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

Smart energy management just took a step closer to becoming simpler. This week, the organizations behind Matter, the smart-home interoperability standard, and the OpenADR protocol, which sends signals between the grid and the home, announced an agreement to work together. This should make it easier for connected appliances to participate in demand response programs (DR) and, hopefully, save you money.

In demand response programs, a customer agrees to reduce or shift their electrical usage in exchange for utility bill credits or other incentives. The Connectivity Standards Alliance, which runs Matter, and the nonprofit OpenADR Alliance have outlined how the two protocols will work together to automate this process.

Smart lighting company Nanoleaf has been unusually quiet recently. While competitors such as Govee and Philips Hue have been pumping out new products and innovative features at an impressive pace, Nanoleaf has launched just a handful of smart lighting products in the last two years. There’s a reason for this lull — the company has been going through a “brand evolution” focused on wellness, robotics, and, of course, AI.

“The smart home is getting kind of boring,” says the ever-candid Gimmy Chu, CEO and cofounder of Nanoleaf, which he now doesn’t want me to call a smart lighting company. “Our brand needs to evolve to incorporate some of the other products that we’re going to be releasing.”

Hundreds of influencers, media folks, and a few C-list celebs (sorry, Woz) filled the cavernous halls of the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts last week. They were assembled for Dreame’s launch event, ostensibly into both America and a much bigger ecosystem of products. Across the four-day showcase, the Chinese robot vacuum company pitched an AI-wrapped future that extends beyond floor cleaning to smartphones, smart rings, smart cars, and more robotic arms than any cat would be comfortable with.

The event, called Dreame Next 2026, leaned heavily on spectacle and vaporware. While there were some actual launches in the vacuuming, air-purifying, personal care, and home appliance categories, the focus was on attention-grabbing concept gadgets. From a fridge with a robotic arm that puts your groceries away and a robot that folds your laundry to a rocket-powered EV, everywhere you looked was an ambitious new product.

Amazon-owned Blink has two new video doorbells: the Blink Wired Doorbell 2K+ for $49.99 and the Blink Battery Doorbell 2K+ for $69.99 if you already have a sync module; or $79.99 bundled with the required hub.

The doorbell cameras join Blink’s 2K camera lineup announced last fall, and also work with Blink’s smart video descriptions, which send alerts with text summaries of events the camera captures, such as “person playing basketball in the driveway.” They’re available for preorder now and will ship on May 20th.

Homebridge, the popular software solution that allows you to integrate non-HomeKit devices like Ring cameras into Apple Home, is adding support for the Matter smart home standard.

Today, May 4th, Homebridge 2.0, which has been in beta for over three years, officially launches. Along with other improvements, the update brings the “initial groundwork for Matter support,” according to a post on the r/homebridge subreddit from NorthernMan5, one of the GitHub core maintainers.

It took Tim Cook years to launch Apple into major new hardware categories, such as the smartwatch. But John Ternus could start his tenure right away with an ambitious new project: smart home hardware.

All signs point to a strong lineup of new smart home devices coming potentially this fall, putting Apple back in the game in a category where it has been painfully slow to ship new devices.

Ikea’s popular Varmblixt lamp just got a smart home glow-up. The delightfully bulbous light now features color-changing, dimming, and smart home control. I tested the new smart lamp in my daughter’s room and found it made a great bedside lamp and added a fun touch of ambiance to her space. While she’s rarely a fan of me adding smart tech to her room, she did give this an “It’s nice” accolade — high praise from my 15-year-old.

The donut lamp, as it’s known for its distinctive shape resembling everyone’s favorite sweet treat, can be wall-mounted or set flat on a table. It comes with a long power cable, which helps with placement, and differs from its non-smart counterpart in that it has a matte finish rather than the original’s glossy glow. The matte does look quite stylish and helps accentuate the new colors — the old version only glows orange.

Ring has announced its first battery-powered 2K and 4K doorbell cameras. The Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro 2nd Gen ($249.99) offers 4K video resolution and 10x digital zoom, while the Battery Video Doorbell Plus 2nd Gen ($179.99) offers 2K video and 6x zoom. The Battery Video Doorbell 2nd Gen ($99.99) also has 2K but uses a built-in battery unlike the other two, which have removable batteries. The new doorbell cameras are now available for pre-order and will be released on April 29th.

The company also announced an upgrade to its Wired Video Doorbell 2nd Gen ($79.99), bringing 2K Video to its budget doorbell camera. All the models get the new, sleeker look first introduced with Ring’s line of wired 2K- and 4K-capable doorbells last year.

Reolink’s new solar-powered floodlight camera is now available. Announced earlier this year at CES, the Solar Floodlight Camera costs $109.99 but is on sale for $87.99 for the launch.

Most floodlight cameras require hardwiring into your home’s existing wiring, which can limit placement options and be difficult to install. Reolink’s latest model can be mounted anywhere. With a built-in 7,800mAh battery, it can run for up to three months without sun, but just one hour of rays can fully power it for a day, according to Reolink.

This week, my top pick for a retrofit smart lock launched the first Aliro-compatible keypad. The Nuki Keypad 2 NFC ($179) brings tap-to-unlock via Apple’s Home Key and Samsung’s Digital Home Key to the Nuki smart lock, allowing you to tap your phone or smartwatch to unlock your door, just like you tap to pay.

Aliro is a new smart lock standard supported by all major platforms and handset manufacturers. It is designed to allow any smart lock to be securely unlocked by any smartphone, regardless of manufacturer, without requiring proprietary apps.

Ikea’s new Matter-over-Thread products were supposed to prove that the smart home could be cheap, accessible, and reliable. The highly anticipated line — which includes sensors, remotes, smart plugs, air-quality monitors, and smart bulbs — has most everything you need to build a smart home, with prices starting at $6. It’s an exciting idea, but it’s still not ready for primetime.

When I first got the Ikea devices in January, I had a lot of problems connecting them to my main platform, Apple Home. And it turned out I was not alone. Reddit forums and user reviews were full of reports of onboarding and connectivity issues. Many people were struggling to get devices connected to every smart home platform — from Apple Home to Google Home, and even Ikea’s own Dirigera hub. YouTuber Shane Whatley documented his experience trying to onboard to Apple Home in real time, and it’s fairly painful to watch.

The first Matter camera is here — sort of. Camera support came to the smart home standard last year, and Aqara’s Camera Hub G350 is the first to support it. The G350, which was announced at CES, launched this week and is a pan-and-tilt indoor security camera with up to 4K video resolution.

Today, the G350 only supports Matter on Samsung SmartThings, as none of the other platforms have added Matter 1.5 yet. I’ve only had the camera setup for a day, and it took several firmware updates before I could connect it as a Matter camera. So far, all it can do is stream a live feed, which is far less than what Samsung promises Matter cameras in SmartThings will do. But there’s plenty of potential here.

The rumored “HomePod with a screen” we’ve heard so much about was reportedly lined up for launch in 2025, and then this spring, and now, according to the latest updates, it’s on the shelf until this fall. Leaker Kosutami posted as much on X last week, and today, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman followed up with similar information, saying its robot arm-equipped cousin is now planned for launch in 2027.

According to Gurman, the J490 smart home display / HomePad is waiting for Apple to finish work on its chatbot-style AI update for Siri.

Aliro has officially arrived. The smart lock standard, first announced in 2023, finally has a 1.0 spec, meaning companies can now get hardware certified and roll out support.

Aliro is an open standard designed to let any smart lock be unlocked by any smartphone, regardless of manufacturer. It stores a digital key in your phone’s wallet that you can tap to a compatible lock — just like you tap to pay.

Ring founder Jamie Siminoff has been on an “explanation tour,” as The New York Times puts it, following the fallout from its Super Bowl ad and the introduction of its Search Party feature.

In an interview with The Times this week, Siminoff explained that he understands people’s concerns and that “maybe people were ‘triggered’ by an image in the ad that showed blue rings radiating out from suburban homes. There will be fewer maps in any future ads, he said.”

A leaked internal email obtained by 404 Media shows that Ring has bigger plans for its AI-powered neighborhood search capability than just looking for lost dogs. The outlet reports the email, sent last October by founder Jamie Siminoff to all Ring employees, says that with Search Party, “You can now see a future where we are able to zero out crime in neighborhoods.”

Ring, the Amazon-owned home security company, has come under intense criticism in recent weeks following a Super Bowl commercial for its Search Party feature that showed Ring cameras surveilling a neighborhood for lost dogs.

The most striking thing about Ring’s statement that it had parted ways with Flock Safety is what the home security company didn’t say. There was no mention of the public backlash around ties to ICE, or any promise to address users’ concerns about the company’s relationships with law enforcement.

In an increasingly authoritarian political climate, the threat of mass surveillance fueled by AI-powered cameras is what many people fear. Yet Ring’s statement made no attempt to address this. Instead, the company claims it canceled Flock’s integration with its Community Requests tool because it would “require significantly more time and resources than anticipated.”