Apple Smart Display Delayed, Google Nest Woes, & Knog Scout Review
36:47 Share

Welcome everybody to another exciting episode of HomeKit Insider. You've got me, your host as always, Andrew O'Hara, and I'm riding solo this week, but fret not because we have a jam-packed episode per usual, it seems. There always seems to be more smart home stuff to talk about. So let's go ahead and get right into it.

Starting off, I do want to give a little plug to a recent video. It actually went up over the weekend. If you're listening to this anytime during the week, it went up on Sunday. I did a whole video breaking down some of my favorite apps to use Apple standby modes. If you do like using that, whether to control smart home accessories as a smart display, anything like that, go check out that video. I've put a link for it inside of the show notes. Makes it easy to find.

Getting to the actual news, iOS 18.4 was fully released. We had a full release of 18.4, and then we had the beta of iOS 18.5, though fortunately there was nothing in that that we really need to get into.

18.4, a bunch of stuff. The flagship feature that all of us care about would be robotic vacuum cleaner support inside of the Home app, as well as matter support for smoke detectors and CO detectors. That is also included in that.

As far as what vacuums support this, this has been, every part of this has been a bumpy rollout, to be frank. I mean, between what is Apple going to support, then there's like multiple versions of Matter that have robotic vacuum cleaners. There's 1.2 and 1.4. It is a lot, and we have talked about it excessively on this show, so I'm not going to dwell on it, but this is what I can tell you right now as far as where things stand.

Starting out, the Ecovacs update is available for the X8 Pro Omni. I was also told that the T50 series, I want to say, also will be rolling out right away. And then after that, we will get the X2. So the X2 and the X2 combo, they would be getting MatterSupport after that. Beyond that, we'll have to see. So that is all from Ecovacs, the D-Bot line. That is the one that I tested originally.

But if we're looking outside of Ecovacs, Roborock is also supporting Matter. This is also weird, but they put out the firmware that enables Matter for their new Seros 10 and 10R, but there's no accompanying app update. So I have the firmware on my robot, but I cannot test it.

because I do not have a new version of the app. So that should be out. They tell me that they should see the app update hitting by April 8th. So Tuesday, Tuesday of this week, April 8th, we should have that app update as well as the firmware to enable it on the latest Roborock models.

The other models that will be supported, again, right now we have the Saros 10 and 10R with it. Then we should be getting the Z70 when that comes out this spring. So it's not out now, but that model should launch basically with Matter. The S8 Max Ultra and the Q-Revo Slim, they will be coming next. And then we'll have even more models. I think the Curve is on there, the Q-Revo Curve, Q-Revo Edge, all of those will be

I think inside of that, and then more models to follow, though there was no specifics on exactly which ones those are. But yeah, lots of Roborock ones, lots of Ecovacs ones launching basically right now with Matter. And then we're going to have updates from SwitchBot as well as many other manufacturers I've been speaking to. More to come. So stay tuned if you are excited to find out if your robotic vacuum cleaner will support Matter.

Now we have some less fun news, which again feels like something that I have repeated on this podcast umpteen times. We have yet another timing update on Apple's smart display. Okay, so Bloomberg put out its usual weekend roundup on some Apple news, and this one isn't great. Basically, Mark Gurman is saying that Apple is now looking to potentially delay its smart display again.

into 2026 all because it is waiting on Apple intelligence in the revamped version of Siri to finally launch.

This is such a bummer and a letdown for so many reasons. We all know it's supposed to launch this spring, the spring of 2025. And then there was, you know, okay, they were pushing it because they wanted to have really nice synergy with like iOS 19 and the UI design changes. And I'm like, okay,

Fine. That way you don't leak anything with the smart display and the smart display doesn't have to get revamped around dub dub to mesh with that. So fine. Do it right after that. So we thought it could be coming like right after dub dub, maybe even to the fall. It'll be coming out of the iPhone event. Now, 2026 is looking like more and more a possibility. Here's my take on this. Few people will be buying this specifically for Apple intelligence. Right.

or next gen Siri. I think you're going to have a good core group of smart home enthusiasts that are going to be excited by this and, and home pod buyers that are going to be buying this anyway, because people are buying home pods with, without caring about Apple intelligence. Would things like that be nice? Yes. Um,

but they're still selling plenty of home pods without that. And this adds a lot more value to it between the doorbell and camera and security situations and FaceTime calls, the new recipes in the food app. Like we have a bunch of other options

you know, reasons to buy this besides just Apple intelligence. If they launched with what they have now for Apple intelligence, as in like just chat GPT integrations and things like that, be able to visually show some stuff on a smart display, I would still be happy with it because it would still allow more easy smart home control as well as other benefits. I still think it is worth doing. I, I, I don't think like people are going to be on the fence. Like, well,

If it doesn't have Apple intelligence, I'm not buying it. I get it. Apple feels like they're behind, and in many ways, they are. But everyone else is struggling with this, too. I mean, Amazon was supposed to be launching their new version of its smart assistant in waves and stuff. And I've heard almost nobody actually having access to it. I don't think I've seen...

Anyone have access to it yet? So it's not like this is out there and everybody is doing it already. It's coming in waves. And I think Apple could launch this now, still be successful, and then add a new version of Siri later. So please consider that Apple consider bringing it out the second half of this year.

Let people start really getting into the smart home. Upgrade it next year to give more value to it. As Apple looks to introduce more possible hardware between a facial recognition, doorbell, and security cameras. So we'll see. Just not the exciting news that I was hoping to hear regarding the timing on Apple's smart display.

Going over to things that are getting killed off, Google is ending support for its Nest Protect as well as its lock. And I'm not entirely surprised because it is Google and they have a long history of introducing products and then quickly killing them off only a few years later when they have some people that like them but not nearly enough to satiate their demands. So I was a big fan of the Nest Protect product

uh, smoke detector. I had the first model and I thought it was great. It was a really nice, smart smoke detector. And, uh, you could, the, the problem that it had at launch was that you could wave it to hush. Now me all naive. I thought this was a great feature. That was so cool. I could wave at it and it would, it would hush itself. So I'm like, I'm cooking and I could wave and it would shut up. But here's the problem with that.

People also tend to frantically flail when there's a fire or they're trying to put out a fire and that would cause the smoke detectors to go to be quiet when they shouldn't. So they literally had to like recall them and took out that feature. It was a little bit better, but bummer, but it is still a great product and I still really liked it and I had it in that apartment for the longest time.

Until I more modernized and got a few different ones down the line. But I am still super disappointed that they're killing this thing off. It was just another part of the Nest line that is going away. And their replacement is not nearly as good. And I have a lot of problems with it. So they're actually partnering with Resideo to make a new model. And Resideo is basically doing everything. But this has some like nice tie-ins to the Google community.

Basically, it works with the Nest Protect weave that they have, the Google's weave, which is using thread, but it talks to different Google devices. So that way, when there's something detected, it can pass that around to your other interconnected alarms. There's both a wired and a hardware wired version and a battery powered version that's going to be available. It's coming out later this year, $129.00.

It's going to be losing the presence sensor that could be used with Google Home. It's losing the nightlight feature. It's also kind of expensive at $129. And the kicker, it won't support Matter. So they're replacing, I would have preferred had Nest come out with a nice...

really nice version again that supported Matter and it could play with everyone and I would consider upgrading to that in a heartbeat for some of my locations but instead we're getting this like still expensive hardback version from Resideo that won't play nice with anybody else unless you're using Google Home so I'm very bummed by this and

Similarly, there is a new Yale lock that they are partnering to do. So it is a similar aesthetic as many of the Google products. So it'll pair well with like your doorbell if you have like the Nest doorbell because they're still going to sell that for the time being. Who knows for how long?

But it'll come out this summer for $170. It has black, gray, and white color options. Now, the good news here is this one is matter over thread. So if you look at that and you give a little head tilt and you think, I do kind of like the look of that one, you can use this with Apple Home that way, though there will be no HomeKey support.

Still, Matter over Thread, HomeKey won't be there. And there is a Wi-Fi hub if you need to do that. If you are using Apple Home and you have like a Thread border router, whether it is like your Nanoleaf devices, HomePod, Apple TV, those will all work to give you that basically the same thing as a Wi-Fi hub without having to need that.

So some good stuff here with the lock. The lock isn't terrible. It's made by Yale. So like I like Yale, good stuff there. I have bigger issues with the smoke detector. That is just a, a,

poor replacement for the nest protect. Now nest protect, we'll be getting manufacturer support and updates through a 10 year anniversary of its manufacturer date. If you are some of the people who bought them early on, you're definitely going to be needing to replacing them soon. And you're going to have to go with a third party option. So,

you're going to have to look for different things. Personally, I was a huge fan of the first alert safe and sound. It was great. It was literally an airplay speaker built in to your smoke detector, carbon monoxide detector, all of that.

And, uh, there was also a light in it too. So you could control the light. You can control a speaker. I can play something like on my Apple TV in the living room and then cast the audio through my smoke detectors through the home. So like I'm doing laundry. I could like walk back to the laundry room and I can still hear the movie playing like in the hallway as I'm going and moving like clothes around and stuff. I love that. We have one of those. It's great.

Those I actually asked them about at CES this year and like, no, we still got it. It's still totally available, still a thing. And I was looking it up for this story and no, it is definitely discontinued. It says on their website discontinued. So unless they discontinued it quickly after CES, because they do say much of their one link line of smoke detection is going away and slowly being discontinued.

Perhaps this was just early on that list, but they had reassured me at CES it was there and you could buy it. Now you can't. It is definitely discontinued, which is a bummer. And now I'm not sure they have anything in the smoke detector space that works with Apple Home or with Matter. Yeah, I vented a little bit about that. Okay, moving on.

Apple did release a new app for HomeKit this week, but it's not really something that you're going to use. It's actually a developer app. So nothing really for you guys to care about. Developers will use it in the creation of smart home accessories. There's like a QR code validator in there, but not much other information that we can glean from this. Aaron Pierce, I want to say, I want to get his name right. So I'm clicking the link to make sure I actually know who it is that I'm talking about.

Uh, cause there is Aaron here. This is Aaron, Aaron, Aaron P six one three. Okay. We'll go with that. It's in the show notes, but he was able to spot this, uh, as one of Apple's unlisted apps, but it's always interesting to see. And Apple's clearly producing more developer tools for people to make more smart home accessories, which is always going to be a good thing.

Now, speaking of things that you will see, because you're not going to see that app, you will see your sales going up thanks to Shopify. That's right. We should take our break. Thanks, Shopify, for sponsoring this episode. I love Shopify for so many reasons, and I have talked to you guys all about them many, many times. But let's just hit a couple of the highlights, things that we love best from a consumer point of view.

It gives me that credibility, or it gives that site that credibility, and it gives me that confidence when buying from a website. Just this Christmas, I was looking for sheets for our bed, and we need some kind of weird ones that have like a split-top king situation, and there's not that many out there. And I found some ones that look pretty nice, but I'm like, I don't know this site. Are these good sheets or these bad sheets? And am I giving my money to a real company, or am I going to get scammed? Because it could be scammy. And next thing I know, I'm picking out some sheets. I put them in the car. I was debating, and as soon as I saw the car, I'm like...

Yeah, I'm going to complete this purchase. I'm going to complete this purchase because it was a Shopify website. So I knew I could trust them. I knew where the money was going, my credit card information, and I wasn't going to get scammed. I was protected. I wasn't giving my card information that was going to get swiped by this company. It was all through the secure Shopify checkout. So I felt much better about that.

You also have the benefit of things like Apple Pay. There's also Google Pay, Shop Pay, things like that. So that's a benefit too. And as I recently learned, Shop Pay can give you money, like money, money. And you can take that money and spend it on other Shopify websites through the Shop app. Who knew? I didn't know this. My wife, who apparently shops enough to have accumulated a good amount of Shop money,

was able to use this on like Aviator Nation, which is a really nice, they have some really cool clothes. I got like an SNL 50th anniversary shirt that I was through them. And the shop app actually had a discount going through Aviator Nation. And then she was able to use her shop bay, her shop money and get even a bigger discount. So she was like able to find brands that she loved and get discounts on them. So tons of benefits here from a consumer point of view.

If you're the business, why do you care about some of those things? Aside from the fact that it makes happy consumers, I like shopping at shops that you shopify, even if I, as the consumer, may not even realize that is why. But on the actual website side of things, it makes things really easy to manage.

Manage your inventory. You can manage it between an online store and a physical retail location. Ship to store. You can also handle shipping costs. Which countries do you want to ship to? You can pick and choose which ones. It'll automatically calculate tariffs and duties and taxes and all of those things for you so you don't have to do it. You can focus less on those things and focus more on running your business and creating cool products. You can sell digital goods, physical goods,

physical goods, all these types of things. You can give out gift cards and promo codes, all these benefits to actually running your website and making it successful. They have like the incredibly good converting checkout, which you probably heard all the reasons why I like that, but there's a lot of reasons to use Shopify. Many of the tech sites that I talk about on this show use Shopify, um,

Moment, Allbirds, Rothy's, Brooklyn, and I said Moment. There's Nomad in there. There's so many in 12 South. They use them. There is a reason for all of that. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout that they all use with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash homekit, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash homekit to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash homekit.

Also, do you know who also else uses Shopify? Fast Growing Trees. True story. Both of our sponsors hopping on that Shopify bandwagon. Fast Growing Trees is also a sponsor for the episode, and I love them just as much. I am picking out our stuff for this year. As we speak, I have a tab open on my browser, and I'm trying to find bushes and stuff that are compatible with chickens, which is a very specific problem, and I don't think they help with that, but they have so many options that, yeah, I can find some that will suffice.

So fast growing trees is wonderful. They are the biggest online nursery in the U S with thousands of different plants and over 2 million happy customers. They have all the plants, your yard needs like fruit trees, privacy trees, flower trees, shrubs, and so much more. Whatever plants you're interested in, fast growing trees has you covered. Find the perfect fit for your climate and space.

And I think that's key because I'm someone who likes to plant things, likes to have a good garden and everything, but I don't always know. Like what trees, what apple trees are hardy and good here or what strawberry plants or blueberry bushes? I don't know. When you go into fast growing trees, you can actually tell it where you are and it tells you what zone you're in and then you can filter by just the plants and bushes and everything else that makes sense for where you are.

And if you do something like order a tree, you might not get that tree right away. They'll actually wait until it is the appropriate time for you to plant that tree. Then you'll get that tree. They will send it to you when it makes sense so you can put it in your yard and it's going to flourish. Personally, right now, I have like five trees that I've got from Fast Growing Trees.

There's two cherry trees and I think three apple trees. And one of the apple trees was something I had never seen before. And I can't shut up about it in several since I got it, but it's a five in one apple tree. Like literally they took one tree, then grafted on the branches of four others to give you five apple varieties on one tree.

How has that not been a thing other places? This is brilliant. This is so cool. I love it. It's so, it's amazing. Right now, everything in the yard is blooming. So like that five in one tree has like all these different colored leaves on it. It's like the one has like red leaves, but I've got like Granny Smith, Fuji, Gala, and one other maybe Pink Lady on that or something. There's all sorts of different ones. So it's amazing and just really cool to see the colored leaves coming on it right now as it's blooming, but they're all doing fantastically well.

So yeah, fast growing trees, so many things on there. We're getting some bushes to good landscape around our chickens, and then they have everything else that you could possibly need for your yard shipped directly to your house at great prices. So be sure to check them out. If you haven't already, you can do so this spring. They have the best deals for your yard. Do half off on select plants and other deals. And listeners to our show get 15% off their first purchase when using the code home kit.

at checkout. That's an additional 15% off at fastgrowingtrees.com using the code HOMEKIT at checkout. Fastgrowingtrees.com, code HOMEKIT. Now is the perfect time to plant? Use HOMEKIT to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. Now, next up in the news, Sonos is dropping prices. That's always a good thing.

Sonos has been hit with so many issues, right? We've had the app updates that have struggled. And then after that, we had problems with internally. There was turnover going on. And then the product that I was most excited for, its new smart TV situation streaming box that had been very close to being launched.

axed at the last minute. And I am heartbroken because I was really excited to see that. And I thought if anything, it would give Apple more competition in the premium space and it was not going to come to market anymore. So that's a huge bummer. And now some good news, the arrow 100 smart speaker and entry-level race soundbar. They both now cost only one 99. So for the air $150 price cut, uh,

That was originally like $250. And then the soundbar is $80 off, which I think is much better. The Ray soundbar came out like three years ago. Great soundbar, but it was a little high for where the market had come to because so many people had released soundbars. So while I was really on board three years ago, but without really any price drop and so many other competitors coming into the space, a permanent $80 price drop was warranted.

But this is great. So Arrow 100, now $199. Ray Speaker, also $199 or Soundbar $199. Happy for both of them. Like, great updates for those products in terms of pricing.

Also, I found this really interesting. They are running a Trello board for their app updates. So if you are curious, like, how are they coming? What new features are they working on? What are they hearing from customers? They have a public Trello board where they're tracking all their progress on app updates. I have never seen a company work so hard to regain their customer trust.

I still see people hurt by what they have done in that beleaguered app update that was released, but this is incredible. They have pushed out update after update after update to that app. They're now dropping prices on a couple of their products. I hope they continue to do well because they make really nice stuff. So hopefully we see more from them. I'm excited to see what other hardware they will be releasing. Maybe we'll find something out later this year.

The Aqara G5, I have not even had the G5 Pro camera for long, and Aqara is already releasing a pretty major update to this thing. So they have a whole Reddit post where they break down all these features, but I'll give you the highlights. First, free 24-7 cloud recording for six months with the purchase. So if you buy the camera, you immediately get six months of their 24-7 activity-based recording.

monitoring and stuff for free or storage for free. So that's really nice. It's not like a one week or a one month trial. You get a full six months of that storage. Now these two work with iCloud secure video. So if you're already using that, you may not need that, but it's still nice to have as an option.

Additionally, detection and automation timeouts were removed, so there's no more paywalls for detection frequency. You can set this all the way down to 15 seconds. That was behind a paywall before with their monitoring option. There's a new option for local clip download. You can save clips directly to your phone.

If you have a NAS 24-7 recording with a local NAS, that is really, really intriguing to me. So you can just set this thing up to continuously record on a loop until your storage is full and then it just keeps going through like true security camera around the clock. Then there are new event markers and fast forward buttons on the local timeline and better AI accuracy for object detection.

All of these are great. Like these are, this is a substantial update for this camera that was just released. I'm currently testing the wifi version and I've been trying to find like the appropriate power cord and some things like that before I can give you guys my full review. But so far things have been going really well and this makes things even better. Uh, the only thing that I'm curious about is,

Uh, this is the 24 seven recording with the NAS. I want to try this. I want to see how that works. And I've, I've struggled to find, like, it doesn't show my synology on the network and I do not know enough about setting up the recording with the NAS. Like what I need. So something is not working. It's like saying turn on Samba on the NAS. I'm like, but I have like SMB turned on, um,

I don't know. I have not messed with that, so I need to do some more research before I get there. But if you know, maybe you can reach out. Let me know if you try this yourself or anything. There seem to be people struggling with using a car, cameras, and NAS for their recording. So if you've had any luck with that, reach out. AndroidAppleInsider.com. I'd love to hear any tips that anybody has.

Journey has released a new water bottle. This is the review, Revis, sorry, Revis, R-E-E-V-U-S, reviews? I don't know. Water bottle. And the reason we're talking about it on the episode is because it has Find My Support.

That's right, it is a water bottle with built-in Find My. Additionally, the top of this thing is a ring that you can use to carry the water bottle around, but it will also tilt up and you can use it as a MagSafe stand for your phone. So you can put your phone there and you can use it to watch content, you can use it to record yourself, just a really handy little stand built into your water bottle. So I like that because if you're going to the gym and you're someone who likes to record yourself at the gym to check your form, anything like that,

You can do it if you're creating content at all. You can bring a water bottle around with you and just use that as an impromptu stand for your phone. You can also just turn it sideways and do like, you know, a HIIT workout, Apple Fitness workout, whatever, and use the water bottle as a way to hold up your phone. So lots of really nice uses there. All stainless steel, super insulated, 24 hours keeping your stuff cold. It holds 23.6 ounces. So not the biggest, but not the smallest, a decent size there.

Recharge this thing every three to four months is what they say. Now, pricing-wise, we're looking at $89. So not cheap by any means. And it comes in four different colors. So there's Halo Black, which has a black bottle, a whitish top, and then a yellow ring. Then there is Polar White, which has a white bottle but a gray top to it. Then there is Slate Black, which is basically just all black. So three different colorways.

If you've seen them before, this reminded me of the Scosche bottle that had, I think it's called like the, it's called the magic Mount flask, I believe, which is available in 22 and 32 ounce sizes, but it does the same thing as far as putting like a magnetic phone mount on the top of the water bottle. Now the Scosche one is way cheaper. I think they're usually priced at around 50 to $55, but,

but you can usually get them like 20 bucks off that. I think when I checked their website, they're like $35. So it's still a good idea for a basic water bottle, but the Scosche one does not have find my built in. And I think the find my is the big part here that is really useful because

I mean, think about it. Anytime that you go somewhere with your water bottle, you don't want to forget it. You go to work, you go on a hike, you go to the gym, you're walking out of there. You don't want to forget your water bottle, especially if you're buying a nice water bottle in general. Like is it a Yeti, a Hydro Flask, a Stanley, whatever, like you want to have that with you when you leave. So with the Find My built-in, as you dip out, it's going to send you an alert that you left your water bottle behind.

I've actually seen some things. I think actually Nomad made a hydro flask bottom that slipped onto the bottom of your hydro flask and had a spot for an air tag to fit in there. And I thought that was a smart idea. I'm more of a Yeti guy, so I have a lot of Yeti right here on my desk right now.

But there's, I haven't seen, there's I think some on Etsy that do similar stuff there. But this is just cool to see everything all in one, everything all in the water bottle, magnetic mount for your phone at the same time as the Find My app, left behind alerts, tracking down all of those things. So pretty cool here. The puck basically pops out of the top and you can put it onto any wireless charger, so any MagSafe wireless charger.

or wireless charger to charge it up. It'll give a three months or so on the single charge before you have to do it again. So that is available now. And I put the link in the show notes to round this episode out. Let's do a quick review. So I have the Nog Scout.com.

which is a find my tracker. That's pretty darn unique. So this one is cool because it's more of a luggage tag than your typical like key chain or backpack or anything like that. It's, it's really made for luggage and travel. So I'm holding up. If you're the video version, you can see what this thing looks like. I have the red one. I believe red is an option.

Uh, cause I don't even see it on the list. Maybe this is more of an orange or an older color, but to me it, it looks red. Uh,

So it is red with a little metal clip at the top. So the way this thing works is you basically have the body of the charger itself that is a kind of a large pill shape but flat. Then there is a metal cable at the top. It comes with two different sizes of metal cable for you to install it onto your bag. So a short one and a long one. So put this on top of your luggage, you slip that cable through, and then it locks into place. It comes with a little key to remove it, but it's not that hard. It's just two kind of little pins attached.

It reminds me of a golf divot removal tool, but a little bit smaller. So you can use that and little rabbit ears to tighten this thing down.

I saw people complaining in some of the reviews on this that they didn't understand how to put it together. It's pretty easy. Really, like, it just comes as the body itself and then the cable and then the two metal pieces. You just put the cable around and tighten everything down. It takes you a few moments, and there is some instructions up on their website, little videos how to do it. But it's very simple to do. So put it all together. Put it onto your bag.

Couple things to note from that point on. It does work with Apple Find My, so you're going to get left behind alerts, you're going to get tracking, all those things. Great right now for the airlines that are starting to support the Find My app. So if you lose things, you can actually send them the Find My link for this and they can try to track down your bag even easier to return it to you. It has NFC so they can tap on it and get your information. There's also a QR code on the back that they can scan to help connect with the owner as well. So a few different ways for people to see this and get in contact with you.

Additionally, it is USB-C to recharge, which is perfect because there's no battery to replace there. Now, some things I don't like that you have to recharge, like the water bottle we just talked about. I don't mind it. Like, I don't hate it, but you have to remember to do it. A water bottle is a little bit, probably a little bit easier, but things like a Find My Card in Your Wallet that is rechargeable are

I like the rechargeable. It's more eco-friendly. It's better. You don't have to replace it ever. But the problem is you have to know to do it. You have to say, oh, it's been about three months. I better charge my find my card. So you take it out and put it on a charger. It's when it's in your wallet. It's kind of like out of mind and you don't remember to actually charge it until you lose your wallet. Then you're like, well, shoot, I really wish I would have remembered to charge that thing.

This, I think, makes sense because you just charge it before you leave. You're packing your bag. You bring your luggage upstairs. You plug in a USB-C cable to let this thing juice up while you pack your bag. And then you close your bag and you're on the way. You're on the way. You're all set.

So I think that makes really good sense. Very easy to do just as you're packing. It's part of that routine as you're getting your luggage ready to go. And you have this tracker on there that cannot be removed or at least not easily without some bolt cutters to actually remove this thing since it is like, you know, metal cable.

I really like that. Now, the one unique feature that they also have on top of that, because you could still use an air tag, just put it in your bag somewhere. They have to find it. You could use other ones that clip onto the top. There's a lot of those, but those can be removed. What makes this even better as an optional feature when you pair this with the Nog app, so that's K-N-O-G, by the way, you have this like theft deterrent device. So you turn this on and if anyone takes your bag, the alarm sounds, right?

So it has an 85 decibel siren built into this thing. And when there's motion detected on the bag, the bag is moved. The siren goes off. So basically you're sitting there at, you know, you're at an airport and your luggage is sitting next to you and somebody walks by and absconds with your bag. It's going to start beeping the other way that that could work. Maybe you have it on a backpack or something. You just have your somewhere and you have, you take off your backpack, you set it down, you turn on your theft alert,

We have an Emil, whatever, on the bus, someone grabs it, you're going to get that alert right away. Now, Find My has those left-behind alerts that could alert you, but they're going to be gone by the time that those left-behind alerts actually show up. So I think that's a really unique and cool feature that you can turn on with this.

My only problem with it is you have to remember one to do that and then two to turn it off. Because if you turn that on and then you forget and then you pick up your bag, you're going to set off your own siren. So just something to keep in mind. But I do really like it. It gives you more peace of mind and it's much more designed for luggage versus other find my solutions.

pricing isn't too bad I want to I had this pulled up before the episode and I have forgotten how much it is so $60 $60 I don't think is too bad you're looking at air tag which is technically like 29 so double that price but it comes in colors it has an actual cable on there the the motion detecting alert situation the NFC and QR codes to get in touch with people and

I think this is a very smart product. I like it. The colors that you can choose from, there is pitch black. They call it Tangerine Dream. Maybe that's what I have. It doesn't quite look like the website, but mine is more red, I swear. The Tangerine Dream online looks more orange.

So maybe that's just an updated colorway, but the tangerine looks great. Then there is a mint green, also lovely. There is a sunflower yellow, very apt. And finally, a deep blue. To me, it looks kind of like a denim blue or a slate blue, but I like it too. So lots of different color options to choose from. If you're interested, if you're traveling this summer, maybe this is something that you add onto your bag. If you're interested, there's a link down in the show notes.

So that's it. That was this week's episode, folks. Thank you so much for hanging out, talking to all the smart home news. If you have anything else you want answered, questions for your smart home, drop me a line down below on the video. You can send me an email at andrewatappelinsider.com or go over on Twitter at andrew__osu. You can also find me on Blue Sky as well, trying to be more active there.

If you want to watch the video version of this, you can do so at youtube.com slash homekitinsider. Great place to ask questions. Give us a follow there if you like the video version of this compared to just doing the audio. Thank you to the sponsors for the episode, Shopify and fasterintrees.com. Otherwise, stay tuned. Give us a 5, 10, 100-star rating on your podcast player of choice. We'll see you guys on the next episode.