This smart light switch does it all — voice assistant, motion sensor, night light, intercom

I recently replaced most of the light switches in my home with TP-Link Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Switches because it’s pretty damn cool to ask Alexa to turn off the lights, and that happened to be a cheap and reliable way to do it.

But TP-Link just announced a new switch that does so much more. It’s got a built-in voice assistant with its own microphones and speaker. (Weirdly, TP-Link couldn’t say which assistant is built in, though the company implied it’d be Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.) It’s got a motion sensor to turn on and off the lights without me even asking. There’s even a built-in nightlight, and, of course, it plays music.

And because they’ve got speakers, microphones, and buttons, and you’re probably going to buy at least two of them, TP-Link saw fit to make them function as intercoms. Press a button, and talk to someone in another room! Summon your real-world servants! Talk to somebody through the bathroom door! (Okay, maybe not those last two.)

You can also press the button to chat with someone outside your front door since TP-Link has a whole raft of new smart home products here at CES 2019, including a smart doorbell:

I had a fairly long phone briefing with TP-Link last month, and most of the new items are interesting in their own right. There aren’t a lot of actual smart power outlets, for instance, and the $40 Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Power Outlet looks way more convenient than sticking a couple of blocky smart plugs in my dumb ones. Second from the left is Kasa’s Wire-Free Outdoor Security Camera System, a water-resistant 1080p camera with a removable battery that — thanks to super-low-power motion detection that wakes the cam from sleep — can last six months on a charge at a time. Like some competitors, it’s got a built-in two-way radio and siren, and an optional solar panel can keep it topped up.

Meanwhile, Kasa says that its wired smart doorbell (third from the right) will stand out from the pack with 2K HDR video, two free days of video recordings at a time, and facial recognition macros. (You can program it so that after it sees certain faces, it can fire off a pre-recorded message, automatically turn on certain lights in your home, etc.)

And while there are quite a few outdoor smart plugs, I might have to try Kasa’s IP65 water-resistant one (far right) for $45.

TP-Link says the outlet and outdoor plug are coming this February, a new $50 1080p indoor camera this spring, and the rest of the items should arrive sometime in the first half of this year.