Smart Home
A Smart Scale Is Most Useful When You Read the Trend, Not the Number
How body-composition scales and wellness bands differ, what to check before buying, and where the Hume Pod and screenless Hume Band fit.
5 min read
Smart Home
Smart Home
Smart Lighting Can Completely Change Your Home Here’s Where to Start
Most people think upgrading their home means buying new furniture, repainting walls, or taking on expensive renovations.
5 min read
Smart Home
Lutron Caseta Diva Dimmer Kit: Nothing Has Been Taken Away, and Nothing Has Been Added Either
Home Depot sells the Diva kit for $124.95. Lutron publishes no price of its own, no subscription, and, four years into Matter, no Matter support.
5 min read
Smart Home
Smart Home for Beginners in 2026: What to Buy First, and the One Device to Skip
A first smart-home purchase in an order that makes sense, with prices from the manufacturers' own stores, one device we would tell a beginner to avoid, and the reason cameras come last.
6 min read
Smart Home
Smart Home Gadgets Worth It: The Ones Their Own Makers Have Not Already Beaten
One test applied to eight products: is this still the best version of itself inside the manufacturer's own current range? Several popular recommendations fail it outright.
7 min read
Smart Home
After Checkout: What ecobee’s Smart Thermostat Premium Bills You For, and Why the Aqara Hub M3 Bills You Nothing
A thermostat and a hub are not alternatives. What they share is the question of what arrives on your bill after the box is open, and only one of them keeps sending one.
5 min read
Smart Home
What Washington Has Actually Done About Wyze and TP-Link, and What It Has Not
A camera and a four-pack of plugs are not rival purchases. They share one 2026 question: which brand is in trouble with a regulator, and which is only in trouble with its own customers.
6 min read
Smart Home
Wyze Cam v4: A $37.98 Camera and a Subscription That Tripled in March
Wyze retired its multi-camera Cam Plus bundles in March 2026 and raised the annual price by half. The hardware is fine. The terms around it changed after people bought.
6 min read
Smart Home
Aqara Presence Sensor FP2: The $50 Sensor in the Same Catalogue Has the Protocol This One Lacks
Aqara's store sells the FP2 at $82.99 and lists its Matter support as No. The FP300, announced at $50, does Matter over Thread and Zigbee.
5 min read
Smart Home
Pull the Router Out: Which of the Sonos Era 100, the Lutron Caseta Kit and the Nest Hub Still Does Its Job
A speaker, a dimmer kit and a smart display are not rivals, and scoring them against each other is meaningless. Ask instead what each one can still do with the connection gone.
6 min read
Smart Home
Sonos Era 100: A $219 Speaker From a Company Still Working Off May 2024
The Era 100 launched at $249, was cut to $199 to rebuild trust after the app failure, and now sells at $219. The speaker was never the problem.
5 min read
Smart Home
One Went Up 40 Percent, One Fell From 849 Dollars, One Has No Published Price: Hue, Roomba and Kasa in 2026
The Roomba j7+ is discontinued and iRobot was sold out of bankruptcy. Set beside Philips Hue and Kasa, it shows how differently prices have moved in this category since 2025.
5 min read