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

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), deftly navigate dog poop, and have arms to pick up your socks, 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.

Fancier models have obstacle recognition, and some even use AI-powered cameras to tell popcorn from poop and avoid the latter. If you want one of those, check out my best robot vacuum buying guide. But if you think you can manage the task of picking up after yourself (and your puppy), a budget bot will save you a lot of money and still do a good job cleaning your floor.

It looks like someone may have finally done the smart door right. Doma Home, a new company from the creators of the August smart lock, has announced its first product: the Doma Intelligent Door. A motorized smart door that automatically opens as you approach and closes after you enter, the Doma door also features built-in sensors, a video doorbell, a keypad, a smart lock, and a smart home control panel.

Doma founders Jason Johnson and Yves Béhar have designed their own doors and partnered with manufacturers to integrate the Doma technology platform into standard doors. Everything is made to order, and pricing varies by door type. You can sign up on Doma’s website to be notified when they’re available, which should be next summer.

Robot vacuums that can both mop and sweep your floors have improved significantly in recent years. While they are still not as effective as good ol’ manual labor, if you run them regularly, they will help keep your floors cleaner with much less effort on your part.

The difference is that newer “combo” robot vacuum and mop models are designed to actually scrub your floors. The first robot vacuums that could also “mop” simply slapped a thin, flat microfiber pad on the bot that kind of Swiffer-ed your floor. Basically, all this was good for was getting up fine dirt that the vacuum left behind.

Garage door opener manufacturer The Chamberlain Group has launched a new version of the communication platform that powers its connected garage door openers — and it’s bad news for smart home users.

The new Security+ 3.0 platform, launching alongside Chamberlain’s latest openers, shuts down the workarounds that third-party accessory makers such as Tailwind, Meross, and Ratgdo developed to let you integrate your garage door with Apple Home, Home Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and others.

Robot vacuums are impressive devices that will clean your floors well and — thanks to bigger batteries and better robot brains — rarely get tired of doing their job. Over the last few years, these floor-sweeping bots have gone from utilitarian devices to full-fledged home robots that vacuum and mop your home, clean themselves, and trundle off to prepare themselves for the next run.

I’ve been testing robot vacuums for over 7 years and have run more than 80 of them throughout my house. This guide features my top picks if you’re looking for the best: a robot vacuum that can do it all with limited intervention from you.

A smart lock is an easy solution to some common problems. Locked yourself out? Need to let a friend in to water the plants? Your latchkey kid lost their key? Hands are full, and it’s raining cats and dogs? A smart lock solves all of these problems and more.

One of the best smart home upgrades you can make, a smart lock gives you remote control access to your house from anywhere, plus easy, key-free ways to unlock and lock your door. Smart locks also remember everything that happened, so they can tell you when your door was unlocked, and sometimes who did it.

Resideo’s newest thermostat looks like a compelling alternative to Nest or Ecobee if you’re looking for a premium smart thermostat. The Honeywell Home X8S is compatible with Matter, supports room sensors, and features a sleek 5-inch touchscreen that works as an intercom for Ring and First Alert video doorbells.

The $219.99 thermostat launches this week, and thanks to Matter compatibility works with Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple Home, and other smart home systems. It also includes indoor air quality monitoring, plus humidity and ventilation control.

The last thing I need is a new Amazon Echo smart speaker. As The Verge’s smart home reviewer, I currently have a dozen scattered around my home for testing. But when Amazon’s Echo Frames smart glasses went on sale for $115 for Cyber Monday, down from $300, it was an offer my husband couldn’t refuse.

He chose the prescription-ready model (over the blue-light-filtering option), which meant he also got the Echo Spot, Amazon’s handy $80 smart speaker/smart alarm clock, thrown in for free. That’s a total savings of $265 and a total tally of about 13 smart speakers for me.

‘Tis the season to score some serious bargains on smart home gear. While Black Friday is behind us, Cyber Monday is coming up fast, so there is still time to grab a bargain on that smart lock you’ve been eyeing or take the plunge on a robot vacuum. Here I’ve rounded up the best deals I’ve spotted so far on some of my favorite smart home gear.

It’s finally happening. Three years after Matter launched, the interoperability standard now includes the most popular smart home devices: cameras.

The Matter 1.5 spec, announced today, adds support for all types of video cameras — from indoor and outdoor, wired and battery-powered cameras, to video doorbells, baby monitors, pet cams, and more. Matter support should be possible with an OTA update, so some of your existing cameras could become Matter-compatible. The new spec also adds garage door controllers, soil sensors, bi-directional charging for EVs, and more advanced integration with utilities for energy management.

Google started rolling out its new Gemini voice assistant for its smart speakers two weeks ago and, in a blog post marking the anniversary, the company seems to think everything is going great. It’s even quoting a user who said, “My Google Home just got upgraded with Gemini. It’s actually useful now beyond asking for today’s weather.” That’s some not-so-subtle shade right there.

But dig into the post’s FAQ, and things don’t look so rosy. Two of the most frequently asked questions from those who have the new assistant are:

Things continue to look bleak for the original robot vacuum maker. iRobot’s third-quarter results, released last week, show that revenue is down and “well below our internal expectations due to continuing market headwinds, ongoing production delays, and unforeseen shipping disruptions,” said Gary Cohen, iRobot CEO, in a press release.

This meant they had to spend more cash and are now down to under $25 million. “At this time, the Company has no sources upon which it can draw for additional capital,” said Cohen.

Robot vacuums are amazing machines, but they can also be a pain in the arse.

In my home, testing a new robot vacuum often means digging it out from under my living room couch or unhooking it from the legs of my lounger. Then there’s being woken at 3AM by a cheery “resuming cleaning,” getting down on my hands and knees to retrieve a pencil from their brushes or scrub the gunk out of the “self-cleaning” dock. And — my favorite – holding my nose while dumping the contents of a giant dirty water tank into the toilet.

Ikea just announced a bunch of super cheap, colorful Matter-over-Thread devices that will work with any platform, and it feels like Christmas came early for the smart home.

The 21 new products include a line of smart bulbs starting at just £4 and two new remote controls that start at just £3 (US pricing is not yet confirmed). Ikea also officially updated its Dirigera hub to a Matter controller and Thread border router to support the new products, which will start to arrive in the US in January.

This weekend, I turned my home into a test lab for Google’s new Gemini for Home AI and subjected my family to 72 hours of surveillance as it watched, interpreted, and narrated our every move. My purpose? To find out if an AI that sees everything is actually helpful or just plain creepy.

“R unpacking items from a box,” read one notification from the Nest camera on a shelf in the kitchen. “Jenni cuts a pie / B walks into the kitchen, washes dishes in the sink / Jenni gets a drink from the refrigerator,” it continued. Sometimes, the alerts sounded like the start of a joke, “A dog, a person, and two cats walk into the room / Two chickens walk across the patio.”

I love the Echo Dot Max. It’s an excellent speaker, a good listener, and comes in purple — which is just fun. It’s got new, easier-to-use controls and more smart home sensors and radios than earlier models. It’s also one of the first devices designed for Alexa Plus. And while the AI-powered assistant isn’t mandatory (and is only available in the US), its presence is something of a letdown for an otherwise superior speaker.

Despite the name, the Dot Max isn’t a replacement for the Echo Dot, which is sticking around; it’s a successor to the fourth-gen Echo, released in 2020. At $99, it’s the same price as that melon-shaped Echo, which has been my top pick for an Alexa speaker for the last 5 years. But it is getting long in the tooth and appears to have been discontinued. Now the Dot Max, with its more compact design, sleek knit fabric look, speedy new processor, and support for Matter, Thread, and Zigbee smart home protocols, takes the crown.

Samsung warned us last month that ads were coming to the giant Android tablets embedded in its Family Hub smart fridges. I’ve been eyeing mine ever since — and the first ones are about to arrive. Starting November 3rd, the $2,000-plus connected fridges will get a new widget that serves up ads, Shane Higby, head of Home Appliance Business at Samsung Electronics America, confirmed to The Verge.

The ads will be part of a new widget on some of the smart fridges’ “Cover screen themes” (like a tablet or smartphone’s home screen). The widget, which Samsung shared with me ahead of today’s announcement, has four rotating screens. One showing news, one calendar events, one the weather forecast, and one with “curated advertisements.”

My front door unlocks automatically as I walk up to it, and the home security system disarms itself — no code or app required. The system has recognized me using the Google Nest Doorbell’s Familiar Faces, and confirmed I’m me using my phone’s location. The dual-factor authentication triggers the automatic disarming and unlocking, so all I have to do is walk inside.

This hands-free Auto Unlock experience is powered by ADT Plus, the newest security system from America’s oldest security company. It features the usual hardware — a base, sensors, and various accessories — but represents a major upgrade from fumbling for keys or racing to silence a beeping keypad.

Jamie Siminoff has returned to Ring, the company he founded, with a renewed focus on its mission statement to “Make neighborhoods safer.” Talking to The Verge ahead of the release of his new book Ding Dong, Siminoff says he believes the new wave of AI could finally help him fulfill that vision.

“When I left, I felt like Ring had gotten to a place where it was linear innovation,” he says. But new features like Search Party, an AI-powered tool that can search your neighbors’ Ring camera footage for lost dogs, are the type of innovations he always dreamt of but couldn’t execute. “Now, with AI, we can,” he says.