SAVE $60: As of Dec. 28, the Echo Show 8 (3rd gen) is down to just $89.99 from $149.99 at Amazon. This post-holiday price is $15 less than Black Friday and a new all-time low. Opens in a new window Credit: Amazon Echo Show 8 (3rd gen) Get Deal The …
Read More »A First Look at Matic, the Reengineered Robot Vacuum
Within a few minutes of arriving at the WIRED offices in San Francisco, Matic cofounder Mehul Nariyawala brings up the classic Paul Graham piece on schlep blindness. The essay talks about how engineers will often shrink away from starting a company to tackle a very commonly understood problem simply because …
Read More »Worried About Burglars? Here’s How Your Smart Home Can Help Protect You From Break-Ins
As the nights draw in and fall gives way to winter, it’s worth thinking about how smart home devices can protect your household. Whether you are worried about porch pirates snagging holiday packages or burglars breaking in when you are away visiting relatives, there are some simple ways to make …
Read More »How to Set Your Thermostat—According to Science
The house in New Jersey came with a menagerie of control panels. Pallid little rectangles with fuzzy LCD screens, of varying brands and designs. Some were decades old, and there were six of them in total, dotted around various rooms. Joe Truncale, a customer engineer at Google, remembers trying to …
Read More »The Pros and Cons of Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video
If you're shopping for indoor or outdoor security cameras, video doorbells, or a mix of all three to cover your property, finding a system you can trust is tougher than it should be. Between security scandals, shoddy software, expensive subscriptions, and laggy feeds, you'll struggle to find a bulletproof security …
Read More »These Motion Sensors Finally Made My Home Feel ‘Smart’
My progress toward a truly “smart” home has been painfully slow. I’m sick of unreliable voice commands, flaky smart switches, and poorly designed apps. Where’s the seamless experience that was promised? As my wife often points out, if it’s not easier than flicking the regular old switch or drawing the …
Read More »How the Apple TV 4K Quickly Became My Favorite Streaming Device
For years, I've had recurring problems using smart home devices on Apple’s HomeKit ecosystem. A string of security cameras and video doorbells, most notably the Logitech Circle View Doorbell, would work fine for periods, but they'd inexplicably fail to record video or would randomly disconnect from the network. I chalked …
Read More »I’m Charging My Toothbrush With Wireless Power Over Distance—and It’s a Trip
For the past month or so, my electric toothbrush has been charging wirelessly, but not the way you think. My toothbrush charger is not plugged into an outlet. There are no wires or cables. The charging cradle can sit anywhere on the bathroom counter and continue to charge my toothbrush. …
Read More »Amazon Upgrades Alexa for the ChatGPT Era
When Amazon launched the Alexa virtual assistant nine years ago, its ability to decode voice commands to set a timer or play a song seemed almost magical. Today, the bar for impressive language skills is much higher, thanks to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Amazon is giving its voice assistant a reboot that …
Read More »Amazon’s Eero Max 7 Mesh Router Adds Wi-Fi 7—for a Whopping $600
Every new hardware announcement is always described as “the best ever,” but Amazon’s new Eero Max 7 mesh might just be a real leap forward. This is Eero's first tri-band mesh router that utilizes the latest Wi-Fi 7 standard, promising roughly double the speeds of its previous flagship system, up …
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