The Vergecast - Your smart home questions, answered

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

Here at The Vergecast, we get a lot of questions. Questions from you, which we love! Questions that, for some reason, often tend to be about the smart home and why it's often not so very smart. So on this episode, the first in a two-part series, The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy helps us answer a whole bunch of your questions. Questions like: what's Apple's deal with the smart home? Are there any good smart faucets? And what's about to happen to my robot vacuum cleaner? Jen helps us wade through all that and more. We also go on a long diversion about smart smoke detectors, which are pretty awesome. Further reading: My smart kitchen: the good, the bad, and the future Moen’s Smart Faucet with Motion Control is totally hands free, and works with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant The future of the Roomba, and the best robot vacuums This smart smoke alarm could be a worthy Nest Protect replacement Home Assistant’s next era begins now Apple’s plan for AI could make Siri the animated center of your smart home What’s in a smart home reviewer’s backyard How Matter works, where it’s headed, and why it matters The problems with AI in the smart home and how Amazon and Google plan to fix them Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of light switches, the ones just like over there on the wall that you just go over to and you flip it up and the light goes on and you flip them down and the light goes off. Unbelievable technology. We love it very much. I'm your friend David Pierce and we are here today to talk about the smart home. So we have the Vergecast hotline, 866, Virgin11, call us and ask us all your questions. We have an email inbox, Vergecast of the verge.com. We're all on social. and we get tons of questions about everything all the time. But I think the number one subject people call and write in about is the smart home. People have product questions. They have big philosophical questions. A lot of people are like, why do I need a smart home in general?

So we're going to spend this whole episode just answering your questions. Jen Toey on our team is going to come on and she is going to help me. We're going to go through as many questions as we can and just try to figure out some smart home stuff here on the show together. This is the first episode in a two-part series that we're doing. Next week, Jen is going to help me personally, specifically, figure out a bunch of stuff at my new house. If you're watching this on YouTube, this is only going to be my background for another couple of weeks.

And then I'm moving and I need some serious smart home help in the new place. All of that is coming this week and next week. We're going to get to Jen in just a second. But first, I'm going to go flip that late switch a bunch because it makes me feel good. And a lot of smart home technology does not make me feel good. So I'm going to go flip light switches because it works. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back.

Support for the show. comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data, in your cloud, with enterprise security, built in. Go to retool.com

slash vergecast. We all need to retool how we build software. All right, we're back. As promised, Jen 2 is here. Hi, Jen. Hi, David. I'm very excited. I'm having a lot of feelings about the smart home today. Yeah. Yeah. Is that because you're moving into a new home? I'm moving into a house, which is just an awful process that no one should do. And also, we've been compiling these questions over the last few days.

And the number of people who basically are just like, why am I doing any of this? Is all of this just a total insane process that is designed to make me hate myself? It's been very validating to me personally. I can sympathize. Yeah. You have to live this harder than anybody. Like anybody who is like, Jen is just a true believer in this born home and thinks it's wonderful. Like, no, no, no.

You have not spent any time talking to Jen about her house setup. What are you testing right now? What's the wildest thing in your sense? set up right now. Oh, gosh, right now it's a little crazy. I have the switchbot robot from CES that was my pick at CES, the like multi-home helper robot. And my husband walked in the other day and go, I was like, what is that? It's like, I mean, that and for him, that isn't reaction because he is, he's used to seeing crazy things in the house. So yeah, that's one of the crazy things. I also have a very cool garden at the moment, an indoor garden.

I'm growing a smart garden, which is fun. And it's growing a sunflower. So I'm getting some pretty smart home, which I enjoy. So, okay, I'm going to lead you to store the garden one for next week because next week you're going to come back on the show and you're going to help me smarten up my new house. And one of the things I need from you is a way to make the, like, essentially windowless basement that I'm going to be working in every day

feel less like a hole in the ground. And I think I've been thinking about like maybe I do some kind of like living wall. So we're going to have to talk about that next week. Yeah. Hold on to that one for me. That's a good. Yeah, that's a good challenge actually. A basement is a place where you feel like that smart tech can really help, especially smart lighting,

which is, which is my favorite. So we have a mix of questions from people that are like kind of all over the place. Some are very tactical. Like I have a specific problem that I need solved. and Jen is the person to solve it. Some are very kind of galaxy-brained. There are, I was serious when I say there are a lot of people who kind of look at a smart home project and are like, what am I doing? What is any of this for?

Why do we exist as humans? And so we're going to talk. I tried to kind of bounce around the spectrum a little bit here, but we're just going to get through as many questions as we can before we both completely lose our minds and start yelling at each other about matter. Does this sound good? Okay. Yes. No yelling. Promise.

I want to start with, I think, the most. popular question we got. This came in a bunch of different forms, but I just want to attack it head on. And this version's question comes from Brendan, who says, I have all of the Apple Home stuff in my tiny New York City apartment. All of my lights are from their overpriced brand,

NanoLeaf, editorial note. That's a fascinating point. NanoLeaf, not an Apple brand, but we should talk about it. I have the HomePod Mini, and I have the Apple TV. All these Apple Home accessories are fine. Nothing spectacular.

It all works. I suppose that's good, but I want better tech in my home that would be on par with my new M4 MacBook Pro in space black. Great computer. Is that too much to ask? I mean, it's Apple. Basically, why can't we upgrade the Apple TV or improve upon the HomePod?

Why does Apple not seem to care all that much about the smart home? This is truly, if I had to put all of the questions together, this is the one we got the most often, is why is the Apple version of this ecosystem, which seems very sensible and like it could be sort of a complete thought about the smart home, why does this feel so half-assed from Apple and is it likely to get any better? So I'm just curious your thoughts. Yeah, this is a common question because I would say amongst most of our readers and people I interact with around the smart home, Apple Home is one of the preferred platforms for using the smart home. It's well known for being private and has a lot of local control, which people like, And then it has its home kit secure video platform, which is end-to-end encrypted and processes

things locally. So it has a lot of things going for it. What it does not have going for it is much choice, much variety, and it doesn't have a smart display, which a lot of people are very unhappy about, although there have been a lot of rumours around this. To answer that overall question, why is Apple not done more in this space? I don't think it was really a priority for them at all for a very long time. We got a little bit of update in the last few years where they revamped the home app, made it a lot more usable.

I think there has been, I mean, originally the Apple TV was called a hobby project, correct? If I'm recalling my Apple law. For many, many years. Yes. So they kind of stumbled. It feels a bit like they stumbled into the smart home. It wasn't really a direction they chose. But I do think they are focusing on it a lot more.

I mean, we've heard rumors that they have pushed, I think, when the Apple Car project sort of wound down, a lot of people were moved over to the home. I think there's a view that the home is now an area that Apple could be doing more in. There's a lot of rumors around them moving into cameras and maybe some other sort of products outside of the HomePod and the Apple TV. I think the big frustration we're seen right now from a lot of users is everything in Apple Home that's Apple-based, not things that you connect to Apple Home, is relatively old, getting a bit long in the tooth. Siri, not an excellent experience in the smart home. It does. It's the nicest thing anybody said about Siri on this podcast in a while. I mean, the reason I'm being a little bit nice is it does do what you tell it.

to as long as you're, it's capable of what you tell it to do, which is not an experience I'm having right now with some of the new smart home assistant revamp smart home assistants, which can struggle to do some of the basic stuff. But yes, it's limited. It's very command and control. It doesn't have much imagination. But I do think we're going to see a big shift. And I think it's been a long time coming. I think Apple is working behind the scenes on this. There's, again, lots of leaks around home robots. smart displays, I think that's all coming. One of the reasons they've taken this long, I believe, is the shift to matter. You see, we got matter in there right at the beginning.

I know, this is the shortest episode we've ever done. This is crazy. Because I don't think Apple really wanted to build and maintain a back end for their smart home. I think it was, I think HomeKit was sort of an experiment and that HomeKit was the framework that developers could use to bring their devices into Apple Home. And it was a very slow, ponderous process to get devices certified with HomeKit. I don't know, maybe there was just one guy in a basement in Cupertino authorizing things. That is honestly how it felt. It probably was. And I heard from a lot of developers, they would complain incessantly about how they couldn't get anyone to respond or do anything or every update would take six months to go through. And that's not what you want. And with

smart home devices, you want to be able to update and innovate and iterate as much as possible. So with Matter, which they, if there's some law here, if you don't remember, HomeKit, Apple donated the framework of HomeKit to the CSA for Matter. So Matter is really, the foundation of Matter is HomeKit. And now that's sort of taken away that load from Apple and it's put it on another organization, although a lot of the Apple engineers are involved with Matter. And they're, so that they don't have to worry about that. Now I think what they're going to do is start working towards that layer, that layer that makes the smart home valuable and usable. So things like energy management.

We're already seen hints of that Apple released energy kit quite recently, very quietly at WWDC actually, which should help be able to use energy management tools in your home, which I think is going to be a huge part of the smart home going forward. So it's just there are pieces and parts coming together, and I think they're just taking that slow and steady, torters and the hair approach. And I'm hopeful, because I'm an optimist, that this, that, you know, they're going to come out at the end with something that's going to be solid, reliable, and work very well. I just don't know how long we're going to have to wait for it. And that is frustrating, I know. But that, I think, is the reason people want Apple to be

more involved here, right? Because I think what you said about sort of the scope of the project, I think is exactly right and seems to be what almost every company that isn't Amazon encountered, where you start doing smart home stuff and then you sort of peer through the door and you realize how big and messy and like infrastructural this thing is. And you have to look at yourself as a company and say, okay, do we want to be in the business of water sensors? Like, is that a thing we want to do? Yeah. And honestly, in so many ways, kudos to Amazon for really like rolling up its sleeves and being like, we are going to completely do this project, which I think it has done in a bigger way than any of its competitors. For Apple, like, probably the right call to be like, we are not going to be in the business of making and supporting water sensors.

But now we have Matter, which is in theory the sort of underlying infrastructure of this. It's like if Matter is the Internet, all you have to do is build stuff on top of it now. And that's where a company like Apple, which is historically very good at things like user interface design. and making things work well across different devices. Like, that's the kind of thing. Apple seems uniquely positioned to do really well here, which I think is why so many people, even who have been burned by HomeKit, even who bought home pods that sucked, even who thinks Siri is terrible, like, you can still see why there is something Apple could

do here that is different and better. And again, the question is, there is this, like, mythical home device Apple's been working on for a while, and you keep writing about, you know, new. iPads come out with thread chips. And it's like, okay, we could do this. All the puzzle pieces are sitting right there. Apple just hasn't put them all together yet. And I don't know how long we're supposed to wait for that, which is a question we're going to come back to a couple of times in this.

Yeah, I think this spring is when we're going to start seeing some movement in Apple Home, which will be potentially a new home pod. I would definitely expect a new Apple TV, but I just don't think we're going to see new hardware until they've got the new Siri kind of nailed down. And we've seen that. That's the system that we've seen with Amazon and to some extent Google, they need the hardware to support this,

but to support the new AI features that they want to bring into the home. And I think we know that Apple's been struggling with bringing Siri to that level. So I think, and I don't think we'll get the fancy stuff right away. I think it's going to be a while until we see the cameras and maybe the robot arm smart display, if that really is a thing. I think we'll get maybe a nice update to the HomePod because what the mini is five years old now. And then what else? Yeah, at least.

And then a new Apple TV. I think they may change the name too, but I think Apple Home Hub would make a better name. Especially now they renamed the TV, right? Historically speaking, all that's going to happen is Apple is going to name more things Apple TV. So give it a minute. The home pod is going to be called the Apple TV. The iPad is going to be the Apple TV. Like this is just, this is what we're doing here. All right, let's get to the next question.

I think we're going to come back to Apple, I think, a couple of times here, which is surprising given the actual reality of Apple Smart Home. But let's move on. So the next question, Brendan says we often hear and talk about smart home automation products from Phillips, Hugh, Lifex, Google Nest, and several other consumer tech companies. But is there anything beyond those types of companies? Is there maybe a more professional level of smart home automation out there? And if so, how does it compare to the hues and nests we often hear about?

This question really like jumped out at me because I remember years ago when we were first talking about smart home stuff, there were these like high end sort of custom install. Somebody will come out to your house and like build a whole thing for you. And there was a real sense of like maybe this is a version of the smart home that is going to be meaningful to lots of people. I haven't heard about any of those companies recently. Are they still out there? Does this kind of high-end custom install professional smart home world still exist? Oh, definitely. But there has been a big shift for sure.

So there are, you probably remember some of these names that Control 4, Crestron, savant, and then Lutron. Those are sort of, those were the high-end home systems from the 90s and the 10s, and the noughts and the 10s. And they still are around. They are very expensive, although some, especially around Control 4, pricing has come down because what's been happening is there's been so much interest in the DIY smart home. So as the DIY smart home has kind of risen, the pro-install smart home has become, is trying to kind of come down so that it can attract a broader audience. So one of the problems used to be with these systems is that you would pay someone an awful lot to come and install everything.

And then you would have to pay someone every time you wanted to change something. which got very expensive. So like if you wanted to change your routine, you would have to pay, you know, $150 an hour for someone to go and do it for you. That they've started to sort of phase out and now you can control it a lot more yourself. There's this kind of do it for me,

middle ground that's sort of emerging as well. So what is interesting about this space is it often trickles down to the DIY smart home. Really high-end custom system. are pretty awesome. I'm not going to lie. But we're talking like $50,000 to $100,000 to have everything in your home lighting, shades, heating, you know, probably radiant flooring heating, like everything to be working in sync and no, you know, all very automated sensors, voice control, without having to sort of troubleshoot yourself or set things up. It's all done for you. But that,

That is a small market, very expensive market. There are some really interesting things that happen in that space. Like, for example, like circadian lighting, that's something that sort of trickled down from high-end system. So that's when your lighting adapts during the day. Like Crestron is one of the sort of more high-end options. And they have this sort of solar sink system where they actually have like a photosensitive, like a little device that actually measures the light outside and changes your lights inside to, how, you know, so that you feel like you have natural light throughout the day.

And your shades and everything will sort of work in sync. And it's all very seamless, but very expensive. So as I said, there are, those systems have become, I think, Control 4 in particular, and then also Savant, which is another one that's been around for a while, have become more approachable. You still have to pay a custom integrator. So with these systems, you don't like go to Questron and buy their system. you normally would hire what's called a home integrator.

And I actually spent a really fun week a couple years ago at CDIA, which is the custom electronic design and installation association trade show and got to sort of see and play with all the neat gadgets that they have in these systems, these high-end systems. And these custom integrators, you know, this is the show for them. They get to see all the new tech coming out. And so we're probably all familiar if you're into the smart home with Lutron Kassau. which is one of the sort of more rock-solid,

DIY smart home lighting systems. But Lutron has a whole other line, actually three lines of high-end, professionally installed systems. And they had like a whole room with buttons and labels and gadgets and gizmos. And I just spent like an hour in there. It's like, oh, this is so cool. I want all this in my home.

But we don't get any of that fancy stuff. But you can, but you have to go through. a custom integrator. And are these things mostly like a totally different class of gadget or is it really like I think the word integrator there is so fascinating because it seems like a big part of what these people do is they build the system for you in a way that works, which is such a like damning critique of the DIY smart home. But that in many cases, at least from what I can tell it's it's like the kind of thing you could in theory figure out how to do for yourself. It's just that somebody can build a system for you that works a lot better because they've developed software that makes more and all this stuff. Or do you go to CDia and there's like a whole class of gadget that is not even available to the normal public? The second. So none of that Lutron stuff you can get unless you get it through an integrator.

I see. I've written about it a couple of example of something that's very cool that you can't get unless you go through a professional installer. I've written about it a couple times on the verge, and they have like, they can put microphones sort of like throughout the home, so you have this sort of more ambient computing, which is, you know, something that a lot of the DIY systems are trying to achieve. And it's all local. I mean, it can connect to the cloud, but it all worked, you can have it all work locally. And this probably will feed into other questions that we have later.

But one of the benefits of these systems is they are, you know, ad-free. largely cloud-free, you can have cloud connections, but you don't really need them because the system is set up to work the way you want it. And that's why you hire the integrator. They're able to program everything for you, again, for a very large price. It's going to cost you. But it's not, I mean, it's not just lighting. It's also, and actually where most of this starts is whole home audio and video. So like high-end speaker systems, throughout a home, home theatres. They'll also set up your networking.

So you've got a solid foundation before you start your smart home. And then security is another big part of this. And there are some kind of in-between systems like Vivant is one, which is a security company, but they also do smart home. And they'll come and install everything for you. But yeah, it's what it is an interesting space to see sort of, I said some of the tech sort of will trickle down. like remotes, smart remotes that you can control your whole home from. And the Josh, Josh AI actually

showed off one a couple years ago that had full touchscreen. It was like, I really wanted this thing, but I think it was about $5,000 or something. So everything's very expensive. I will say, I just Googled the savant remote because I remember the first time I learned about savant, I think it was because they had this cool. Like, if you imagine a TV remote smushed with an iPod, it looked like that. And I love it very much. And I have to stop looking at this web page. I'm going to end up like ruining my whole life with smart home stuff. Let's move on to our next question. Let's do one more, and then we're going to take a rate.

This is a question. This is a delightfully specific product recommendation question. Let me play it for you. Hey, y'all. This is Evan. I've got a question for Jen. I have a smart house that my friends compare to the titular Disney Channel original movie Smart House.

And almost everything is automated using Apache of HomeKit, Home Bridge, and Home Assistant. My kitchen faucet is on the way out, and I'd really like to replace it with a smart faucet that can interface with Siri, or at least Apple Shortcuts, and can dispense an exact volume on demand. Asking, like, you know, for a cup of water or a liter of water to make my weekly chai.

The idea of, you know, not having to fumble for a measuring cup absolutely sounds amazing. But my question is, are there any smart faucets out there that are really worth the money? I haven't found any yet, and it seems like they're all kind of limited to some extent or another. It seems like a no-brainer that somebody would build this, but I've really learned a hard way that at home tech doesn't often conform to normal life. Thanks. I just want to say, first of all, the idea of a fuller. faucet connecting to Apple shortcuts fills me with both glee and rage in a way that I cannot describe.

I was screaming at the last episode. Like, when are you guys going to talk about serious shortcuts? No, I can't. I can't do it, Jen. But I brought this to you because I remember you at one point not that long ago being very excited about one of those like faucets that you just sort of tap on with your arm to get it to turn on and off. And I think that is like a genius innovation in kitchen gadgets. How far have we gone with smart faucets? Is there a good one out there? What do you have for Evan? We have not gone far, Evan. I'm very sorry. It is not, you will not find what you're looking for, sadly. Really? Just blanket statement. It's not out there. No, not the works with Apple Home or series shortcuts. You would have to go to Google or Amazon voice

assistance to get this functionality. But it does exist from both Cola and Moen. But it's interesting his comment about why hasn't more happened here. Both of these devices have been around for several years. Moen is on its second or third generation now. So is Cola. And there hasn't really been a lot of innovation here and not many other people following suit. Also kind of like appliances, there are only a couple big brands in this space anyway. But, But both Cola and Moen have the automated faucets, which, you know, you can wave to turn on and off. And I have a Moan one. And that's my favorite feature.

Just wave on and off. And I'll like go, when I go visit someone's house or go to an Airbnb or something, I find myself doing this. The faucet looking like a fool. And I love that feature. But you don't need a smart faucet to do that. You can just get a motion-activated faucet. the dispensing the exact amount of water is neat, especially if you have specific use cases. For example, baby bottles, you can have, you can sort of say, hey, Moen dispense, you know, 12 millimeters at 75 degrees and get the exact.

Oh, that is cool. That's kind of neat. But you can't do it with Apple Home. Moen does not work with Apple Home or works with Amazon and Google. Kola used to, but no longer does. and I think this goes back to our Apple conversation. Apple's moving away from HomeKit towards Matter. This is not part of Matter yet.

And it may be in the future, but I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. So if you want to use it through Apple Home, I don't really think it's worth getting either of these. They're very expensive. Like $800 to $800 to $1,000. You might be able to get one for around $6. But forcets also, nice faucets are expensive.

It's not just the smart that you're paying for, because it's all the high-end ones. So it's not your sort of bog standard delta that you go and buy from Home Depot for, you know, $150. These are these are fancy faucets. But the moan is great. You can do gesture controls to turn it hot, turn it cold. And one of the places in the home that is most handy to be hands-free is the kitchen. So, yeah, I mean, I love that functionality. But as said, you don't necessarily need a smart for that hands-free.

You can just use a motion-activated forcet. So unless you're willing to switch voice assistance, I'm afraid you're not going to find a solution here. And I'm sorry not to have, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Yeah. No, I think I think that's good advice. And I do think the idea of sort of how smart is it useful to be is forever a great question. in a smart home, right? So like, wave activated one good idea. Do you need to jump through all the hoops required to do the next step? Maybe not. Yeah. I don't find myself using that feature much.

And it's complicated nomenclature again. And I haven't tried it since I've been using the newer voice assistants, but it's like, hey, A, ask Moen to dispense one cup of hot water at 85 degrees. And it's like, but one feature I do really like about the moan is it has a freeze feature. And this is one reason, especially if you live in a very cold climate, that it would be worth maybe even putting these in all your rooms if you can, all your bathrooms and kitchens, is as soon as the temperature drops below a certain level, it will just trickle, automatically trickle water out of your taps for you. Oh, that's handy. That is handy. That sometime, sometime a fun smart home thing we should do is all of the like unknown, unseen, really useful smart home things, right? Because I think like going all the way back to the nest, the idea of this is a thing that you are not going to have to baby, but what it's going to do is actually use power at the cheapest times to use power is like perfect smart home.

Right. Like I think we should eventually get to the point where the answer to why do I need smart home stuff is because it is completely invisible to you and just does things that are cheaper and safer. better and easier, and you don't have to worry about them anymore. And I think sometime we're going to do the most boring Vergecast episode in history that is just about all the useful smart home stuff that you will never ever see again and is useful nonetheless. That, I mean, the functional side of the smart home really is where the value lies outside of the kind of fun gadgets. But yeah, it's not the sexy side, that's for sure. But it's the side that could save you a lot of money in the long run. Yeah, indeed. I mean, that was the whole case

for The Nest, right? It was like, this thing will pay for itself over time. And that was a pretty true story in a lot of ways. Yeah. All right. We're going to take a break and then we're going to come back. And we have maybe the question I'm personally most excited about to do next. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify.

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at Shopify.com slash vergecast. Go to Shopify.com slash vergecast. That's Shopify.com slash vergecast. All right, we're back. Time for more smart home hotline questions.

Jen, here is one I've been thinking a lot about. And a thing we've sort of talked loosely about before, but we're just going to get into it right now. This question comes from Ali, who says, curious about starter packs for smart homes. I have basically nothing save a HomePod mini. Can I buy like two or three smart bulbs and do some magic without anything else? What else could I get without a big infrastructure investment? I only want the gadgets. I love this question so much.

And I think I don't, I think there are probably a lot of ways into this, but I think a useful place to start is like, I don't want to plug anything new into my router. I don't want to buy any more equipment. I don't want to put a raspberry pie in a closet anywhere. What is the, like, what is the most sort of off the shelf? Like, if I'm just a person who wants to start doing some smart home things, do we have good ways into it without doing a bunch of sort of extra infrastructure investment? Well, yeah, especially as he already has a HomePod Mini. That definitely helps because most of, most systems require some kind of hub or controller in the home. Right. And, and, and, and, An echo or a nest something or in this case a home pod mini.

Yes. That's fair. Or like a bridge. There's that that's, and that's even with matter, that's something that we're still going to need. But because he has the HomePod mini, he can easily buy smart lights. That is, you know, smart lights are like the gateway drug to the smart home. It's the type of device that you don't really realize, you sort of think, why do I need smart lights? I can just flip a light switch.

But it's great point, Jen. Great point. Once you have them, you don't want to go back. This is like my family, my husband is on record, has not being a huge fan of the smart home, but we will go to a hotel, and he'll be in bed, and he'll be like, A, turn off the lights.

It's not going to work here. Do you just lie there next to him in bed and just go like, I just laugh. So, yes, that, and they're so easy. All you need to do with the HomeBob Mini, you can just pick up smart bulbs, they will connect directly to the HomePob Mini. You don't even need to download separate apps or anything and you can have smart lighting. If you want to get fancy with your smart lighting, and it does sound like he might want to get

a bit fancy because he says he wants the gadgets, you might want to then download the app for the smart light bulbs. So that can give you a bit more control, especially if you want color changing. I did actually bring some show and tell. So these are the newest huge. smart bulbs. Okay. I was just about to ask, is Hugh still the kind of, if you don't have any follow-up questions,

you just want some smart lights, buy Hugh lights? So, it's like the safest option. The caveat always used to be you need the bridge. Right. Which is a pain and that's sticking something in your router. But these are the new line of hue lights that work over the thread. So you can now just pair this directly with Apple Home without using a bridge. You used to be able to, you could also do that with Alexa.

using Bluetooth prior, but now with thread, you're able to pair this directly to Apple Home, which you didn't used to be able to do without the bridge. And these are their new essentials bulbs, which are much less expensive. I think for a four-pack, it's $60. There is a lot less expensive. It's a lot less expensive. They're not as, like, they don't have as strong color, like, CRI, and they don't get as bright. but for just some fun color-changing lights, something like these new hue essential bulbs,

these are 60 watt, so 800-lum, not super, super bright. If you want to go super bright, there are other options. Like there's a brand called Lincoln, L-I-N-K-I-N-D. They have a ton of matter lights. Govi, if you want some really fun stuff, because they're the ones with the crazy light shows that you can do. because, you know, if you want, that's the fun part about smart lighting if you're using colour. And Govi has also has some really fun like smart lamps. So if you don't necessarily want to stick a smart light bulb into your existing lamps,

you can sort of, you can buy light strips or smart lamps to sort of for fun. I think the Govi JBL speaker is a really fun device that we reviewed recently. That's a smart light that will connect to matter and add a little fun gadget. nice, gadget niceness to your home. And then motion sensors would be another thing that you might want to add because that is where smart lighting kind of feels quite magical, when you just walk into a room and the lights turn on, as long as when you wanted them to turn on. But so, I mean, in terms of a starter kit, though, like, and for fun stuff, I mean, we just talked about how there's the boring stuff, like the locks and the thermostats and the freeze, the leak detectors

and such. But for the fun stuff that's kind of, kind of wow, visitors and guests, then, you know, the lighting is definitely where it's at. Also, smart plugs so you can automate things in your home. That's always fun, like a coffee machine. Smart shades are another kind of fun wow factor. Those you generally need. Smart shades is a good one. Yeah, smart shades. And so it's a really nice convenience in your home. You won't, again, it's one of those things until you have it. It doesn't really sound that much. It doesn't sound like that necessary. But it also can save energy. It helps with lighting throughout the day. There's a lot of real benefits to smart shades. Robot vacuums would be the other kind of fun one. I know it sounds. It doesn't sound fun,

but they are. And especially if you, now with matter, you can connect several brands to Apple Home. So he'd be able to control everything using one app, which is nice. And then smart locks, smart video doorbells are also, those would be all things I would sort of consider as part of like if I want to get started with the smart home, those are sort of the key elements that people would probably want to add. And then a thermostat, if you're in like a home where you can install your own thermostat, that's not always possible for some people. But I think my, my, my read of things is that lights is definitely the one to start with. That seems that seems true. Like if you just want to do a thing in your smart home that is fun and useful, lights is probably the place to start. I think I'm starting to realize like smart plugs might be the next one. That actually there's a there's a sneaky number of things you can do just by having a pretty useful smart plug. And then I think after that like sort of the flood gates open. But in terms of just like I just want to do a couple of things and make my house more fun, it seems like lights and plugs I think are the are the place to start. Definitely. They're easy. They're inexpensive. And then if you get kind of excited and like them, then like you say, you've got sort of a foundation and you can start doing more. I mean, with plugs as well, like things like fans, space heaters, for safety elements. I would always use to plug my like hair devices, hair irons and curling irons and things into smart plugs. So that I make sure they turned off. Because you can set them to turn off like 30 minutes after something turned on, which is a really neat.

feature. Space heaters is, that's another good example. Oh, that's a good one. Because then you don't have to worry about having left it on and burning your house down. Yep. I have a space heater that lives right here next to me for like seven months out of the year that more times than I'm proud of, I have like woken up in bed at like two o'clock in the morning being like, oh my God, the space heater still on. Did I leave it on? And I have to just run downstairs to turn it off and make sure I didn't burn the house down. Yeah. That's a good one. All right, let's move on to the next one. Another very straightforward gadget recommendation. This is from Comron, Cameron, I'm sorry for butchering your name, but it says,

good morning. This is morning. Good morning, Jen. I had a smart home question. The NessProtect has been discontinued with first alert supposedly filling the smart smoke detector gap. Have you reviewed and or used the first alert solution? It's gotten mixed reviews.

Any help would be appreciated. What do we do with smart smoke detectors, Jen? This fits theoretically, perfectly into the like deeply unsexy, but very valuable smart home gadget, right? I am on the record many times as saying I think this is actually one of the most valuable smart home devices you can have. So there have been some sort of innovations in this space where you don't necessarily need a smart smoke alarm to know that your alarms are going off at home.

There's like smart smoke alarm listeners. Smart speakers can listen for your smoke alarms now, like a HomePod Mini. Will send me an alert when I'm away if one of my smoke alarms goes off. Oh, that's clever. Which is neat. But ultimately, if you want to know for sure whether it's a smoke alarm going off versus just some other noise that your smart speaker thinks is a smoke alarm, which has happened a few times to me. Smart smoke alarms just make an awful lot of sense because if no one hears your smoke alarm, they are not going to help you save your home from burning down unless you have a professionally monitored security system. So you want to know when your smoke alarms are going off if you're not home.

I was at Disney once and my neighbor called me and said, your smoke alarms are going on. And it's like, ah, if I'd had a smart smoke alarm at the time, I did, but I'm not going to say which one it was, because it didn't work. But anyway, she had heard that my alarm's going off. But, you know, you want to know if you're not at home and your smoke alarms are going off. So the Ness Protect was one of the best smart home gadgets ever made. And I don't think you'll find many people that disagree with me on that. And based on my inbox since Nest, Google, discontinued it, many people are very sad about the fact that it has gone away. And it was, they never really did much with it.

They didn't, it had a second generation because the first generation got in trouble for being, do you remember you could wave to silence it? And that was considered not smart because people often wave when they're worried or upset. Oh no, the house is on fire and the smoke alarm would stop. Anyway, so they had a second generation after that, but since then it's never really been updated. And then for some reason, Google decided to get rid of it. They discontinued it this year.

And they only last 10 years. That's a sort of federal law, I think, about smoke alarms with sealed batteries. So everyone's a slowly dying that they bought, you know, in the last six or seven years after they first came out. Mine gave up the ghost in August. My last one, I was very sad.

Because what was so great about it was, it was a smoke alarm. Smoke alarms are boring. You're moving into a new home. David, you're going to have to buy new smoke alarms. For every room in your home, they're ugly, they're annoying. You have to stick them somewhere that kind of is quite obvious, so they're quite an eyesore. Nespretex were very nice looking comparatively.

They had this lovely what was called pathlight feature. So when you walk under them at night, you would get this gentle glow that just kind of lit up your hallway or whichever room you were in. And they just, and they had this lovely method of being able to alert you to the smoke alarm going off before they started blaring. It would just be heads up. There's smoke in the living room. And, you know, so you could get the app out. Anyway, RIP. Well, this is good.

Now that we've suitably made everybody feel bad about these things being gone. Are there any good replacements? No. Really? Well, so... This is the most Google thing ever. They're like, we made a product everybody loves and has come to rely on literally to stay alive. And then we've taken it away.

Thanks, Google. I know. So what happened was they partnered, Google partnered with First Alert, which was the company that used... So they actually released a smart smoke alarm many years ago called the OneLink brand. So you had the One Link smart smoke alarms. They worked with Apple Home and Alexa. One of them actually had an Amazon assistant built in. So it was a speaker and a smoke alarm on your ceiling.

And you could play music and podcasts through your smoke alarm. That was a bit of an over-engineered piece of tech. I'm not going to lie. But those are all being discontinued. And Google partnered with First Alert, and they've released a product that's similar to the Nest Protect. But it doesn't have... the path light, which is probably the feature people enjoyed the most. It's also quite expensive,

$129, which is a lot for a smoke alarm, considering you can pick one up for about $40 at Home Depot. It doesn't have presence sensing, which the nest protected. But it does have a neat feature where you can just swap out your old one, your old nest, and leave the mounting plate up there and just stick the new First Alert. I think it's called the SC5 is the brand. You can just stick it back on the existing mounting plates. So they've taken that annoying step of having to drill holes in your ceiling out, but it doesn't replace the protect in the same way. It does have the heads up early warning, and I have tested that, and it hasn't worked for me. Oh dear. That's a bit, yeah, they've sent me a new one because they thought mine might be faulty. I would get an alert in the app,

But it didn't actually, I didn't get the audible noise, which is what you want. The voice that says heads up, the smoke levels are rising, do something before the alarm goes off. It does have the feature that can trigger a live feed from your Google Nest cams, though, which is nice. So if you connect it to your Google Home, Smart Home, and you have any Google Nest cams, if the smoke alarms go off, it automatically will start recording footage in your home. So you can check in and see what's going on. That's a good idea. But it only works with Google. It doesn't work with any other smart home platform, which, to be fair, the Nest only worked with Google.

So that's not a difference there. But then there are a couple other options out there. The Kiddy, which is the other big brand in the smoke alarm space, they have released one that works with Ring. But it's hardwired only. Whereas the Google, the first alert one, you can do battery ore hardwired, which is what the Protect also did. And then there's a sort of left of field company that came out with an alarm earlier this year called the place alarm. I wrote about this on the site. It's a company called GenTech, who you've probably never heard of.

They're actually responsible for the homelink system in cars. Oh, sure. Okay. And they also developed the first ever dual cell photoelectric smoke alarm. So they know their stuff. And they have all the same features that were in the Protect. So I was really excited about those. It has the night light.

It also has, they've added indoor air quality monitoring, gas detection, white noise. So you can put one of these in your baby's room and it will be a white noise machine. And one that has a camera. So you could actually use it like as a nursery cam, a nanny cam. Wait, Jen, this is such a good idea. It is quite. I literally had not, I had never heard of this until just now. This is such a good idea.

It's like a thing in a prominent place that you have all over your house anyway. And to put all of that stuff, that makes perfect sense to me. It is. It's an interesting product. The camera. Does it cost 9,000? Like, is this so, just put me out of my misery now. Does this thing cost so much money? No, actually.

No, sorry. That's for the base model, maving up to 300 for the camera. But you have the camera, the white noise machine, indoor air quality, temperature monitoring, all of the things that you would potentially want to know about in like a baby's room. Yeah. So, yeah, it's good. The place idea is they have like four different models for different places in your home. So they have one for the kitchen that has gas detection as well.

They have the one for the nursery. Then they have one with heat detection for like your garage. And that one also has a camera in it, I think. So yeah, it's an interesting company. It seems good. What's wrong with this? I'm into this? Well, it's only hardwired. That is a problem for a lot of people because unless you have newer homes,

your, you know, most old homes aren't hardwired for smoke alarms. It also does not work with any smart home platforms. So you're just going to be using it through the app and for things like viewing the video feed. But it has the nightlight and you can also

customize the colors of the nightlight, which is nice. They did say that they are working on smart home integrations and actually looking into Matter as well when matter gets certified for this. So I think they're, that's, aren't we all Jen, aren't we all? You know what I mean? That is, it's one to definitely consider. Because the most

important thing about smart smoke alarm isn't necessarily setting up automations with it, right? You don't need your smoke alarm. Yeah, I actually don't hate the idea of it as like a mostly self-contained thing. Right. Like it just has a job to do inside of my house. Yes. And I actually don't. As long as you have the app so that you then get alerts when you're away from home. That's the key. but it does have a motion sensor and a humidity and temperature sensor in. So in theory, you could use, if you did pair it with a smart home, you could use those as sensors in your home. I mentioned earlier with smart lighting, you know, having motion sensors is great, where

an obvious place to have motion sensors in your home is on the ceiling because that's where it's going to pick up the motion when you're walking around the house. So if you could, it would be nice if it integrated with a smart home, but it's not essential. And as it has built in cameras, the feature of the next. Protect that triggered the Google Nest cameras. Well, that's kind of moot because it's got a camera built in. But you also might not want a camera in your smoke alarm. So they have the option without too.

So yeah, this is a good option, but it's not a Ness Protect replacement if you want to use it with Google Home. Yeah. I really, I love the smart home trend of the sort of sneaky gadget that they're like, okay, it's like the lamps that IKEA has been working on that are also Sono speakers. Like, those lamps for some reason are always hideous. They've just made a series of really incredibly ugly lamps. But they made one that was just like the speaker rectangle that you could just put into a bookshelf.

And it would look like a speaker or it would look like books, but it was a speaker. And I'm like, hide smart home stuff in my house. And I think there's so much cool potential there. Actually, that was unintentionally a perfect segue to the next question. I did not do this on purpose. I'm not actually this good at my job. But the next question we got comes from B. And the question is just, I love this question.

Is it better to buy the device that doesn't function as well but looks great in the house or buy the device that is stellar but looks insane to normal people? This is a question close to my heart. This is your life. Where do you land? Well, I just have to make a note that IKEA did discontinue those sonos speakers, David. I'm sorry. I know, it's true. It's because they were so ugly.

If they had made them non-hideous, it would have been fine and they would have sold lots of them. Yeah, that's true. No. This is, and this kind of goes to your point. that there are, the idea of putting multiple functions into one device that looks good is appealing in the smart home, but I've rarely seen anyone successfully pull it off. It is something that a lot of companies have tried, but to the point of, is it better to buy a device that doesn't function as well, but looks good versus it looks insane. Most smart home gear really does look quite insane.

I'm going to lie. And this has sort of been like a personal crusade of mine when I talked to companies like, just make it look nice. This is something that's coming into people's homes. Too much of this tech is developed by tech companies, not home design companies. This is why IKEA has actually been somewhat successful in the smart home space because they've actually managed to have come up with a few products that look decent and have smart features. But they haven't gone as far into that yet as I was hoping. They at one point were developing a lot of of furniture with like built in charging and sensors, but then they kind of start with all of that. Yeah, it's, it's tough. I think it's, it's, it's that I think this goes back to the original

question about integration. So the high end systems look really nice, but they don't have all the whizbang features. So for example, like door locks right now, I've tested some smart locks that you kind of wave to open or use facial recognition. They have. have all these really kind of cool high-tech features, but they look like a piece of Star Trek equipment on your front door. And most, that's, that's an issue, especially if you're, if you don't live alone and spousal approval factor can be a real issue in the smart home. So Google has done a really good job here. Not, I mean, a lot of their products are designed to fit into people's homes. Maybe people who live in California predominantly. But, you know, they have, they have, they have

They have options with nice colors and tones and fabric and touches. So like the smart speakers, the Google smart speakers, definitely the original ones looked a lot better than most of the echo show devices and the echo spot speakers. They're doorbells. They have different colors. They just released a lock, a smart lock that they're working with Yale on that also isn't just a slab of black plastic on the door. So there are some people, some companies that are doing a good job here. And then the legacy companies that are creating products for the smart home like Moen and Cola with Fawcett's, Schleg and Quickset with Doorlocks, they have, they've been keeping a little bit, you know, they have a little nicer design aesthetic. But overall, yeah, if you want the whizbang features, you want the facial recognition or the palm to wave to unlock, or you want the sort of high-tech.

air purifier. Like I've been testing an air purifier from Dreamy that looks like a Dalek in my house. Do you remember Dalek from Doctor Who? Sure. It has a giant head that moves around and follows me and directs air at me like fresh air. But it's big and gold and giant and it's like half the size of my daughter. It's like this is not something I want to put in my home permanently. I want nice things in my home. I actually, I land on the side of like I think if you have to pick, like, if the question is, should you pick the one that works well or the one that looks good? You should pick the one that works well. But I think on, I mean, don't buy a gadget that sucks, right? Like, if you want something pretty, just buy the pretty thing.

But I do think there is a spectrum of like, I think it's easier to get nicer looking things that don't do as much. Like you can buy a locks are a really good example. I'm like, go with the stuff. Don't get all the features. just get something that looks good and does the thing you need it to do. You don't need all the other necessarily need all the fancy gadget stuff. Yeah, that's where I think to me, like you mentioned door locks. To me, that's the perfect example.

Like get the door lock that does the least and looks the most like a door lock. And I think you will, in most situations, end up happier than getting the one with all of the wild features that, like you said, looks like a Star Trek gadget. Exactly. Yes. But my main takeaway here is I want gadget companies to start making. better looking tech, please. Because that's how you're going to,

that's the number one issue outside of like interoperability, I would say, about smart home tech is it doesn't look good. We need more, we need more good looking tech, please. 100% agree. All right, we need to take one more quick break. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Upwork. The days of doing it all, all by yourself, are over.

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And we're going to kind of in a certain way. we started. This is the other most popular question, and I think is like just directionally fascinating. And I would boil all of these questions down to one that we got from Matthew, which says, how much do you value committing to a single ecosystem? With multiple ecosystems, do you juggle apps or try to unify with something like home assistant? And then there's another one, again, we got a lot of this same question. Another one from, I believe it's Rogin, I'm sorry if I'm pronouncing that wrong, who says, at what point will the AI and ad-filled options brought forth by the big companies drive people to prefer something open source like home assistant. And the spirit behind all of these questions, I think, is so interesting, which is like this, we're clearly in a middle space of the smart home where you can see what a lot of the stuff is going to look like, but a lot of it is messy. A lot of it is unfinished. Am I, am I stupid to cast in with one of these in-progress platforms? Or should I just go to what might sort of feel like the correct ultimate end of it, which is just that I, I do it myself is something like Home Assistant. And there are a lot of big Home Assistant fans at the Verge. You, I think, included, we've had Paulus on the show from Home Assistant. Like, we're all fans, but I think this question of like, should I play the platform game or should I

just build the thing myself from the jump is a really interesting one. What do you think? So it depends on your level of commitment. I mean, I do, I really like what Home Assistant does, but it is a bigger investment of your time. It's got a lot easier than it was originally for sure, but it is still, it doesn't have the polish and the usability of most of the sort of big name platforms. But I think there's a core misconception with this question about committing to a single ecosystem that, well, it's not a misconception,

but there has been a change in that you used to have, to pick your platform and you used to have to choose just HomeKit devices or just devices that worked with Alexa. But with Matter, you can choose a platform and if you buy Matter devices and you decide I don't like this platform or this platform starts charging me a monthly fee, so just to turn my lights on or to change my thermostat, then you can just take your devices to another platform. And this is sure, but we're in like the slow march of that happening. Yeah. That is not, that's not yet true. Like right now, if you're like, I want to do a lot of stuff. in the smart home, you are going to have to pick a platform.

Yes. And if you, at this stage, you are quite limited by the platform that you choose. So, for example, my home, I run on multiple platforms to get the functionality that I want. You can do that. And then you can use a platform like home assistant to tie it altogether. I wouldn't necessarily. So one of the things that Powloss often says, and I think he probably even said this when we talks to him on the show is that home assistant is no one's first smart home platform,

but it's what they kind of graduate to once they hit the limitations of the other platforms because you can do so much more with home assistant. It's a much more powerful system. But for just basic, like you just want your lights to turn on or you want to have your door lock off, you know, at a certain time of night and your thermostat to adjust, you can use one of these platforms a single ecosystem quite easily. And it's a much better experience using one platform than it is using five different apps. That's the real frustration I think that a lot of people have. And I think there are very few, we live in a little tech bubble.

There are very few people that actually use these smart home platforms. I think a lot of people that have smart devices have these sort of, they picked up a ring doorbell because they wanted to check on their packages. They got a MyQ garage door so they could close their garage door. They got some Phillips Hughes smart light bulbs. And they control them with three different apps. And they don't put a folder full of apps. Yes.

Not a unifying system. I got 100% agree. And I think that's a frustrating. But I do think that is where we currently are for most people. Yes. We are. So, yeah, I mean, I do think there is value in committing to a single ecosystem. I think it will make your life a lot easier.

But it does seem like what you would say is the thing you should absolutely. Absolutely 100% commit to right now is matter, right? Like, if you're starting from nothing, you should not buy non-matter products. I completely agree. Okay. That's what you're saying, right? I'm putting words into your mouth, David. It's a, it's a nightmare that I just said that sentence out now. But it does seem like, I do think, like, we're still in a moment where you can build something really haphazard if you want to. Yeah. But the, the, even if it's not all there yet, the only future-proof thing you can do is buy matter right now. That is, yes, very much so.

Or some sort of local control. So if you have, if there's a device you want that doesn't exist in the matter ecosystem, look for it to work over Z-Wave or Zigby and not necessarily be a reliant on the cloud or Bluetooth even so that you have that option for local control. And then to the point about the AI and ad-filled options, which is definitely feels like there's sort of reached a peak in the last. few weeks, we had the Samsung bringing ads to its fridges and the Echo shows beginning to show a lot of ads. I do think that we are getting to a tipping point that I'm concerned that it is going to really turn a lot of people away from the smart home.

The AI side of things has so much potential, I believe, in the smart home. And I do think I want to see companies explore this and implement interesting solutions to make the smart home easier, to do things like the boring smart home stuff, like managing your energy use, making sure your water systems aren't freezing, you know, all that sort of, as you said earlier, the home running on itself, running on its own for you so that you don't have to worry about it. That is something that AI could definitely help us do. But the way too many companies are approaching it now is, oh, we have finally figured out a way to monetize the smart home without selling hardware because hardware is hard. And the software has, you know, a lot of these companies like Google and Apple and to some extent Amazon, they know software. They want to do that. They don't want to do the hardware as much.

And this is a way they can see to get some value. because to date, I don't think really any company has really cracked the business model of the smart home other than these high-end systems that charge a lot of money that we talked about at the beginning. And the beauty of the DIY smart home is that you spend the money up front, you have these great gadgets, they get better over time, hopefully, with updates. But now we're starting to see this walk back with companies starting to charge more, Even Google Home is now more expensive to use with its new AI features. You have to pay more.

We're seeing this across the board. And the subscription creep and the advertising creep is going to be a real turnoff for a lot of people. And I think mean that the smart home just is going to stall out again unless we can find a better solution here. Isn't it amazing how much the advice is just build good products people like? Listen up smart home manufacturers. Build good products, people like, and maybe it'll be fine. Yes, I know. I mean, the smart home business model has been a tough one.

I've talked to a lot of manufacturers, and they're like the recurring revenue, but you need to offer value with your recurring revenue. You know, if you offer a subscription, fine, but don't offer a subscription for basic features. Offer a subscription for something that I might want to pay for, but I want to be able to turn on my thermostat without paying you. Yeah. No, I'm with it. All right. And I have now said nice things about matter, which means we have to stop here because horrible things are about to start happening. This has been great. Thank you to everybody who sent emails and hit us up on social and called the hotline. As always, the emails, Vergecast to the verge.com. The hotline is 866, verse 11. You can find Jen on social. You can find me on social. We're everywhere. Jen, thank you for doing this. We're going to come back next week. We got way more stuff to talk about and you are going to solve my specific problems because I, host this show and I get to make people do whatever I want. But thank you, Jen. This is really fun. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Always, always a fun time with you, David. Appreciate it.

I should say before we go to, thank you to everybody who sent in questions, everybody who called, keep the stuff coming because we're going to do this show next week all about my stuff. But if you have other questions that we can answer in the course of talking about how to smarten up your house, I'd love to hear from you. 866, version 1-1 is the hotline. Vergecast to theverge.com is the e-mail. Get at us. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. I will be back with Neely on Friday to talk about all of the news of the week because stuff just keeps happening.

We have a lot of AI news. We have a lot of interesting AI policy news to talk about. All kinds of stuff going on. We will get to all of it. We will see you then. We'll see you then.