Build a home that runs itself — without the gadget graveyard.
Smart Home
HomeKit support is a routing fact, not a privacy guarantee. Here is which devices in our fact base reach Apple's Home app, on what terms, and where the Aqara M3 forces a choice.
Smart Home
A hub and a lock are not alternatives. The question they share is what a standard printed on a box guarantees inside a house, and the 2026 answer is less than the packaging implies.
Smart Home
The specification and the ecosystems that implement it have come apart. A Matter logo tells a buyer which document a device was certified against, not what will work in their house.
Smart Home
Aqara markets the M3 as an edge hub built for local control. PCWorld unplugged the modem and control timed out. Aqara's own store shows two prices for it.
Smart Home
None of these three is an alternative to the others. All three, though, have had something taken away from people who had already paid, and that is a buying signal.
Smart Home
There has never been a fifth-generation full-size Echo. Here is the range Amazon really sells, what the August 2026 price rise did to it, and what Alexa+ costs.
Smart Home
Ring sells two different cameras that a search for 'Video Doorbell Pro 2' can land on, at $129.99 and $249.99. Here is how to tell them apart, and what a $37.98 Wyze Cam v4 does instead.
Smart Home
iRobot cut the j7+ in March 2025, warned on going concern days earlier, filed Chapter 11 in December and emerged in January 2026 owned by Shenzhen Picea Robotics.
Smart Home
A four-pack of smart plugs and a set of light panels are not alternatives. They do share a claim printed on both boxes, and it means something different on each one.
Smart Home
Three days after this was published, Google starts taking Google Assistant away. The Nest Hub still shows 99.99 dollars on Google's store and has been out of stock since August.
Smart Home
August's Wi-Fi Smart Lock and eufy's S330 doorbell get compared as though you would pick one. You would buy both, or neither. The useful question is what each does when it stops working.
Smart Home
If you cannot open a wall box, most of the smart switch category is off the table. Bulbs, plugs and battery devices are what is left, and some of those still leave marks.