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Best smart fans in 2024
Be smart about staying cool with powerful fans that feature wireless connectivity and remote control
Hot, humid, and still air is the last thing you need when enjoying your home in the summer months. A powerful fan is a great alternative to crippling AC bills and directs cool air to where you need it in your home.
Philips makes some of the best smart lighting you can get in its Hue line, but the it's generally more expensive than options from competing outfits like Lifx and GE. If you're in the Philips ecosystem and you don't mind getting some bulbs that aren't brand new, today is a good chance to stock up: Woot's got refurbished Hue products for up to $50 off MSRP.
If you're looking for an easy solution to keep an eye on your front door without breaking the bank, take a look at Eufy's smart doorbell. It usually sells for about $160, but you can snatch it for just $100 on Amazon this Black Friday.
Connected doorbells work best when used together with a smart display, as the latter lets you view who's at your door without having to reach for a phone or tablet. Such a setup can be costly, though, but thanks to this deal, you can snatch a Ring Video Doorbell Pro and Chime Pro bundle for just $230 and get a free Echo Show 5 with your purchase. When bought separately, these items would cost nearly $390, so this is a significant markdown we're talking about.
If you're looking to lose weight, visualizing data is a great advantage; seeing that, despite daily fluctuations, you're still on track can be highly motivating. Smart scales save you the hassle of manually tracking numbers and creating your own graphs. That may not seem like a luxury worth paying much money for, but Eufy's Smart Scale is pretty much an impulse buy at its current sale price.The scale tracks not only weight, but also body fat percentage, muscle mass, water weight, and 10 other stats. The majority are approximate — accurately testing these things requires serious equipment — but repeated weigh-ins will still produce a useful trend line. The companion app is nice, too, and it syncs with Google Fit.
If you're looking for a convenient way to keep an eye on your front door but don't want to break the bank, Eufy has got you covered with its video doorbell. It normally sells for around $160, but you can snatch it for just $100 thanks to this coupon code.
If keeping an eye inside your home is important to you, Ring's Stick Up Cam is also discounted. It's quite versatile and can be placed on a table or mounted on a wall, depending on where you'd like to put it. Like the doorbells, it features two-way audio, night vision, and real-time notifications for maximum safety. Lastly, you get to pick between the battery and wired models and get to place your camera anywhere without having to worry about cables. As with the other Ring products, you'll need to get the paid subscription to save footage, which doesn't make it the most affordable security camera on the market.The products are discounted on Ring's site and Amazon and don't require any additional coupon to enjoy the markdown.
You can pretty much get a smart anything these days, and while lots of connected products make sense, some can be more concerning. Smart ovens that show a live feed of your roasting turkey on your phone and can be switched off remotely certainly sound like a good idea, to begin with, but not so much when they turn themselves on in the middle of the night and heat up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Smart doorbells are a convenient way of adding an extra layer of security to your household, but they can be quite pricey and often require an additional monthly subscription. Of course, there are a few inexpensive options, but their resolution is usually limited to 1080p, which is decent, but not on par with new 4K standards. Eufy's approach offers a good compromise with great value for money, thanks to its 2K image quality at a reasonable price and with no monthly fees. The intelligent doorbell normally costs $160, but you can get it for just $112 thanks to this promo code.The doorbell has a bunch of neat features: For starters, it doesn't need a monthly subscription, it comes with a built-in 4GB storage to save video footage locally, which is automatically encrypted for extra privacy. It also features a predictive functionality that can automatically alert you if someone you know is at your door before they even ring the bell. To avoid unnecessary notifications, it uses human detection and won't bother you if an animal is standing in front of it.The product also lets you save pre-recorded responses, which are particularly convenient if you're not at home or want to save time. In case you'd rather talk to your visitor, you can use two-way audio thanks to the built-in microphone and speaker. For extra safety, the camera will start pre-recording video when it detects motion to let you see the previous three seconds before the actual alert. Lastly, unlike its competitors, the Eufy doorbell uses 4:3 images, which offer a more significant viewable area.
IKEA's embraced the smart home market with a growing range of different products, such as smart blinds, bulbs, and outlets, so when a partnership with Sonos was announced back in 2017, it didn't really come as a surprise. After teasing us with some first looks this January, today the two companies revealed the first fruits of their collaboration and introduced the SYMFONISK table lamp and bookshelf, both equipped with Sonos-compatible Wi-Fi speakers.
Lenovo Smart Home Essentials is the company's new product line for the connected home. It's starting off humbly with a camera, a wall plug, and a light bulb — consequently, I feel like there should be a joke here, but I'm drawing a blank. These will be compatible with both Alexa and Assistant right out of the gate, too.
Apparently Target has its own line of smart lamps, for which the US retailer released an iOS app called Target Connected back in October 2016. Now that app is available for Android devices, though without Google Assistant integration or any groundbreaking features, it's far from anything to get excited about. Oh, and it tries to sell you stuff from Target.com.
Around a month ago, we heard rumors that Amazon was planning to release a home security camera and a pair of smart glasses. Today, one of those became official, as Amazon announced the Cloud Cam. The intelligent indoor camera costs just $119 and aims to bring home security features to consumers who might not previously have been able to afford such hardware.At the same time, the company is launching a new home access service called Amazon Key. This Prime-exclusive scheme is designed to allow Amazon delivery personnel to briefly enter your home and leave packages inside your door, all under that watchful gaze of the Cloud Cam. You'll also be able to grant access to family and friends without leaving a key under the mat.[EMBED_YT]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn7DBdaUNLA[/EMBED_YT]The Cloud Cam can record 1080p video with its wide-angle lens, and also has night vision and two-way audio. You'll be able to view activity clips and a live stream from the last 24 hours in the Amazon Cloud Cam app, all of which is stored securely and free of charge in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. You'll also be able to view live footage on Amazon hardware with a screen, such as the Echo Show, Echo Spot, Amazon Fire TV devices, and Fire tablets, just by asking Alexa.Motion detection will trigger the camera to record, and also send a push notification to your phone so you can review the clip immediately. Two-way audio allows you to talk to pets or visitors. You can have up to 3 cameras with 24-hour storage for free, but after that, there's a subscription model. As well as longer storage or more cameras, subscribing gets you Person Detection to distinguish between humans and animals, and Zones for ignoring continually moving objects in the home. The prices are below, and each tier can be trialed for free for a month.
Amazon may have been first to the touchscreen assistant punch with the Echo Show, but there's compelling evidence to suggest that Google is readying a Home device with a display, too. In the meantime, another company is offering the first Google Assistant-enabled touchscreen home hub, and it's called Lynky.
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- Sony has just announced its new LF-S50G, another wireless speaker with the Google Assistant.
When the Google Assitant SDK was announced back in April, we knew it would only be a matter of time before we saw third party speakers with the Assistant built in. Google has announced the first three of those speakers at IFA 2017 in Berlin, and we can expect to learn more about them over the next few days.
Home security company Ring has had great success with its range of video doorbells and security cameras. The self-styled "most popular video doorbell in the world" was Ring's first product all the way back in 2014 and it quickly gained a foothold in the market. The company has since updated it with the more powerful Video Doorbell Pro, which increased the quality to 1080p but required a pre-existing hardwired bell setup. Ring is now ready to refresh the original product and has announced the Video Doorbell 2.
Eero was among the first companies to usher in a new wave of mesh WiFi systems. The startup's goal was clear: Introduce easy to set up and incredibly powerful WiFi across homes that suffer from poor signal. The three-pack of attractive white routers wasn't cheap but performed commendably, and the companion Android app also won many plaudits. After numerous OTA updates improving the service, as well as the release of performance doubling TrueMesh software, Eero is now refreshing its hardware offering with not one but two new devices.The first is, unsurprisingly, an update to the standard Eero router. It may look identical to its predecessor, but it's inside that counts, and Eero is promising that it's twice as powerful while maintaining the same form factor. That's important, as one of the key selling points for Eero is that the box smaller than its competitors without sacrificing power. It's apparently the only WiFi access point of its size to offer Tri-band WiFi, allowing it to handle the needs of multiple users around the home with ease. The 2nd generation Eero router, which also gets a speed and range increase, can easily be added to existing Eero systems.
I'm sure by now we've shined the light on enough Philips Hue deals for you to know all about the WiFi connected bulbs. I mean, you're a bright bunch, I don't think I can really illuminate any new details about the system that you haven't read before.
We're still weeding through the fantasmagoric dump of announcements, features, and all the new things that Google has gifted us with yesterday during its I/O keynote, and we now reach the company's push for a unified and improved Internet of Things ecosystem. It was only a week ago that we heard rumors of this new venture, which seems to be a rethought Android@Home initiative that is adapted for broader purposes, and it's now official.