176 articles
The SwitchBot Hub Mini (Matter) sits in a very specific corner of the smart-home world: the little box you buy when you are tired of juggling one more app, one more voice-assistant compatibility chart, and one more "works with" badge that turns out to mean "sort of." Its job is not glamorous....
The SwitchBot Lock Ultra sits in one of the more practical corners of the smart-home world: the retrofit smart lock. That means it is designed to motorize your existing deadbolt from the inside, instead of replacing the entire exterior lockset on your door. If you live in a rental, share ...
The Kohler Numi 2.0 Smart Toilet sits at the far premium end of the bathroom-tech market: not just a bidet seat, not just an automatic flush toilet, but an integrated smart fixture that expects more from the room around it. If you are looking at one, the real question usually is not "what tri...
The Kasa Matter Smart Outdoor Plug sits in one of the most practical corners of the smart-home market: the outdoor smart plug that lets you automate dumb seasonal lights, patio lamps, fountains, and other backyard gear without replacing the devices themselves. This is not the glamorous side o...
The ThirdReality Motion Sensors sit in a much less glamorous corner of the smart-home world than cameras, speakers, or robot vacuums. That usually means they matter more than people expect. A motion sensor is one of those small devices that quietly makes a home feel smarter: lights turn on wh...
The SwitchBot onero H1 Humanoid Robot sits in one of the strangest corners of consumer tech right now: the not-quite-practical, not-just-for-show home robot. It is not a robot vacuum, not a smart speaker, and not a toy in the usual sense. Instead, it is a 1.3m-tall wheeled humanoid robot ...
The TESSAN European Plug Adapter USB C 2-Pack sits in a very practical category that people usually only think about a week before a trip: the travel plug adapter that tries to reduce how much charger clutter you bring. It is not a travel converter, not a battery bank, and not some premium ga...
The Wyze Smart Plug sits in one of the most practical corners of the smart-home market: the simple Wi‑Fi outlet adapter that turns a "dumb" appliance into a controllable one. That sounds small, but this category does a lot of real work. A smart plug can put lamps on schedules, restart a flaky...
The HomePod Mini sits in a slightly unusual spot in the smart-speaker market. It is not the cheapest small speaker you can buy, and it is not trying to be the loudest either. What it really offers is Apple's idea of a compact home speaker: a small, voice-controlled audio puck that can pla...
Renters have been the quiet casualty of the smart-home boom. Most guides assume you can swap out a deadbolt, mount a doorbell, run speaker wire in the wall, and call the installer for a new C-wire in the furnace closet. If you're renting — a condo in Toronto, a basement suite in Vancouver, a down...
Matter is the smart-home standard that everyone has quietly been waiting for since roughly 2017, and the standard that everyone — including the companies that made it — keeps explaining badly. If you've read five articles about Matter and still aren't sure whether it replaces Wi-Fi, or Thread, or...
If you've ever stood in your kitchen watching a video buffer while your router sits two rooms away, you already know why mesh routers exist. A single router—no matter how powerful—can't push a strong signal through walls, floors, and the general chaos of a Canadian home. Mesh systems solve this b...
