Halloween lighting does more for a spooky house than almost any decoration. A glowing orange window, a few long shadows and a purple porch will set the mood faster than a yard full of inflatables.…
Your thermostat can’t see you leave the house. What it can do is ask your phone. That’s the entire premise behind geofencing – a virtual boundary drawn around your home. Your phone reports when you…
Someone’s on your porch, and you have no way to know who – a delivery driver, a neighbor, or an unexpected visitor. By the time you get downstairs, they’re already gone. Most video doorbells look…
A shadow crosses the porch, and your phone buzzes before the visitor reaches the button. You tap the notification, see a delivery driver setting down a box, and say thanks through a speaker built into…
Cold nights shouldn’t mean cranking the thermostat or waking up sweaty because the blanket got too hot. Smart heated bedding brings app and voice control to the bed. No more fumbling for a manual dial…
If you’ve struggled with incompatible smart home devices or juggled multiple apps to control your connected home, Matter aims to make things simpler. This open, royalty-free smart home standard gives devices from different manufacturers a…
When temperatures fall, smart thermostats and whole-home heating systems tend to get most of the attention. There’s another cozy corner of home automation just starting to heat up – smart heated blankets. Imagine slipping into…
Most bathrooms have the same toilet they came with. It works, it flushes, and nobody thinks about it until something goes wrong – or until they try a bidet seat at a hotel and wonder…
Shopping for a smart toilet or bidet seat means wading through spec sheets filled with terminology that isn’t always explained. What does oscillating spray actually do? Is a self-cleaning nozzle the same as a self-cleaning…
Your current toilet works. It flushes reliably, it’s paid for, and it asks nothing of you. The question is whether the premium, which ranges from around $150 for a powered bidet seat to several thousand…
You’re stuck in a delayed train, the kids are already asking what’s for dinner, and the chicken you’d planned to roast hasn’t even made it into a cold oven yet. Or perhaps you’re standing in…
A smart plug doesn’t generate electricity or change how much of it your appliance uses. It sits between your wall outlet and your device, and it handles three things – switching the circuit on or…
Smart plugs are safe when they carry genuine third-party safety certification and stay within their rated amperage and wattage limits. The risk worth worrying about has nothing to do with the “smart” part. It comes…
You’re standing in the cereal aisle trying to remember whether you’re out of milk or just craving cereal. A smart fridge promises to settle that argument before you leave the house, but “smart” covers a…
A smart kitchen doesn’t require replacing everything at once. The appliances that earn their place are the ones that remove a step you’d otherwise skip – a timer you forget to set, a temperature you…
