Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

Senior Reviewer, Smart Home

Jennifer Pattison TuohyJan 21, 2025

These POE smart shades are the first to work with Matter.

SmartWings, one of the first to offer Matter over Thread smart shades, has another first. Today, the company announced its Matter over Ethernet smart shades, which use a single cable to provide power and connectivity — no batteries, Thread, or Wi-Fi required.

Matter compatibility means the shades, which come in roller, zebra, and woven styles, will work with Apple Home, Google Home, SmartThings, Alexa, and other smart home platforms.

SmartWings’ new Matter over Ethernet shades have a CAT 6A Inline coupler to connect to a port on a compatible router or switch for power and connectivity in one cable.

Image: SmartWings

Jennifer Pattison TuohyJan 16, 2025

You can now control your LG appliances with Homey.

The electronics giant has followed through on its promise to open the APIs for its ThinQ appliances, and Homey, which is owned by LG, is one of the first platforms to implement it.

The LG ThinQ app for Homey is available now for both cloud-based and hub-based setups and lets you add connected LG washers, dryers, TVs, and more to Homey and control them directly or with automations.

LG appliance integration with Homey allows users to set up automations like this one, which will dim the Philips Hue lights and close the Aqara curtains when the LG TV turns on after 8pm.

Image: Homey

The Google Home app will soon support the Nest Protect

Jennifer Pattison TuohyJan 15, 2025

Robot vacuums just keep growing

CES saw wild innovations from Roborock and Dreame and helpful upgrades from the rest of the pack, all of which are set to make 2025 a banner year for those who’d rather leave the cleaning to the robots.

Jennifer Pattison TuohyJan 12, 2025

Jennifer Pattison TuohyJan 11, 2025

Rincewind is in the house!

Meet Julien Navas, dressed as a Conehead wizard to promote VideoLAN’s new automatic subtitle generation and translation for VLC.

I tracked down the colorful character in the French section of Eureka Park in the dying moments of CES 2025.

Here, I saw Ricky Gervais’s Golden Globe speech being translated into Japanese in real-time, locally and offline — a feature the team says is coming to VLC later this year.

Julien Navas has developed Cone Fused, an online Game Boy game, to promote the non-profit VideoLAN. Finish it first and win a 24-carat gold Game Boy.

Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Jennifer Pattison TuohyJan 10, 2025

This mechanical keyboard can control your smart home.

ThirdReality’s MK1 Magic Keyboard ($80, launching March) is a Matter smart button. Ingenious!

The function keys are programmable buttons. Just press to activate a scene or control smart devices like lights through Apple Home, SmartThings, or Home Assistant. Mechanical keyboard / smart home nerds rejoice!

This smart keyboard has RGB lighting, Gateron Yellow switches, and a Matter-over-Wi-Fi chip on board.

Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Jennifer Pattison TuohyJan 10, 2025

Nanoleaf brought smart lighting for the face to CES.

So, of course, I had to go try it out. This $150 LED Light Therapy Face Mask is the smart lighting company’s first lighting-focused wellness product, and it sounds like there may be more to come. I think it’s rather fetching ... don’t you?