Connected devices for the home.
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A silent, frugal little box that turns Home Assistant into genuinely plug-and-play hardware — as long as you accept that it has no radios of its own and budget for USB dongles on top of the $199-$219 asking price.
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The Homey Pro Mini delivers local-first Matter, Thread and Zigbee control with no subscription for $199.99, and it's far friendlier to set up than Home Assistant — as long as you can live with Ethernet-only networking and a trimmed app list.
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Hubitat's C-8 Pro is a local-first smart home hub with a genuinely broad radio stack — Matter 1.5, Z-Wave 800 Long Range, Zigbee 3.0 and more — aimed at tinkerers who want automations that survive an internet outage. The $184.95 price and steep learning curve keep it out of beginner territory.
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Amazon's $179.99 wall-mounted control panel bundles every major smart home radio into one 8-inch touchscreen, undercutting professional systems by thousands — as long as you can live with occasional sluggishness and a stand that costs extra.
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The CSA's Matter 1.6 release adds no new device types. Instead it rebuilds the plumbing: a Joint Fabric that lets Apple, Google, Amazon and SmartThings co-administer one network, NFC setup that works before a device has power, and thermostats that treat commands as suggestions.
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Google's first speaker in six years is a handsome, punchy $100 smart speaker let down by a half-baked Gemini assistant and the quiet disappearance of Google's cheaper options.
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