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It was a banner year for smart home products, but the big trends I saw weren’t about new product categories; they were about bringing better features and lower prices to smart home staples such as smart lighting, smart locks, cameras, and TVs. A giant version of Lockin’s wirelessly charged V7 smart lock was a showstopper on the CES show floor.
I picked Aqara’s Smart Lock U400 and Roborock’s Saros Rover robot vacuum as the overall best smart home gadgets from CES 2026, but there were gazillions of other great gadgets on the show floor.
This is what I expected the launch of the interoperability protocol Matter would bring.
