2 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Smart Home Archive

Archives for January 2026

Sean Hollister
Sean Hollister
Would you buy a Tamagotchi for your plants?

The company calls it Senso, and it’s cute! Detachable heads and charger so you can leave the probe in soil. Light, temperature, humidity, and soil moisture, plus a whole AI pitch I’m not quite buying. I’d be more tempted if it weren’t a Kickstarter and had a local smart home API. (YouTube version here.)

The best tech announced at CES 2026 so far

Smart lights that know where they’re placed in a room, wild designs for next-gen routers, and a glowing inedible donut.

Andrew Liszewski
The Verge Awards at CES 2026

Rollable laptops, twice-folding phones, and a ‘longevity station.’ This is the CES tech we come back for.

Verge Staff
Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Everything else in your house is smart now, so why not your dog crate?

The CleverK9 is one of the first, if not the first, smart pet crates on the market. As you’d expect from anything with the word “smart” in the title, it has an app for opening the doors, and you can even automate it so they’ll unlock in the event that smoke or CO2 is detected.

Unsurprisingly, the CleverK9 won’t be cheap, starting at $600 and going up to $2,000 based on size. But hey, at least there’s no subscription.

Antonio G. Di Benedetto
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
Here’s a closer look at Asus’s Wi-Fi 8 concept router that looks like a d20.

The Wi-Fi 8 spec isn’t finalized, but Asus is showing a ROG NeoCore concept router at CES. Buying a router based on an unfinished reference design spec sounds risky, but I do hope this d20-like styling sets a trend.

The clear spider-like version you see here is Asus’s Wi-Fi 8 test model. A rep told me the NeoCore internalizes the antennas, which are the edges of the polyhedron. Neat.

<em>The Asus ROG NeoCore with its test unit behind it.</em>
<em>Asus reps did not let me roll for initiative.</em>
1/9
The Asus ROG NeoCore with its test unit behind it.
Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
I’ve been using my Hue lights all wrongI’ve been using my Hue lights all wrong
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy