All the smart home news, reviews, and gadgets you need to know about – The Verge

Surprise! Facial recognition smart locks are actually good

2026-07-18T10:18:10-04:00

Facial recognition smart locks are here; now you can unlock your door the same way you unlock your phone. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Hands-free unlocking is the future of smart locks. The best smart home tech removes friction, and having your door unlock for you as you walk up is as frictionless as it gets - no passcodes to remember, no need to have a free hand to wave, press, or poke at the lock. One way to achieve this nirvana is through facial recognition. You already unlock your phone with your face; why not your home?

Hands-free unlocking using geofencing has been around for a while, but it can be slow and unreliable, and requires an app running in the background on your phone. Newer innovations - facial recognition and unlocking using an ultrawideband (UWB) radio - …

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Schlage’s Sense Pro unlocks the door so I don’t have to

2026-07-09T11:50:06-04:00

The Sense Pro is Schlage’s first Matter-over-Thread lock. It also supports hands-free unlocking via Apple Home Key, with Google and Samsung support coming soon through Aliro.

The Schlage Sense Pro is a beautiful smart lock. Sleek, discreet, and simple to use, it's Schlage's smartest lock to date. Thanks to ultra-wideband (UWB), it unlocks as I walk up to my front door; I don't need to enter a code or tap my phone or press my finger against it. I've tested several hands-free unlocking systems that rely on geofencing and other radio technologies, and UWB is faster and more reliable. It's the first one I actually trust.

The $399 Sense Pro is Schlage's first smart lock with ultra-wideband auto-unlock, its first to support Matter-over-Thread, and its first without a physical keyhole. It works with Apple Home Key for …

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iRobot’s newest floor cleaner isn’t a robot

2026-07-07T10:39:51-04:00

The Roomba Electro Plus is iRobot’s first manually-operated floor cleaner. | Image: iRobot

iRobot just announced its first-ever non-robotic floor cleaner. The $399 Roomba Electro Plus is a 5-in-1 hard-floor cleaner that combines vacuuming, mopping, and disinfecting, but you have to operate it yourself. The company also announced updates to its line of Roomba robot vacuums, launching five new models with higher suction power, smaller footprints, and lower prices. These largely replace the line that arrived in 2025.

Designed exclusively for hard floors, the new Electro Plus is similar to the new breed of manual wet-dry floor cleaners available from Dreame, Roborock, and others. iRobot's distinguishing feature is Electro's ability …

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Google built a great smart speaker, but Gemini isn’t ready for it

2026-07-01T14:20:52-04:00

The Google Home Speaker is Google’s first smart speaker in years. And it’s pretty! | Photo: Jennifer Patison Tuohy / The Verge

Smart speakers have spent the past few years searching for a compelling second act. Beyond music, timers, and controlling your lights, they've struggled to justify taking up space on the kitchen counter. AI promised to change that.

Amazon debuted its new hardware powered by a revamped Alexa last fall, and now it's finally Google's turn. The Google Home Speaker is the company's first new smart speaker in six years and its first "built for Gemini." After years of neglect, Google appears to be finally getting serious about the smart home - again. The new speaker is the clearest sign yet. Gemini for Home, however, still feels unfinished.

Google …

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Inside the room where the smart home industry is still betting on Matter

2026-06-27T09:11:02-04:00

Four years ago, overlooking a canal in Amsterdam, the smart home industry collectively launched Matter, the one interoperability standard to rule them all. Heralded as the solution to the industry's struggles, Matter was built on open standards and existing technologies and is the result of years of collaboration between traditional rivals, including Apple, Google, Amazon, and Samsung.

Matter promised an end to walled gardens and ecosystem lock-in. It promised to make a smart home device, like a lock, lightbulb, or sensor, easy to buy and set up. It promised you could choose any brand, use any platform, no expertise required - it would just …

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Smart lock maker Level has been gutted and its founders are out

2026-06-26T19:05:53-04:00

Level’s defining innovation was hiding the battery, motor, and electronics that power the smart lock inside the deadbolt itself. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Assa Abloy has laid off the majority of staff at Level Home, the smart lock company known for building smart tech into traditional-looking deadbolts, and is folding the business into Kwikset, according to a source familiar with the decision.

The Verge obtained exclusive details from a person familiar with the restructuring who requested anonymity as they were part of the layoffs. They shared an audio recording of a meeting in which Peter Boriskin, CTO for Assa Abloy North America, and Kimberly Cummins, head of North American HR, informed the staff that their positions had been eliminated, effective immediately, as "a part of a larger restru …

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Hue’s wired wall modules bring non-smart lights into its ecosystem

2026-06-19T13:24:45-04:00

The new Wired Wall Switch Modules fit behind existing switches. | Image: Signify

Smart lighting company Philips Hue has launched its first wired wall modules. Installed behind existing wall switches, the new devices bring non-smart lights into the Hue ecosystem for the first time. Hue also announced new Play table and floor lamps that are more affordable versions of its Signe series, along with upgrades to its E14 candle bulbs that add a broader white light spectrum and Matter-over-Thread compatibility.

The new lights are now available globally; however, the Wired Wall Switch Modules are Europe-only. Signify CTO George Yianni told The Verge that there are currently no plans to launch them in the US, but the company woul …

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Google’s first smart speaker in six years arrives next week

2026-06-17T11:06:26-04:00

The Google Home Speaker comes in four colors, including porcelain. (Stroopwafel not included.) | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Google's first new smart speaker in six years starts shipping on June 25th, narrowly missing its promised spring launch window. Preorders for the Google Home Speaker open today, June 17th.

Nothing has changed hardware-wise in the nine months since the $99 speaker was announced. It has the same slightly squished round design, with touch-capacitive buttons on top and a light ring at the bottom to indicate status. And it still comes in four colors: porcelain (white), hazel (black), jade (green), and berry (red). The last two are US-only.

Google Home Speaker

Google's first smart home speaker in six years is built for Gemini for Home. It has 360 …

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Will Matter finally be able to do what it should have always done?

2026-06-17T15:19:14-04:00

Matter 1.6 introduces a new way to share smart home devices with different ecosystems. | Image: CSA

Matter, the smart home interoperability standard, might finally get a feature that should have been there from day one: a single shared Matter network managed by multiple ecosystems. With this feature, called Joint Fabric, smart devices added to the network will be controllable by any authorized platform - Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and the rest. No need to "share" your smart light between apps; set it up once, and control it everywhere. It's like your smart home is a joint bank account and your platforms of choice all have signing authority.

Joint Fabric is part of the new Matter 1.6 spec announced this week at Unify, the Con …

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Apple’s smart home camera service is starting to impress me

2026-06-16T08:07:54-04:00

New features are coming to cameras connected to Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video. | Image: The Verge, Getty Images

Apple's HomeKit Secure Video service is getting in on the Apple Intelligence party to bring more descriptive alerts from your connected cameras and let you search footage using natural language. The Apple Home app is also getting better notifications powered by AI and is finally adding support for energy reporting.

These improvements were announced at WWDC last week and will be publicly available this fall. I've been playing with some of the features in the developer betas for iOS 27 and tvOS 27 for a few days, and based on my first impressions, Apple's HomeKit Secure Video is much improved - enough to put it back in contention for me as a …

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