Six of the best smart home gadgets from the CES show flow

The smart home at CES wasn’t just Matter, Matter, Matter.so The Bargewe covered literally dozens of new product launches at the big consumer tech show. From exciting products in smart lighting innovations and smart home energy management to wireless charging for flying cameras and smart locks. , we were able to see a lot of great new technology.

However, there were some things we didn’t highlight during the show. There were also some genuine surprises that Shaw discovered walking around his floor. Here we round up some of the other innovations, gadgets and new products that caught our attention in Las Vegas. In case you missed it, you can catch up on his coverage of all smart homes from the exhibit floor here.

Many people use smart LED light strips to retrofit under-cabinet lighting, but it’s not always the ideal solution (you need outlets in the right place and corners can get in the way). possible). Nor is there a hardwired solution for color-changing smart LED strips (or not in his summer of 2020 when he remodeled his kitchen. Ultimately, dumb his LED strips and smart switches decided to use).

GE Lighting has the solution. GE Lighting’s Patrick Miltner gave us a sneak peek at the products the company is launching later this year.

They are part of GE Lighting’s Cync smart lighting brand. It features a full-color, adjustable white light and can be controlled with the Cync app. Also, the flat panel approach seemed to provide a cleaner, diffused light than LED strips (GE Lighting set up a mock kitchen counter as part of the display). There were no prices available, but Miltner said it would be an “affordable solution” to the problem.

Samsung turned your TV into art with Frame TV. And now LG is turning your air conditioning unit into art with the LG Artcool Gallery air conditioner. The wall-mountable mini split AC unit comes with a digital photo frame to help solve the problem of looking like unsightly white appliances stuck to the wall.

LG had a previous version of this product with a real picture frame glued on, but for obvious reasons it didn’t look good. The new model replaces the physical one for digital with a 27-inch built-in LCD screen. You can choose from still or animated images, or upload family photos using the LG ThinQ app. No price or release date has been announced.

Italian smart lighting maker Twinkly sets itself apart with its unique AR mapping capabilities. With this feature, you can literally paint lighting patterns onto your products. However, the company’s smart light range is expensive, and we were excited to get a quick preview of its next product, Twinkly Candies, coming in fall 2023.

These caught my eye as they have 3 unique shapes: ball, star and candle. It’s also cheaper than most Twinkly products. Only $49 per RGB strip. One way the company keeps costs down is by not including the USB-C power brick in the lightweight string, Twinkly CEO Andrea Tellatin told me.

This is the new trend in smart home. Fewer and fewer products ship with these chunky chargers. Samsung’s new SmartThings Station, for example, is $20 cheaper if you don’t need the block. It looks like the future of universal USB-C charging could not only solve smartphone charging problems, but also bring some savings to the smart home.

GE Appliances showed off its first smart mixer at CES. Introduced late last year, the GE Profile Mixer brings smarts to the baking process, combining smart scale with auto-sensing technology that monitors changes in texture and viscosity via motor torque. All this means that the meringue should not be over whipped.

This feature only works with recipes that your device knows about, but since baking is a science, not an art, leaving it to the machine should give you more reliable results. It also features built-in voice control via Alexa or Google to stop, set speed, set timer and adjust speed.

As a big fan of the Thermomix smart blender/cooker, I can appreciate the benefits of the built-in scale.It makes cooking much easier and less messy. However, $1,000 for a pasta maker, meat grinder, and all the other stand mixers (with the right accessories) asks a lot. But if the price is right, you can order one now from Crate & Barrel.

Taking the farm-to-table concept one step further, counter-to-table produce had a hot moment at CES a few years ago. Allows you to grow your own crops. A few startups have emerged since then, including Aerogarden and Rise, but the overall concept seems to have faded. So excited to see his LG Tiiun at LG’s CES booth this year.

Tiiun, LG’s first indoor gardening appliance unveiled at CES 2022, looks like a wine refrigerator, but instead of chilling chablis perfectly, it’s used to store sprouts (Tiiun means sprouts in Korean) and lettuce. Grow vegetables in 4-8 weeks from an all-in-one seed kit with automated water, lighting and climate control. Order a kit from LG and Tiiun works with LG’s ThinQ app. It’s only in South Korea for now, but his LG representative at the CES booth said it’ll be coming to the US this year for around $1,300. He also showed off the desktop LG Tiiun Mini.

European IoT device maker Shelly is bringing a new smart smoke alarm to market. So far, the space for smart smoke detectors has been spotty, with Google Nest and First Alert options being the best, but expensive and somewhat limited.

Shelly Plus Smoke is a battery-powered smoke alarm with sound and light display that sends a notification to your smartphone when smoke is detected. Smoke alarms use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and, as Plus devices, need to be updated to support Matter (Shelly said all Plus and Pro devices will have an option to roll out at the end of Q2). says it will support Matter with a firmware update for ). .

Shelly also works with Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Home Assistant, and other smart home platforms thanks to its open API. This allows you to create scenes that can unlock doors, start air conditioners, turn off appliances, or turn on all lights if smoke is detected. No pricing has been announced, but Sherry confirmed that it will be coming to both the US and European markets.

Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy/The Verge