CES 2025 Smart Home Roundup with Special Guest Faith O'Hara
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Welcome everybody to another exciting episode of HomeKit Insider. And I'm very excited. This may be the best episode of HomeKit Insider ever. Because not only do we have all of this CES news to cover, but we also have a special guest, my much better half,

My prettier half, my smarter half. Faith, thank you for hanging out and rounding up all of our CES coverage. I'm excited to be here. It's been a while. I know. It's been a while since you've been on the podcast, and now we have... What I'm really excited for is...

So Faith had to batten down the hatches at home and work all week while watching our kid and everything. And the last thing that I'm sure you have done was read a bunch of smart home news. So I get to go through all of the news and break down why so much of this is exciting and why people should care about it. So also, how was it dealing with the smart home while I was away? Just a normal –

I don't know. I don't know. Because I usually, I use the smart lock for the front door usually. And then definitely our lights, you know, when I, especially at night, I can just hop in bed and say, oh, good night. And all the lights go off. So that was, that was typical stuff. But yeah.

So how do you, okay, so on our bedroom door, we have been using the lever lock from a Kara, which has the fingerprint reader, the keypad, all of that. We had to put that in because Harrison can now open doors. And we have the cat in our room that we cannot have out mingling with our other cat at the same time. So we had to, you know, put like a childproof lock on the door. Yes.

I feel like we're having mixed experiences with this lock. It's a love-hate relationship right now with it a little bit. I'm not going to lie. Especially if I need to get in there quickly and if my thumb's not lined up just right and it's like red, red, red. And I'm like, take a breath and just slowly put it back on and then it'll open up eventually. But sometimes it works so fast and then I get really excited. But...

Um, but yeah, so it's a, it's a love hate. Like I'm glad we have it, but also when it doesn't work, just like anything else, when it doesn't work right away, it's like, you know, it's a little bit frustrating.

So the way that I found that I like best is to actually use home key. So I just walk up to our door and hold my watch near it. Oh, okay. And then I, cause I agree. I, the fingerprint didn't work like 100% of the time. There was still chances when it didn't. So now I just hold my watch up as I walk up to it, unlocks into the room. I feel like that's the quickest way. That would have been nice to know.

Okay, well, I'm just saying, folks, if she had listened to the podcast, I would have broken down someone missed an episode. Someone missed an episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, we do have a lot of stuff to get through, so let's hop into this. Now,

The first is not a specific product, but it is how the new Apple Home badge is going to be working. And this should enable a bunch of benefits for Apple Home products as well as Matter products in general. And I've actually seen some confusion on how this is rolling out. So here's the deal.

When you get a product certified with Matter, like the uniform standard, it's certified with Matter. But then you'd also have to go out and get your Apple Home Certificate, your Amazon Assistant 1, your Google 1, your SmartThings 1, all of that. And they would be all separate individual certifications.

Well, now you can actually get certified with Matter done. And then if you run your product, this is the important part. So there's the Matter cert. But then if you run your product through the optional interoperability lab, a bunch of engineers will run through its paces, test it on every single thing they can. And if it makes it out of there, you fix any issues, anything like that, but you run it through that.

If it passes that, you now can get your Apple Home badge, which means not a separate certification. That's handy. Yeah, so I think that's going to help expedite...

I've been talking too much this week. It's true. But that should expedite getting that certificate and hopefully get more products to market. So that'll be good. Yeah. On top of that – so that's going to bring the cost down a little bit too, I believe, because Apple was charging for it. And the same thing will go, I think, for like Google Home and stuff. Yeah.

But on top of that, the CSA, I sat down with them and talked to Chris LaPree, and he talked about a few other changes that they're making as well. So they're going to be combining, like, they're making, changing definition of, like, a family of products. So before, you may have had to have a different certification for a U.S. smart lock or, like, a smart plug. And then same thing for a Europe smart plug, and then...

an Australian smart plug, whatever, you'd have to get like three different Matter certifications. But now those can be categorized as like a family. And I think you can get away with like one certificate and that should reduce the number of products. So there's something crazy. Like maybe if you had a thousand products before, now maybe you only have 250 different families of products that you have to get certified. So that should really lower the cost to get products certified with Matter. Okay.

Then lastly, for Matter, they are changing their upgrades. So firmware upgrades. Now you can actually, as long as it doesn't change functionality, just bug fixes, you can submit them and get them through without paying any additional fees. So again, I think important lowering cost to get Matter products out there. That'll be a game changer, I think.

I think that, I mean, it's been slow and I think even LG was complaining that it was too expensive. So if LG is complaining, I think it was LG. I hope I didn't misspeak. But yeah, so it clearly was a barrier. Well...

Getting into new products, the first one here is pretty cool. So this is the Kwikset Halifax Lever LED. Pulling up a photo. Basically, it's not a smart product necessarily. Like it doesn't have Apple Home or Matter built in, but it's an interior lever lock. So things for like a bathroom, office, bedroom, those types of deals. It has your normal lock on the back with a safety thing that you can undo on the opposite side. Nothing smart, but it has a built-in

in LED light that faces the door. And then there's a little motion sensor. And as you approach it, it'll automatically light up the LED nice and slow. Looks really pretty. As you walk away, it dims again. Battery powered. Nothing crazy, but I really like it. I think it's a nice little touch to add to a room without having to do like a full smart lock. It looks like very high end too. Very like simple, but...

But high end. Does it come in different colors or is it just that one? Well, I see... Just the black? Yeah, we're seeing the matte black. Yeah, no, that looks nice. Yeah, I like it. It's very square, so definitely modern looking. It'll be the album art for the chapter. So that is coming out soon. They also say it has... So it's push-button lock with emergency release and antimicrobial coating on the outside. So this sounds perfect for a toddler room. Yeah. Built-in light, gets rid of germs. Done. Perfect. Perfect.

Well, continuing down the smart locks, this is not anything new for followers of the show, but Nuki is confirming that their smart lock ultra, which launched in Europe in November will be soon coming to the U S this is a matter enabled lock. I don't believe it has home key, but I think it,

This one looks really nice. This is a retrofit lock. It goes on the inside. Basically, we just go on the interior of that deadbolt. We're looking at the website and all the European stuff, so it looks different from here. But, I mean, it looks really nice and sleek, right? Yeah, it kind of looks like something from James Bond. I don't know. It looks very nice. If James Bond invented or used smart locks... This would be it. I'm telling you.

Done. New Key sponsor, we got you Ad Read right here. You're welcome. I really like that lock. So it is nice that it's coming to the U.S. Yeah. Okay. Cool.

It's going to have opinions on this one too. So Govee has a number of new products out. So first up, they have their Pixel Gaming Lights. These are interesting, but they're not going to be matter-enabled. So I kind of didn't talk about it much on the Apple Insider video I did. But the idea is they come in two different sizes. It's pixelated art, kind of like retro Game Boy looking. And they can do all these different things. You can use AI to generate an image. So someone was like, generate a CES logo. And it was able to...

make a guess on a CES logo and put it on the screen. But you could also, anything you can imagine, you can get like this pixelated image of. So that's kind of cute. And I guess it can also kind of mirror your screen. And I saw a demo of this when I was playing Mario Kart and the screen below, like they had, they were dragging the bananas and all of a sudden the pixel LED screen switched to an animated, like moving banana. Yeah.

It looked at your screen, saw a banana, and turned into a banana. So it was kind of neat. So that's kind of fun. But again, not matter-enabled, just general smart home. In terms of actual matter stuff, they have a new floor lamp, which it actually – so it's a normal floor lamp, matter-enabled. It's got a flat, round top, and it has a downward-casting light, you know, like lamps.

But it also has a colored light on the top and one of those Aurora projectors. Like, they actually make the projector that we have in our son's room. Yes. He is obsessed with that thing. He will not go to bed without it on. Or wake up without it on, apparently. Oh, no. He'll open the door and say, stars? Stars? Stars?

So we have to turn it back on just to turn it off when he leaves the room. Thank goodness they have that built-in timer that turns it off after a set period of time so we don't have to deal with it. Yeah, but he loves it. And it has like the white noise too and so you can pick your sound and stuff too. But the stars is the key element.

I like the idea of having it in one lamp. So you have your normal lamp for the room and then you also have the Aurora projector on the top. Oh, yeah, that's cool. So we're moving his room around right now. I'm not 100% where that projector is going to go. Yeah, probably like on his dresser or something. But why take up dresser space?

True. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So this one lamp could solve all those problems. And it's really nice. I mean, just in general, it's very soothing and relaxing just to look at it. Like if we're just reading books to him and it's on, it's just so nice to like wind down the day with. So that would be fun to see. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. I think that's really cool. Yeah. The second thing that Govee came out with that is very nice as well. They have a new, it's like a, I can't even, I don't know how to describe it, but it's like a canister kind of lamp and it is clear on the bottom. Then the middle part has the light, like the top two thirds has the light and then the tippy top has a speaker.

So they've partnered with JBL on the audio. So they have an upward-facing speaker, smart lights in the middle, and it's wirelessly charged. I want to say – I'm not 100% on the charging. I can't remember now. I saw a lot of things.

But it should be portable. So you pick it up. So it does have a battery inside. So you can pick it up, move it around. It's got a bunch of colors. So you can actually not just one color. You can do multiple colors on the sides of it. And two of them can be paired together for stereo sound. So kind of a neat portable speaker.

Yeah, so that's kind of nice, too. I think they did a good job with that one right there. That's it, Faith, so we're scrolling down. Oh, yeah. It looks like a good little table lamp that you can take with you, decent audio built in. It's always kind of hard to judge audio at CES, but, I mean, at least they paired with somebody who did audio instead of just guests on their own. Yeah.

Well, after Govee, Hyper. Hyper has some new products out. So they are usually known for their Thunderbolt docks. I'm pretty sure that right there that we're using to connect the microphone for this episode. USB hub. Yeah, it's Hyper. Well, they have a new version of their backpack. They have a really nice backpack that's out. Tell me more. She's already excited because she heard backpack.

Yes. She likes her backpacks. I do. This is probably a little more like it's dark. She likes colorful backpacks. So maybe not your style, but it's subtle. This is more neutral. Yeah. With the darker colors. Yeah. So they call these their mobile tech backpacks, but they're very kind of simple, streamlined backpacks. And their new one has a built-in tracker for Find My. So similar to what they did before. Yes.

They have two different ones. So one with the built-in tracking is $109.99. The second one, the HyperPack Go, is $80. So a little bit cheaper. And they have a hole so you can put in your own tracker. So if you have your own AirTag, you can add that or buy one with a tracker already built in. That's really cool.

Pricing isn't too far off, though. No, not at all. You're looking at $80 to $130, but an AirTag is less. So, I mean, they're technically $30 for an AirTag. So it's pretty comparable to just buying the device by itself and putting it in. But I think the one is a little bit bigger, too. So it's a little bit bigger and has the built-in tracking. So I guess a couple benefits to it. Those look really nice. Well, here's a topic. This is going to be great because I know FaceGuard Opinions...

It is time for robotic vacuum cleaners. Okay, I'm ready. We can't escape CES without a litany of robotic vacuum cleaners launching. But we're going to start off with what I think of all the ones we've tested, the one that we go back to probably the most, which has been RoboRock, right? Yeah, I call ours RoboBurt. RoboBurt, yes. Well...

A couple things they say. They are including Matter support. They're basically ready to go. I think the unofficial word on the street is everyone is waiting for the Matter Apple Home support to coincide at once. So no one's saying this, but everyone I talk to is kind of like, well, it already works with other platforms. The real benefit of Matter is just Apple Home. And if there's no Apple Home support yet, what's the point? Mm-hmm.

Fair. Yeah. Fair. So I think we're going to get, you know, 18.3 in the spring. And I know that'll be a time that Faith will update her phone right away. Yeah. Instead of weeks later. We just, she was, she wanted to make the emoji and she thought we had the Apple intelligence update, but that was 18.2. I didn't do it.

I don't know. It's trying to find like a time to sit down and let your phone run for a half an hour. It's harder. It's harder than I thought, but I do want to make my own emoji. So if there's any like constantly, is there not an emoji for insert thing? No, I'm trying to think what it was now, but yeah. I can't remember. But if there was anyone that that feature was made for, it's her. So yeah. Okay. Focusing together again.

Roborock has three new vacuums coming. Oh, okay. There's the Saros 10, the Saros 10R, and then the Saros Z70. Yeah. So first things first, the 10 and the 10R. These are going to be launching soonest first, and they are priced the same at about $1,600. So they're two flagship vacuums. Here's the struggle. They're basically the same.

They are both priced at $1,600. And I talked to them and I asked the simple question of, if I want the best robotic vacuum cleaner that your top of the line model, which one do I get? The 10 or the 10R? The answer I got was, it depends. On? I'm not quite sure.

There's a little bit of an answer, which is it depends partially on maybe your floors. So let me tell you how they differ, and then you guys can all decide which one makes more sense. So there's first the Saros 10. Okay.

So the Roborock Seros 10. This is $1,600. It has 22,000 pascals of suction. It uses their latest VibraRise mop. So that's the pad that goes on the bottom and it goes like vibrates on your floor and

That's that mopping system. And then it has a new retractable navigation system. So your traditional laser based navigation system that goes on the top. Now what's nice is that as it like approaches something, it can actually drop that down and then go underneath of it. And then it comes back out and it raises that back up. So all good. But that's the first one. And the second one is the Roborock Saros 10R.

Here, it uses the dual spinning mops on the back. Now, if you also ask, hey, well, then they have different mops. Which mop is better? They're equally good, is what I was told. They're equally good. Equally good. Okay. Yep. Okay. The other difference is that it has, right now, they're saying 20,000 pascals of suction. So it's like, oh, well, it at least has less suction. Yeah.

Not quite. Those suctions are actually based off of a lot of testing that they do. So they've done, they're doing the testing now and apparently it's actually 22,000. So they're going to have about the same amount of suction on them. They're going to have the same, the same suction. So suction is the same. The mops perform the same. And then the last thing is navigation.

So traditional laser-based navigation, I believe, is what the X has. The XR has their new next-generation AI-powered starlight navigation system, so it doesn't have the little bump on the top. It doesn't retract. There's nothing. You don't need to worry about it. So here's the question again. Okay, what's better, the old traditional navigation system or the new one?

Folks, I was told they're equally good. That's not helpful. It's not helpful. Who's going to know the difference between these things? So a couple of things to make it a little easier to decide, because I know I'm like ragging on this a little bit. So first off, the mops. The rotating mops apparently do a little bit better scrubbing on textured floors. So if you have anything like...

kind of like a wood grain to it, like a laminate type flooring, the spinning ones should work better.

Then if you have a smooth floor, like piano, glossy, like a, I don't know, like a polished or marble, anything like that, the Vibra Rise is better because the Vibra Rise can leave no streaks, like no nothing. Whereas the spinning ones can leave circles or streaks on perfectly shiny floors. So shiny floors, Vibra Rise, Seros 10.

Anything else, go with the XR and the spinning mops. As far as the navigation goes, again, with similar performance, my only thought as a user is I like new.

They say the other one kind of sticks around because people trust it because it has the bump on the top. Personally, I like newer. So I would go with the Starlight, the new one, because I think it has the potential to improve over time via upgrades and everything. So maybe right now they're similar, but over time it could get better. That's what I was going to say too. Maybe they're still trying to figure out what that's going to look like. So they couldn't give you like a direct answer like, hey, this one might be a little bit better, but if you like the old way better.

Then go with, you know, this one or whatever. So they're probably still trying to figure it out themselves. I really do. It almost seems like they're just trying to figure out what people like. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's trial and error with that part. Yeah. They're like, here's two different navigations. Here's two different mops. See which one people buy. Right. So why not? Why not throw out two and see...

See what happens. I think the main reason why not is because it's confusing. Yes, that's true. I'm sure. I mean, people are supposed to listen to this podcast and know, yep, that's the best mop to get or the best vacuum. And it's really hard to tell. Yeah.

Personally, my feeling after seeing both of them, I would lean towards the 10R. The Roborock 10R, Ceros 10R. That's probably the one that we will get for here when that launches to replace our S8 Max V Ultra. Both of them should have matter. Also, both of them can now remove the mops. That's new. So whether you have the Vibra Rise or the spinning ones, both of them can go to the docking stations and it'll take the mops off if you're not mopping.

So that's kind of nice. You don't even have to worry about them dragging around at all. They can just be taken off. Okay. But yeah. That would be helpful. Okay. So put those aside because we have to talk about the Saros Z70. I showed you what this one looked like. Mm-hmm. What did you think? It's very cool. This is the mop or the vacuum that has a robotic arm in the top of it.

And I have a whole demo. So if you watch like my best of smart home CES video, I have a demo of this working. And they throw like a sock on the ground. The vacuum comes out. It sees the sock. It sticks out the arm, picks it up, and then carries it to a little bin and puts it away. We need that. We do. I mean, I'm just thinking of like how many socks of yours and Harrison's are littering like the hallway? Pardon?

Okay, part of that's our fault, but other times our dogs do carry them to places. So does the toddler. And Harrison carries them to places. So a lot of socks are moving around. Socks are a thing. Yes.

So from my understanding on how the robotic arm works is there's a series of objects that it detects that it knows, that are in its database. And it says, I can pick up socks, I can pick up possibly flip-flops and a few other things. And then if it sees any of those, it can pick them up and move them and clean underneath where they were. So...

It is going to be limited by weight. Like, it probably won't be able to pick up a shoe or a boot or maybe certain dog toys. But I believe that list of items is going to grow over time. This one is also using the spinning mops, the 22,000 pascals of suction, and has the Starlight Next Generation navigation system. So it does have all those other things. So honestly, this seems to be the one to get if you're not sure which of the three is

This one probably is the one to get because it's actually a product that's going to be shipping and it's going to be, I don't think terribly expensive either. And they're looking for a May to June launch for this guy. Oh, that's pretty fast. Yeah, that's pretty fast. How do you feel about a robot vacuum with an arm running around our house?

I think a lot of people will need it. I mean, we are going to need it. But yeah, I mean, sometimes this stuff falls off of your coffee table or, you know, just little things that you don't realize fall off when you're away. And I think it'll be super helpful. And then it won't get stuck in the vacuum. And then you come home and the vacuum didn't clean. And it's like,

It's so sad when it's just sitting there and you're like, oh, you wanted to do your job, but you couldn't. Poor Bert. Poor Bert. I love that little Bert. Well, the other thing that it also has improved on, I think, with the new navigation system is cords. It's supposed to do better with identifying cords that are laying around. Faith and I both work very frequently just from our living room. Yeah, it's started to come more often.

office. So we have cords, you know, both of us have to charge up our laptops and phones. So a lot of times there'll be cords that'll dangle off the couches and table. And I'm always worried about them getting caught up in the vacuum cleaner. So I feel like this is going to do an even better job at dealing with that situation. Yeah.

That'd be great. Yeah, of course, Matter coming to this guy as well. But this seems really cool. I'm very impressed that this is actually shipping as a real product. I just can't get over that. Yeah, and so fast. Yeah, just in a couple months. A couple months we'll be testing this thing. So make sure everyone is staying tuned for that review and coverage.

Okay, we have more. We have so much more CES news to get to. Before we get into all of that, you guys know what we got to do. We got to take our break and thank our sponsor for this episode, which is ExpressVPN. So imagine that you are traveling. You're going to someplace crazy and fun and far away, like Las Vegas for CES.

You know, it's like forgetting to, you know, lock your bag or something when you're going to the airport and just handing it off to people. You know, maybe no one's going to touch it or go through it, but there's also the chance that someone's literally going to go through everything you have in that bag. And it just, it makes you a little bit scary. And I will say, after literally a week of being out in Las Vegas, there's nothing that skews me out more than worrying about public Wi-Fi's.

Like, hotel, the show floor. I mean, I'm on that show floor with how many tech people that there's got to be a good amount of them that would know plenty about Wi-Fi hacking and everything. It makes me nervous. And, like, I still got to, you know...

pay bills and log into things and do all that stuff on these public Wi-Fi networks that it just makes me it makes me nervous probably could be fine probably fine but you never know and I'm not taking that I definitely had a VP on the entire time that I was out there so that's just me personally I would definitely have a VPN on Faith has had one she's been around and she always checks with me

hey, can I trust this Wi-Fi or something like that? It's like, make sure that VPN is on and you'll be good to go. So it is always good to go. It routes all of your traffic through their secure encrypted servers. So your ISP, no one else on the network can see your browsing history, anything like that. It hides your IP address. So it's really difficult to track where you are. Maybe you're trying to watch like a,

Ohio State football game, perhaps, that's happening, and you're not at home, and you're trying to find, like, that's not geolocked to your location. That could be something you could do. It's extremely easy to use. Just press one button, connected, good to go, and it works on basically all of your devices, so your iPhone, your iPad, your Mac. There's even one for Apple TV. On your Apple TV, folks, like, the

I love it. I love they literally have a native app for your Apple TV. I use this stuff all of the time, and I think you should too. So if you want to try it out, you can protect your online privacy today by visiting expressvpn.com slash hki. That's e-x-p-r-e-s-s-v-p-n dot com slash hki, and you can get an extra four months free. Expressvpn.com slash hki.

I'm not going to lie, Faith. I had to read the words on the screen to spell out ExpressVPN. Like, I can spell it, but I literally am like, E-X-P. Just don't want to miss a letter, and the H-K-I will get you at the end. You never know. Okay, getting back into the news, because we have more. Ecovacs, another wonderful smart home vacuum cleaner company, they have their latest version, and, you know, no shade to them, but it just doesn't have an arm.

So it's got some nice new features, but it doesn't have an arm. So it's the X8 Pro Omni. There's a couple upgrades here, including a self-cleaning mop. So it has a roller mop on here. As it goes, it scrubs the mop and cleans it for you so it's not spreading dirty water around your home.

And then when it goes back to the docking station, it'll clean everything off. Plus, the docking station now has a reservoir for your detergent, your cleaning solution. So you put that into the docking station. Then it'll mix it with the water when your robot goes back. And just one less thing you have to worry about. That's nice. You can use any detergent then? Well, if I was Ecovacs, I would probably say you should use Ecovacs. But also, who's going to stop you?

So there's no, like, robo, like, cop. There's no robo cop. Did you just invent a thing? Who's ever heard of a robo cop? Yeah, I just pulled that out of nowhere. Uh-huh. Yeah, there's plenty. Like, Roborock does have its own solution, but you use such a small amount. But, yeah, Roborock does have an auto refill thing now. We've seen that before. The one that we reviewed on the channel, the one in our living room right now, the SI3i.

Three Eye that has the forever filling water. They have a compartment in there where you put a whole bottle of detergent and a straw and it just sucks it up as it needs it. So there's a few of them out there that do do that. And Ecovacs is definitely catching up and playing the same game too. Nice. Okay. Here's another fun one. Talking smart locks.

So Ultra Lock has two new, or U-Tech, I guess, U-T-E-C, has two locks from CES this year. The first one is a Matter-enabled fingerprint one. It's $200. It looks very nice. Matter-enabled, good, right? Good, yeah. The second one, though, has Ultra Wideband. And this one was also the talk of the show. A lot of people talked about this, and I got a really neat demo of it. So...

The ones like that, most of the ones now, the way like the location works is it's a combination of geofencing and usually Bluetooth. So they watch your location like on the maps of the app. And then as you arrive home, it sends a trigger to like watch for your phone and like wakes the lock up. And as soon as you get close, it does a Bluetooth connection, authenticates you and unlocks your lock. Okay. Yep. Makes sense. So there can be things that go wrong here.

You could, like, the geofence may not trigger right away. Like, sometimes when we get home and, like, the porch lights don't turn on right away. Yeah. And then, like, a minute later, it's like, oop, they're on. That's your geofencing, you know, not triggering right away. There's also Bluetooth, which is, has, I mean, how many times has your Bluetooth headphones or something not connected correctly? Yeah. Yeah. In there. Yeah.

Well, the same thing for your smart lock. So it's, again, Bluetooth connecting, doing stuff. Well, so ultra-wideband is essentially the same thing as your AirTag. So it's an ultra-wideband technology, and it can tell where your phone is down to the centimeter. And actually, that's a cool, like, see their demo app that they were using for internal testing that showed on the bottom of the screen exactly, like, how many inches, like, you were from the lock. Okay.

So as you were walking towards it, that number would decrease and you could see it inching closer and closer and closer. And then as soon as you were like right up to the lock, it, I think it was within three feet. It only took like a fraction of a second, but it would unlock for you. There was no worrying about your geo fence, nothing like that. Like literally I just, I didn't have to do anything. I just walked up to it from four or five feet away. And as soon as I got within range, it authenticated unlocked automatically.

Yes. Yes. What I also... So here's where it gets very complicated, though, and I don't have a clear answer. Apple is working on supporting ultra-wideband locks in the Home app. Apple is supporting something called Aliro, which is running through the CSA, the same organization that makes Matter. So it's basically Matter-enabled auto-unlocking locks. The problem is...

They say the chipset for Alero, because Alero is not finalized. So if Alero is not finalized, the chipset's not finalized. So if the chipset's not finalized, they're not going to be able to make a lock for probably a year. So instead, UTech was like, we're just going to make one now, and it's going to do the exact same thing, but you have to set everything up through the UTech app. So this is maybe a question for you, Faith, as a consumer user.

you know, like you trust Apple and everything. Would you rather wait a year for like an official Apple, Apple home one through the home app? Or if it works exactly the same, would you buy one now because it's available and theoretically should work the same? Yeah. I mean, that's a good question. Um, gosh, I don't know. I mean, I'm not like, you know, need to have something right away. I'm okay waiting. Um,

But if I knew it, probably I would wait just to see if it happens. And if it doesn't, then I can just buy it as is. Yeah, that's the question. Yeah. I mean, it just depends on the person. Because I'm like, we always test like the latest and greatest of things. So I'm for sure going to test it. But I don't know if it's worth it to recommend get it now and use the UTEC app and everything to set it up and then just use the unlocking automatically. Yeah.

I don't know. I probably would wait just to see. Okay. That's good feedback for, you know, UTech. Yeah. True, but I mean, if that's the consumer's point of view of, you know, I don't really know the difference. I'm going to wait for the one that for sure works with Apple Home. Yeah. So, because like the regular unlocking will work through the Home app. So the same thing it does now, the goodnight scene, all that will still work, but it just won't have that, like it'll work the same. The unlocking will work the same, but you have to set it up in their app. So...

You know, I like simple. That's just me. I just like the simple stuff. True. It makes it easier when you don't have to worry about it and you have to know these things. Yeah. So I'm curious to see. But as far as I know, they are the very first lot to support ultra-wideband technology for auto-unlocking, which is very cool. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. How much do you think that costs? $150. Okay. The fingerprint version without the ultra-wideband is $200. Okay. Okay.

So more than 200. I think it's 400, 399, which definitely is on the high end for a smart lock, but world's first in everything, right? Right. Yeah. Okay. Getting into Aqara, they had so many things. And what's difficult with Aqara is a lot of their stuff kind of comes out early. Like some of it leaks, some of it shows up in China first, other stuff they tease, they show stuff at IFA.

So you may have seen some of these things beforehand, but I can at least run through the bulk of what they have because there's like a bunch of things. My voice is still going, so I need to even like slow down so Faith can talk about some of these too after CES and talking all week long. So let's talk with that panel, Faith, in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. I'm really excited by this. It's called the Panel Hub S1+.

And it's a little bit like what we have in the living room with the brilliant panels, but it'll have all of your smart home tech on there that you can control. So all of your Matter accessories will show on the screen and you can control them, including shades, cameras, all of that stuff. Okay. That's kind of nice to have it all in one place like that. And I do like our panel, but I mean, it's more like manual. It's not like a screen like this. Can you still put pictures on it like ours or is it all just...

So I think it's got a customizable, like, dashboard. So, like, they kind of show, like, a picture to the left and then the time on the right. So, yeah, you should be able to put pictures on it and then touchscreen to see any... So right now it'll work with Aqara cameras. So you can see any Aqara camera on there. And then any Aqara products or Matter products you can control. Okay. So this is the...

This is kind of what we talked about probably two years ago on the show of like, this is the world we want for matter, where we're able to control all the matter devices from something like this. But a lot of people who have been listening to the show for that long probably don't have all matter devices. They probably have a lot of Apple Home devices. So like, not everything we have will show up on there, which would be confusing. Yeah, that could be confusing.

So that's the downside. But it looks so pretty. It does look really nice. I like how big the screw... I mean, it looks...

big here, but how big the screen is. So it'd be easy to see everything on there. Yes. Especially with the cameras and stuff. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's true. With the cameras. So other new products, there's the touchscreen dial V1 for the U.S. It's got like a round dial around it and you can twist it. So imagine like maybe shades rotating it to open and close your shades or the brightness in a room. You could do that as well. Yeah. There's the dimmer switch H2 for the U.S.,

It's very similar to the touchscreen switch S100 for the US. So it has two switches down below that you can program to do whatever you want. They can run scenes, adjust the lights in a room. And they also have a tiny little touchscreen on the top that you can then use to do other things like your shades, whatever.

There's the light switch H2 US, which has four buttons down the front, programmable, do whatever you need them to do. There's the climate sensor W100. This is basically an updated version of their climate sensor and has three buttons that are programmable down the right-hand side. Otherwise has like your temperature, humidity, all that stuff. As far as a couple more that are very cool, there's an updated doorbell camera. So this is the...

Doorbell Camera Hub G410.

And it comes with the little intercom, the piece on the inside, the chime. That's the word. The chime can now act as a hub for your devices as well as actually just for the doorbell itself. And they also said they have a wider camera sensor on there. So I do like this one on our back door for the porch. Okay. Yeah. This is the back door one. Okay. Yeah. There's pros and cons to this because I really do like it. So on one hand, it can be battery powered. It

It's like one of the only home kit battery powered video doorbells that are out there and just runs on like a handful of double A's. We just get like the Amazon double A batteries and put them in there and it's great. The downside is you optionally, you can run it hardwired so you can pick battery powered or hardwired. But the downside is like we use the batteries, uh,

Did that camera work when I was gone last week? No, unfortunately not. It did get really cold here, though. Which probably nuked the batteries faster than... For sure. So, yeah. So, there's your problem. I thought it was all set before we left. Because if you're just thinking about that and it doesn't work, then you can go swap out the batteries. But it did get really cold. Yeah. Yeah.

So I do like the battery-powered ones. They're very handy, but you have to remember to change the batteries, and then if it gets really cold and kills anything early. Yeah. Yeah. So that was a problem because it just wouldn't turn on, and I was, like, in the show, so I don't know why the camera's not pulling up. Like, she heard there was something that happened. I heard something. I'm pretty sure we had, like, icicles, and I think that's what fell. But I'm a scaredy cat, so I looked. Okay.

So yeah, so just something to keep in mind when picking out a battery-powered one. Just remember to refresh those batteries frequently. Okay, then we have the Presence Sensor FP300. So they're updating the name of these Presence Sensors, but this is their latest version. And so it has a combination of millimeter wave and the PIR sensor in there. That's exactly what you want for these things. These are super accurate, far more reliable than motion sensors. But what's nice about this one that makes it special is

Battery powered. Nice. You know, the one that we have in the kitchen that, first off, doesn't work because it requires to be plugged in. And then we unplug it to charge a Harrison toy or other things in that little hub. Yeah. It's like the one hanging under the counter. That's what we were trying to use to turn our kitchen lights on and off, but it requires to be plugged in. This would solve that problem. That would. Yeah.

Yeah, so this is great. This is their new top-of-the-line sensor, but battery-powered now and presence over motion. They also did have an update kind of on their G5 Pro camera and hub situation, which is really cool, but it has a wired, like a Wi-Fi version. They also have a PoE version, which would also be handy because, again, like the doorbell cam out of batteries. And then what about the Arlo cameras? What happened to those?

Well, did they pull up in the home app again? Oh, no, they did not. Yes, because I didn't charge those either. And something like PoE is going to solve that issue because they would be completely hardwired in for internet and power. It's been such a long time since we had those up, so I didn't know where we were going with that. But, yeah.

Yep, the battery-powered stuff is nice until you don't charge it, and then you get lazy on the charging it, and I do because it's like, you know, you don't need them for the longest time, and all of a sudden you need them, and it's like... They're not there. Why aren't they there? Yeah. Yep. So it's a little bit harder with cameras versus a sensor, because the sensor will last... So the FP300, it's two years on Thread, three years on Zigbee. That's a long time. Yeah, it's a really good battery life. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

churning through this news. We're going to get through it all. Um, Hugh sink has launched for LG TV. So we have this on Samsung TVs. Now you can get this on the LG. Remember when, um, we're testing a different TV right now, but normally when we have our TV up and there's the light strip behind it and the lights match. Yeah. Now it's built in to select LG TV. So no need for an additional hardware box. It's just via software. So that's very handy. Yeah.

Nanoleaf has several new products out. They have a new floor lamp. If you're watching the video version of this, it's kind of like the Hue lamp that we have behind us, but just a tall stick that has multiple colors. So Nanoleaf has their first floor lamp coming. It is matter, but otherwise very nice. There's a new gaming stuff too, including like updated light strips and a new camera screen going there. And then they have an LED light mask. Oh, those are really big.

Right now, I feel like. I have not tried one. Yeah, have I? Does it look, do I need one? I don't know. I'll be honest, I don't know much about light masks. I don't. Nano-League basically has that pedigree of LEDs. Like, that's what they're known for. So I think they kind of thought, like, hey, we're good at LEDs. Let's try something different. Yeah. I hear really good things about, like everything else, there's mixed reviews. But I hear really good things and positive things about the light mask.

So I'd be curious to see how it works. I think it's only like $150 too, so I don't think the price is bad for a lighthouse. Oh, no. I feel like there's one out there that's like $500 or $600 or something. I mean, they can get up there. Yeah, I've never tried one, obviously. But yeah, I heard good things about them.

Well, Lutron does have actually some new things for the show this year, at least one thing, and they have a new version of their shades. So our living room shades, those are the Lutron Serena shades, right? Great. Love it. They're so reliable. Amazing. Yeah. Well, they have also the one for Harrison's room.

Oh, yes. Yeah. Also very nice. So they now have the Caseta shades. So there was the Lutron Serena shades, now the Lutron Caseta shades. They're much more affordable. So they're $3.99 for any size under 48 inches. So you just like measure your window, get the size. They only come in a few different colors. So that's where you're limited. They're like whites and grays. And then the blackout versions have like, I think a $30 or $39 additional fee for

And then there's additional sizes available for more money above 48 inches, but still cheaper than what the one for the living room cost. Yeah, for sure. They have all the other benefits of Lutron, so it works with the Lutron Hub. You can use the little Pico remotes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They come in handy. Yep. But yeah, otherwise they look really cool. They are not still the cheapest on the market, but it's really hard to beat how reliable they are. Yeah. I never had a problem with them. Other than...

listening to Apple's assistant when you're trying to control them. That's, yes. That's another issue. But the actual shades themselves. That's why we need, this is literally the example of why we need the new version of Siri on the HomePod. Oh no, I said her name. Um...

That's me all the time.

Well, the new Apple Assistant will do that on your phone, but it won't do it on the HomePod. If you do it on the HomePod, it'll just get confused and you have to start over. Oh, I know. I know it well. Yeah, so Apple Intelligence really needs to come over to the HomePod at least to be able to handle those confused requests from people. But those are also, I think, shipping now. You can put in the order for those new Caseta shades right now, so you can go do that.

Also, before we even move on to the next one, I forgot they do come in both roller style and honeycomb style. And the honeycomb style, they come in different colors, right? They're all still for under the Caseta umbrella. They're very limited. It's like whites and grays, maybe like a sand color.

Okay, so like the neutral. Yes, kind of like your, I think they curated like their most popular colors. Okay, yeah. Just to keep it simple. Right. And you want the fancy, you go to pay the more monies. Okay, got it. Okay, so then Moft has a new Find My Enabled wallet. I like, I love the Find My wallets. I got one on my desk, but the Apple one, there's no tracking feature.

So it's magnetic, goes to the back of your phone. It is moffed, so it does have its very, like, magnet-y backs to it. Oh, actually, Faith, talk for two seconds while I grab one. Oh, no. Okay, I'm sure Faith, that kept you guys all busy. I did. I'm joking. I cut it all out. She said so many expletives, we would lose our rating as a family-friendly podcast. So true. Yeah.

So Mott has all these different accessories. Faith likes this one, which is a tiny little notepad that's magnetic, MagSafe to the back of your phone. Then if you're watching video version, this is essentially, so that's the notepad that works. So cute. And I have their wallet. So it pops down and then turned into a little stand.

I like that. Yeah, kind of like origami inspired. And the idea is it'll hold a couple cards and has built in find my tracking. So if you lose it, you can find it again. You get left behind alerts. All of those kind of benefits to it. And it charges wirelessly on an EG charger.

So you don't need a special, like the Journey and ESR ones that I do like. They need a special Pogo pin charger. This is any Qi charger, which makes it very convenient if it starts to die on you and you're out of town and you didn't bring your wallet charger with you. I love these MagSafe wallets, so very nice. I do wish it would hold more than two cards, though. I want three. Three is what I would like.

It can be thicker. It doesn't have to be so super thin. Well, lastly, to round out the news, TP-Link has a new baby monitor coming out. So this one is nice because actually it's a dual camera one. So it has two different camera lenses. One is a wide lens to cover like the whole crib or the whole room. The other one is a telephoto lens to get like a closer shot of the baby's face. And there's a bunch of different mounting options. So you can mount one like above a crib.

So when Harrison was little, we had the Cradle-Wise, which had, like, a built-in camera, but it did, like, the same thing with, like, a whole crib view. So it has a whole crib view or a face view situation, and then it has, like, these intelligent processings, like, on device, I want to say, that'll alert you in the TP-Link app if something, like, obscures the baby's face. Oh, like a...

toy or blanket or something. Yes. It'll say like baby's face obstructed and you'll get an alert to go, you know, move something from the baby's face. So that's, I mean, maybe you don't have anything in there, but the edge of the blanket or the sheet or the, like the bottom sheet or something came off and they rolled around. You never know whatever. Uh, they were swaddled and they got out of it. Anything like that. If it covers the face, it'll send you an alert. So that's,

That's pretty nice. Yeah. Why we're also talking about it here is TP-Link, not usually known for their Apple Home. So this camera actually supports Apple Home. So it can show up in the Home app just as everything else would. Very nice. The only question I didn't know, and they didn't know when I asked them at CES, was does both cameras show up? Does one camera? Does it show like a combined view? Oh, like a side-by-side or you get to choose? I don't know. Both of them? I don't know. Hmm.

I don't know, but I kind of want to get one and try it out just for fun of it because it's cute. Yeah. Yeah. It would be nice to go be able to look at them individually, but then also side by side so you have that option because then maybe you can zoom. I imagine you could zoom. Probably at least a little bit. Yeah. Especially on that wide angle. Yeah.

Yeah, so that'll be interesting, but it's nice that it supports Apple Home out of the box in different amounts. You can put one on the nightstand above the bed, so you can kind of grow with your child, too, so when they're an infant in the crib, as they get older, put it on the nightstand and see them in their room. Like, we can watch Harrison lay on the floor by the door, because that's where he sleeps now. That's his spot. He's like a cat. With all of his stuffed animals, too. Yeah, yeah. He's got to have his stuffies.

Okay, this was a long, long show. My voice is wrecked. Faith, thank you for joining. Anytime. Any takeaways from CES this year? Well, I...

I know it's very exciting and there's a lot of new stuff and I know how much hard work it is. I know you're very passionate about it and it's really cool to see all this stuff, but I know it's hard. It's a lot of late nights and early mornings for you. How excited are you to see 75% of this in our home in the next six months to test out? So I'll be back to let you all know how it goes. Yeah.

She'll let you know what was worth the hype. Yes. And what was not. Yeah. I do get excited about the door locks and the lights just because those are two things that I use. I obviously use the most. But even like when just going out, I didn't have to worry about locking the doors or unlocking them. I got alerts as I'm driving down the road like, hey, the doors have been locked. Everything's good. Coming back home, same thing. Door unlocked.

The lights came on, you know, grabbed Harrison out the back, and we just walked in. So, you know, it's just like that peace of mind. Like, I didn't even have to think about it. For sure. So, yeah, I do get excited about those two things. And the robot vacuums. Well, of course, the robot vacuums, yes. Yes. As long as I can show me how to use them. That's it. I know, and it's going to be such a game changer where you can just ask Apple's assistant, and it'll send out a vacuum. Yes, and I love that they mop. I just...

I don't know. It's just the mopping. Yeah. It's amazing. So, anywho.

Yes. Thank you again for hanging on the podcast. Yes. Thank you guys for listening. You all do what you guys do best. Give this podcast a 5, 10, 100 star rating on your podcast player of choice. Watch the video version of this over at youtube.com slash homekitinsider. Follow the links in the show notes for anything you guys are interested in. And I got like most articles on all these things and the video as well from CES.

rounding everything up but uh tell me what you guys are excited for what you want to see what you're going to be buying as everything becomes available yeah cool awesome we'll see you guys next episode thank you everybody bye