All the smart home news, reviews, and gadgets you need to know about

Google announced this week that it’s rolling out support for its Nest Hello doorbell in the Google Home app. This allows you to transfer Google’s original video doorbell camera — aka the Nest Doorbell (wired, first-gen) — from the Nest app to Google’s Home app. Google is also bringing its garage door detection feature out of public preview, making it available to all users with compatible hardware. This uses a Nest Cam to alert you when your garage door is left open.

Garage door detection launched last fall in Google’s public preview — a public beta where users can try out upcoming features — but it’s now available to all Nest Aware subscribers in the US and Canada. (Nest Aware starts at $8 a month / $80 a year.)

I have six Amazon Echo smart speakers in my house, and I’ve tested more, but my favorite is the Echo Dot with Clock. I love how the fabric-covered LED dot-matrix display makes time unobtrusively accessible, beaming its gentle white light from my dresser across my blackout-curtained dark bedroom. (It definitely beats asking Alexa the time.)

So I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news: Amazon has discontinued the Dot with Clock in favor of a more expensive, less eye-pleasing model.

Leaked images posted on X by @MysteryLupin show a fourth-generation Nest Learning Thermostat and new temperature sensors, as well as several other thermostats: Nest E, Nest Learning Thermostat (3rd Gen). Missing from the pictures is the Nest Thermostat (2020), presumably because it’s not compatible with Nest’s room sensors.

The new addition looks similar to the third-generation model but appears to have a more curved display while retaining the physical dial, as pointed out by 9to5Google. The display is likely a touchscreen, as with the third-generation model, and the image shows a new icon with three wavy lines.

Amazon’s plan to launch a paid version of Alexa is part of a strategy change to reverse the over $25 billion in losses that its devices business incurred from 2017 to 2021, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The AI-supercharged Alexa, which is rumored to cost up to $10 / month, could arrive as soon as this month.

With a potential launch just weeks away, employees reportedly have doubts about whether the new version of Alexa will catch on. A person who worked on the Alexa team told the WSJ that the division is racing toward the deadline to launch the subscription even though “the technology isn’t there.” Amazon’s former head of devices, David Limp, first revealed Amazon’s plans to charge for an improved version of Alexa last year.

The Roomba Combo 10 Max is a new robot vacuum and mop from iRobot that can wash its mop, empty its bin, and refill its mopping tank — meaning less manual labor on your part. The company’s new flagship robot vacuum will also be its first to support the smart home standard Matter. The vacuum is available for preorder starting today at irobot.com for $1,399.99, and in the UK for £1,499 and Europe for €1,499. Shipping starts in August, when it will also come to other retailers.

Building on the Roomba Combo j9 Plus’ retractable mopping system that picks itself up when it vacuums carpet, the Roomba Combo 10 Max robot and Auto Wash Dock is the company’s first robot vac with a fully multifunction charging dock. In addition to emptying the robot’s bin and filling its water tank, the new dock can clean and dry the mop and wash itself, so you don’t have to.

Today’s robot vacuums are becoming a bit like cars: with all the features, upgrades, and fancy trimmings available these days, it’s easy to forget that they can just be simple machines that get us from point A to point B. Yes, some bots blow hot air on their bums (mop pads) and deftly navigate dog poop, but there are plenty of basic budget robot vacuums that just do a decent job of cleaning your floor autonomously — as long as you tidy up first.

While higher-priced, higher-powered robot vacuums clean better, budget bots do a perfectly good job, especially if you run them regularly. The biggest downside of cheaper models is they get stuck on cables, socks, shoelaces, and other paraphernalia you leave lying around. If you’re home and can untangle it, great, but if you’re not, then it will just sit there stuck until its battery dies, and you have to charge it up again before it will clean your floors. 

Apple’s smart home efforts need a smart display. If I have to hear Siri say, “I found some web results; I can show them if you ask again from your iPhone,” one more time, I may throw a HomePod out the window.

While smart displays — the more expensive sibling to smart speakers — haven’t lived up to their potential, they can be useful and are a missing piece in Apple’s smart home, which the company has largely avoided creating products for — so far, just a couple of smart speakers and a bit of help from the Apple TV.

Moving can be a huge headache. Throw in a bunch of connected gadgets you need to factory-reset or uninstall, and things get even more painful. Deciding what to do with your smart home when you move adds a whole other layer of complexity to an already difficult process.

Do you take your smart lock or leave it? Should you uninstall your smart lighting system or provide a detailed manual for your buyer? Is it better to replace the Nest Thermostat with a non-smart one or leave it and buy a newer version for your new home? What about sensors? Speakers? Smoke alarms? The list goes on. 

Some smart home gadgets could be considered essential. A smart thermostat can save you money, and a smart door lock can prevent you from getting locked out. But unlike those gadgets, it’s hard to argue you need the smart GE Profile Opal 2.0 Ultra Nugget Ice Maker ($579, or $629 with the side tank). However, you may want this gadget — because it makes The Good Ice.

Yes, $630 is a lot of money for any countertop gadget, let alone one that just freezes water. Spending this much on a connected gadget whose smarts are largely limited to scheduling and asking Alexa to make more ice feels like an even bigger stretch. But nugget ice is a hill many will die on — my family included. It just makes drinks taste better, they cry. Anything that encourages my children to hydrate is a big win in my book.

For a moment there, it seemed like Amazon might pivot its Astro home robot to enterprise by giving it a better job as a camera-equipped patrol dog. But today, it’s discontinuing the Astro for Business robot for good. On September 25th, every one of the 20-pound wheeled robots will stop working, and Amazon will automatically issue full refunds for the $2,349.99 bot, plus a $300 credit.

Amazon isn’t commenting on how many business bots it actually sold since the November 2023 launch, but the company’s VP of hardware engineering, Lindo St. Angel, says he’s “increasingly convinced the progress we’re making in home robotics is where we should focus our resources.” We’re sharing his full internal memo below.

Two years after its launch, Matter — the smart home standard developed by Apple, Google, Amazon, and Samsung — is finally gaining traction.

A common language for your smart home, Matter is designed to simplify buying, setting up, and using connected gadgets. With Matter, you shouldn’t need to worry if this smart lock will work with your phone or that light bulb with your smart speaker. If it works with Matter, it should work with any Matter-enabled smart home platform or device.

LG has acquired an 80 percent stake in Athom, a Dutch company best known for its Homey smart home platform. The deal, which LG says will see it acquire the remaining 20 percent of Athom within the next three years, has been forged to expand LG’s smart home ecosystem and should position it to better compete against Samsung’s rivaling SmartThings platform.

LG plans to integrate Athom’s existing Homey connectivity — which supports smart devices from Sonos, Ikea, Aqara, Philips Hue, and more — across its appliances through its ThinQ smart home platform. According to Homey, its users will soon be able to control ThinQ-enabled LG appliances via the platform. Homey has developed a significant user base since it was founded in 2014, with its flagship Homey Pro smart home hub capable of connecting to over 50,000 devices across Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Z-Wave, Matter, and Thread.