. They're just not... It's just not aggressive, yeah. Yeah, I'm really disappointed in that. You know, I think Google did a good job in terms of hardware this round,

but I'm just a little disappointed by the quality of the mic on these pixel buds. I do wonder, I mean, Welch, you mentioned that they're smaller and thus just further away from your mouth. And I wonder at some point if that just is like an insurmountable. physics problem. Like, the, the things with stems tend to be better because they have stems. Like, it just seems to be a fact. I mean, so, I mean, I don't want to see everybody do stems just that would be boring. So I hope they can find a way to, like, you know, like use machine learning or AI or whatnot

to, like, find some way to fix this problem. Maybe the pixel blood will sound better on, like, phone calls of clear to all line. Like, so far, I haven't gotten so that might make a difference versus just, like, just overall audio mode. But, yeah, it's clearly that. that Samsung and Apple are kind of the head honcho is here and the rest are kind of okay at best. Yeah. Yeah, the winner for most improved is Samsung for sure.

I think the last time we did this, I think Samsung came in last. And it was the one that was like borderline unintelligible. And I think Samsung here is either in first or second place, depending on just kind of what you like. Right. The thing for me of that sort of eerie, quiet, super compressed, just doesn't sound as good as what I'm hearing now from the AirPods, which just feels a little more natural. It's like if I were sitting across from you at a coffee shop,

that's what it would sound like. But I can also understand that if what's clear is also if there is one that you are going to trust in awful situations to keep you intelligible, it's probably the Galaxy Buds. Right, Eric, is that your takeaway here? Yeah, I would have to agree with that. They're like the worst-case scenario buds. Yeah.

don't use them. Good to know for the future whenever I'm stranded somewhere and I carry around several pairs of your butts at all times so it's nice to know that those are the ones. Don't call 911 with those buds.

Yeah, they'll be like, it's fine. You can't hear anything. All right, good. Well, we've done it. I would love for somebody to just blow my mind here. That's everyone's charge for next time. It's just like, do slightly better. We're still at a point where the Rayban meta ones

are the best sounding ones we've tested maybe in the history of this segment on the Vergecast. Still, I've never tried those myself, but I won't want those new clear colors. They look awesome. Clear glasses look awesome. Yeah. I have two pairs now, and I don't want one of them, so you can have one of my pairs. Next time I'm in New York, I'll bring you my pair, and you can just have it.

They look stupid on my face anyway, so we'll make it happen. I appreciate it. All right. We should take a break. Chris, thank you, as always. Please apologize to everyone in the coffee shop for us. I will right now as soon as I'm off clear. Thank you.

Thanks be bold. Cheers. Appreciate it. All right, we've got to take one more break, and then we're going to do a question for the first cast hotline. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database limitations

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Start innovating with MongoDB. There's a reason it's trusted by so many of the Fortune 500. And that's because it's a platform built by developers for developers. MongoDB, it's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around all the time in politics. But what do they actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things.

One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers that be that are making your life worse. And then second, being progressive is essentially a hopeful enterprise that you think I think that the world can be much better, that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo. And is there a difference between what it means to the elected officials and what it means to the people? So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you have all that.

That's like secondary. Third. Like that doesn't, that's not a priority. That's this week on America actually. Let's begin. Complex and unprecedented the Spanish authorities are calling it. Before the disembark, asymptomatic. Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship

disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of where are they now since maybe COVID. Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus. And yet public health officials seem remarkably calm. We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning. And we assessed that individual. they are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over.

Today, Explain drops every weekday afternoon. All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866 Verge 1-1. The email is Vergecast at theverge.com. You can hit me up personally on threads or on signal. We try to answer at least one hotline question on the show every week. And actually, I think we're due for like a full hotline episode.

We've gotten a lot of fun stuff. We're in deep gadget season right now, so we've gotten a lot of gadget questions. we'll probably get to all of those at some point in the very near future. But for now, we have a question that feels so, so very verge-casty. Let's hear it. Hey, Birchcast, this is Jeff from North Carolina. I was listening to your latest episode on Mehta's new glasses, and I'm wondering, I remember, I believe it was Scott Galloway.

They had a comment that any product that you're wearing on your body that makes you less attractive will never succeed. I'm wondering if you think with the vision, and then now the meta smart classes, this will apply that if you don't look cool in them, no one's going to buy them. Love the show. Thanks very much.

Bye. All right. There is only one person on earth who can answer this question. The Scott Galloway of the Vergecast, I call him sometimes. Bruttle. Why would you invite me here to insult me to my face? Hey, buddy.

This is my own show. I didn't even prepare you for this. You didn't even get to listen to this ahead of time. Just, this is everything I want to be. Hey, would you like to walk into your own house, me slapped in the face? Amazing. So I love this question for two reasons. One, because I think it's a good question.

And two, because it threatens the very core of Neely Patel's theory of wearable bullshit, which is just, this just says, actually, it doesn't even matter if it doesn't make you look cool. It's out. So I want to know your thoughts on this particular take with these devices. Well, you will recall that the matrix of wearable bullshit, has a minus 100 face penalty. Right. Which is basically what we're talking about here.

Because you can put all kinds of stuff on your body that makes you look uncool. People wear fanny packs all day long. Fair. They're walking around. They're not even wearing them on their fannies from what I'm told. Yeah, they're slings now. Yeah. It's watches.

Incredibly subjective fashion choices. True. Clothing itself. Shoes. The way people talk about shoes in this world. All kinds of ideas about things you put on your body. It's really just, do you have it on your face that sets people aflame, right? That's the thing we're talking about here.

Is it on your face? Is it in your way? And the matrix of wearable bullshit is fiddliness versus utility. And then there's just like this big penalty for face somewhere in there that brings you way below the line. And then you have to offer vastly more utility to get back above the line so that people wear it every day. regular glasses on your face. They take the penalty, but they're pretty useful to most people. True.

So they come back up. And now we've, you know, over decades, we've turned glasses into fashion accessories. Well, okay. So that's the thing that I keep thinking about thinking about this. Because there's basically two ways to look at this. One is these things will never be cool. And the only way they're ever going to work is if we make them so phenomenally useful that it doesn't matter. Right? And I feel like, I don't know, like wired headphones is probably a good example of that, right? Like, I don't know that a pair of earpods is like cool. But they're like simple and they're useful and we all just kind of gut over it, right? That that crossed the threshold with utility, not with cool. The other option is that in some way someone figures out how to make these things actually objectively cool. And then it flips, right? Like in glasses, some people like kind of.

how they look in glasses better than how they look without glasses. Like, that's a real thing. We have made them a fashion object, and that seems like a much harder road for any kind of technology, but is maybe the actually most effective way to get there, is just make them objectively cool, figure out how to make it, like, iconically awesome to have ski goggles on your face,

and then none of the rest of it even matters. But this is, I think, what Apple tried with the Vision Pro. They tried to make it cool, and it fell on its face because it just, we can't be. It just isn't. Well, there are some ski goggles that are cool. I've certainly seen, like, sweet pictures of 80s people wearing ski goggles. True.

Cool as hell. Have you ever seen the movie Ski School? Highly recommended. Anyway, my point is, one, you should watch Ski School. Two, even the people who think they look better in glasses that don't, don't, have not created enough of a market for, like, clear glasses. Like, there's a little bit of marketing for clear glasses. Right, like on prescription or non-prescription clear glasses that you just wear as a fashion accessory. Like a little bit.

But it's as a signifier as part of another outfit, right? It's supposed to be part of another vibe that you're sending out. Not just I wear these every day, all day, like my shoes. Right. As pure fashion statement, there's not much there. And so you just, I think for a tech product, you need to vastly increase the utility of the thing, like AirPods. they're so useful and I care about them so much and they provide me so much value

every single day as a product that I will overcome the fact that they're in my ears all the time and people can see them because they're white. And like regular over-the-ear headphones are fashion statements in different ways, right? They look different. There's different ways you can style them.

There's different ways you can wear them. Remember when beats came out? The beats were not the best sounding headphones. Like Jimmy Ivey and Dr. Dre had one idea for what headphones should sound like and it was super base heavy. Right. And they were a fashion statement at first,

because it came in all the colors. They were the first headphones to really push that idea, and they were a phenomenon in their time just for that. I think with smart glasses, yep, you've got to make the form factor smaller. Yep, they've got to be, yep, they've got to look more like regular glasses.

You've got to solve the battery. You've got to bring the fiddliness way down and the value way up. They've got to be able to do more things. And then somewhere in there, you might overcome the penalty of it being on your face. But I still think the core tenet holds, which is if it's really, really useful, people will get over the fiddliness.

And part of fiddliness is like, is this shit on my face? Right. And whether or not that you want to interpret that in the Galloway fashion of, does this make me more attractive, that it is up to you to decide if that is the type of utility you desire from a product. Fair. And I guess, to be fair, like, Post Malone is out here being like, you know what, face tattoos.

That's how I'm doing it. Listen, some things are attractive to some people. No accounting for taste. No one is attracted to the Vision Pro, I think, is basically the only true statement I can make at this particular moment in time. Okay, so the 100 point deductible is on a scale that it's an Apple. It's not like a attach return. Right, I apologize. The 100 point deduction is like it's Apple chart crime.

It's out of nothing. but what I wonder is, is have we, have we not hit it enough? Like, should it be a 200 point deduction? Like, I am starting to think

that this thing might be harder to surmount even than I had thought. Because even, like, I look at the Orion glasses, which are smaller and much closer to being normal glasses. And then somebody puts them on their face, and they still look kind of stupid.

Like, they're cool, because they're cool technology, whatever, but, like, in no way are they, like, cool-looking glasses. And that is, like, the bleeding edge of the bleeding edge of where we are in terms of being able to make these things awesome.

Like, should we be, should we be dinging these things harder for their face wearing issues for the foreseeable future? Well, I would say one of the most fiddly things about the Orion is that you need to work at Facebook and apparently have $10,000 in order to have one. Yeah. It's pretty fiddly. It's very fiddly. Like, whether or not it's on your face, like, doesn't matter.

Like, it's a product you can't buy. You need to grow crystal lenses in the basement of your underground Hawaiian layer. apparently to have them very fiddly. Like, you're just in the hole, and then you're a little bit further in the hole. I think a better example is the rayban glasses that Meadow is doing, where their utility is not that high.

Right? Like, they can take some photos, they can do some AI stuff. People actually like the photos. People like listening to music on them, but they're not very fiddly. That is true. They're just raybans.

They're mostly glasses. Yeah. And so they can overcome the face penalty, because their fiddliness is so low, right? And then you get whatever utility you get out of it, and they kind of just curve right back up to glasses, maybe a little bit under regular glasses because they have a little more fiddliness to them.

But I think they're just on the same curve as regular glasses, which also take the 100-point face fiddliness deduction. I'm going to be so interested to see how the clear ones end up doing in the world, that, like, limited edition one that they came out with, because my, like, threads algorithm is filled with people who are obsessed with it. My thread's algorithm is also filled with, like, nerds. And it's also owned, I would point out, by meta. It is also owned by meta.

That's a very good point. So I think the question of, like, I have a pair here that are essentially indistinguishable from normal wayfarers. Like, you would never look at me twice wearing them. They just look like wayfair. That is a huge victory. I think the clear ones look a little more like gadgets. And so I think how those sort of percolate out. into the world is going to be really interesting.

Because there is this, like, all the way at the other end of that spectrum is Google Glass, which was like the gadgetiest gadget of all time. And also offered almost no utility. Right. Everyone forgets this about Google Glass. You had a little display in your face that was not very useful at all. No, it, like, told you you had a text message.

Yeah. My phone buzzes when that happens is fine. You were just in the hole. It was like, it would be like, turn left. It's like when you were doing Google Labs. And it's just none of this is useful at all. So the real thing, that I think the raybans have accomplished is they've gotten closer to the curve of regular glasses.

What's really interesting is the clear ones you're talking about have the next generation of transitions lenses in them, Gen S, they're called, which are supposed to go from sunglasses to clear much faster than before. And the idea is that that will make you want to wear them all the time. I don't know. You know, like, are people going to buy these things that look like wayfares and and just like wear them around their office because they're getting so much value out of wearing the meta raybans. And I think the answer is no.

I think you're still on the same curve as just regular sunglasses. So we'll see. I think that's the most successful of these products because they've gotten to the same sort of value equation as a regular set of sunglasses. Yeah, I think that's right. And that's a good example of, I don't know that like your sunglasses generally make you look

like cooler and more attractive, but they are like useful. and they look good. I think historically in the history of culture, people have thought sunglasses make them look cool and attractive. No, they just make you mysterious because nobody can see what you're looking at.

And that... Yeah, sexy and dangerous. How do you feel about your sunglasses? I'm just saying. I think this is how most people feel about sunglasses. That's, no, that's fair. So maybe we're on to something here that there's maybe the new,

the whatever seventh dimension of the theory wearable bullshit. I think I'm down to just two. It's two in the face deduction. But there's also like a sexiness quotient. No. I disagree. All too subjective.

It's fiddliness versus utility and then face. So do we put sexiness under utility? Is one of the utility, like a possible utility just makes me look hot as a hell? Yeah, perceived utility. It's all in there, which is why face is such a, wait, it's face of fiddly. Face is utility deduction. Okay. I think that's right.

No, it's a fiddly deduction. Faces very fiddly. I'm never going to get this right. So it just depends on which axis is which. Whichever one brings you down below that curve, like hard, and then you've got to, like, you've got to pay it off with utility. So it is a, it is a utility deduction. Okay.

Right. You put it on your face. You suddenly need to deliver vastly more utility to get back above the curve. Right. And one of those utilities can be sexy. Looking hot. Yeah. All right, there we go.

We've solved it. And as always, if you listeners can figure out how to graph this for us, please, dear God, we'll let you sponsor the Lightning Round for free. You can figure out how to do this. We've mentioned it before. So there's regular glasses. This is the first thing to put on your chart is regular glasses, which are quite fiddily, especially if you need them to see the fact that if you lose them, you can no longer see, is really quite fiddly. Yes, agreed. Like, you've got to keep them clean.

You can't. lose them, you don't want to scratch them, you got to wear them all the time. Very fiddly. Utility off the chart. You're way above the curve of success on this, on this whatever quadrant chart we're doing. Air pods also in the chart, a good thing to graph, right? People like them, but they make you look like you have AirPods in your ears. Apple Watch, first gen versus the current gen. First, that's so fiddly. Yep. Not a lot of utility. So fiddly below the curve. And they they evened it out to where they are now. So, like, that's the chart, right?

You just got to, if you're going to put something on your body, it's got to be so useful, it's worth the time and attention. And then you've got face deduction. Face deduction is the title of Neely. The face penalty. All right. We did it. Nilai, thank you, as always.

I'm still mad about the Scott Calloway thing. I want to be very clear with this. All right. That is it for the Verkast. Thank you to everybody who was on a show today, and thank you, as always, for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about, all of Jen's coverage of matter and thread, and the video doorbells, she actually wrote about a smart door just yesterday. Great stuff.

All that is on the website. All of Chris's reviews of these various headphones are on the website. I think the wearable theory is mostly a Vergecast thing. So, you know, keep it locked here for all of the updates on Neelai's insane wearables theory that basically doesn't make any sense. And if you have thoughts, questions, or feelings, or anything else you want to talk about, other headphones, you want us to try other ways

to put terrible audio on the Vergecast. You can always email us at Vergecast at theverge.com or call the hotline 866 Verge11. We love hearing from you. Please keep all our questions coming. This show is produced by Liam James, Wilpour, and Eric Gomez. The Vergecast is Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Nelai, Alex, and I will be back on Friday to talk about all the weird stuff going on and open AI because that keeps happening some strange lawsuit stuff with Epic and Google and Samsung and a whole bunch of other stuff. See you then. Rock and roll.