184 articles
Smart plugs are the gateway drug of home automation — and the first product most people return. Not because the idea is wrong, but because setup assumes your Wi-Fi is patient, your router speaks 2.4 GHz clearly, and the app you download will still exist in three years. Get those three things righ...
Canadian summers have a rhythm: June arrives with relief, July brings humidity you can wear, and by August the bedroom feels like a held breath. A basic box fan pushes air in one direction until you reposition it — then you reposition it again. Ceiling fans help if you have them. Most apartments ...
Canadian winters are dry in a way that announces itself — static shocks at the light switch, sinuses that feel sandpapered by February, wood furniture cracking along the grain. Summer air conditioning dries rooms too, just more quietly. A humidifier fixes the symptom. Most humidifiers add a new s...
The Townew T1 Self-Sealing Smart Trash Can sits in a slightly odd corner of the home-gadget market: the "smart" trash can that tries to solve a very specific annoyance. Not smell in general, and not recycling, and not kitchen organization. Its pitch is simpler than that. When the bag is full,...
The Swippit Hub Phone Charging System sits in a fairly unusual category: not a normal wireless charger, not a battery bank, and not quite a docking station either. It is a countertop phone-power system built around one big promise — instead of waiting for your iPhone to recharge, you swap in ...
The SwitchBot Blind Tilt sits in one of the more practical corners of smart home gear: retrofit automation. Instead of ripping out perfectly usable window coverings and buying a whole new set of motorized blinds, this device is meant to motorize the tilt rod on existing horizontal venetia...
The Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Plug Mini sits in one of the least glamorous but most genuinely useful corners of the smart-home market: the tiny adapter that turns a normal lamp, fan, coffee maker, or holiday light string into something you can control from your phone or with a voice assistant. This is...
The Ouaken Electric Composter sits in an odd corner of the kitchen-appliance market: the machine that promises to make food waste less gross, less smelly, and easier to deal with. It is usually sold with the language of composting, fertilizer, and sustainability, but the reality is a bit narr...
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...
