More from All the smart home news, reviews, and gadgets you need to know about
CEO Gimmy Chu says the commoditization of smart lighting is behind Nanoleaf’s pivot.
Influencers and vaporware collided with some interesting-looking robot vacuums, a laundry robot, and a rocket at Dreame’s US launch event.
This was one of my favorite gadgets from CES, and Lifx says the $199.99 Matter-enabled LED lighted mirror will ship later this month. I have one to test and will be posting a review soon.
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.
Lifx launches a smart mirror and a $30 dimmer switch that can control smart bulbs
When Google launched Gemini for Home, it put one key feature behind a paywall. Continued Conversation became available only on Gemini Live, which required Google Home Premium.
Starting today, users in Early Access can once again ask follow-up questions to Google’s voice assistant on their Google Home devices without saying “Hey Google” every time, and without paying. Another bonus is that the feature now works with all supported languages and in all regions.
[Google Nest Community Blog]
The Thread Group has released a new Thread Network Diagnostic app that lets you “explore, monitor, and visualize your Thread network.” It displays network topology, connection status, and device roles to help troubleshoot issues. It’s Android only for now, but an iOS version is in the works.
Thread connectivity problems have been one of Matter’s biggest pain points — most recently with Ikea’s Matter-over-Thread rollout. There are some apps that let you see your network, but a dedicated tool like this could be very useful. I’ll report back after testing it out.
[Google Play Store]
European Mammotion owners took to Reddit to complain that their expensive machines have been offline for three days. Mammotion says a fix is in the works, but hasn’t said what happened. One Redditor claims the outage stems from a bug in the Mammotion Home Assistant integration he had built. We’ve reached out to the company for the full story.
8
Verge Score
The new Varmblixt adds color-changing, dimming, and Matter-over-Thread support, and brings a touch of inexpensive style to my smart home.
The company behind the Brava Oven, the innovative smart kitchen gadget that cooks with light, has announced it ceased operations on March 6, 2026. It will no longer sell its $1,300 countertop ovens or provide software updates.
If you own a Brava, the good news is that the Brava Cloud is currently working. The bad news is that “may change, be limited, or be discontinued at any time.”
The company’s new line of affordable gadgets was supposed to prove Matter’s promise. Instead, it exposed just how far interoperability still has to go.
The Aqara Doorbell Camera G400 goes on sale today following its launch last November. Unlike the G350 Camera Hub camera, which also arrives today, it doesn’t support Matter, but it does have dual-band Wi-Fi 6, PoE, 2K resolution, a 165-degree field of view, and a 3:4 aspect ratio.
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.
Aqara’s G350 brings Matter 1.5 camera support, promising easier smart home integration — but it only works with Samsung SmartThings.
The smart lock, which launched earlier this year with support for Apple’s Home Key, is the first to work with Samsung’s new Digital Home Key.
The feature uses NFC powered by the new smart lock standard Aliro and lets you unlock your door by tapping your Samsung Galaxy smartphone on the lock. Aqara says UWB-based, hands-free unlocking is coming in Q2 2026.
Ring’s Super Bowl ad focused on how its cameras could be networked to find a missing dog, but for a lot of people, it highlighted the surveillance power hiding in those devices. Now Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has sent a letter to Amazon saying, “Get this creepy technology away from our homes.”
You can read it in full here, but here’s a snippet:
Most Popular
- Midjourney goes from generating cat images to full-body ultrasound scans
- Apple’s weird anti-nausea dots cured my car sickness
- Amazon employees say they’re facing termination for backing data center limits
- This robotic self-driving toilet comes to you
- Barret Zoph is out at OpenAI again after just five months