Platforms & Protocols

Apple Home vs Google Home is the first choice most people face when they set up a smart home, and Amazon Alexa is the third option that comes up in almost every conversation. All three control lights, plugs, locks, thermostats and cameras from one app and by voice, and all three now support Matter. The … Read more

The best Matter hub for your home depends less on specs than on which smart home platform you already use. If you haven’t settled on one yet, our Apple Home vs Google Home vs Alexa comparison walks through the choice. A Matter hub is the device that adds Matter devices to your home and runs … Read more

Matter compatible devices are supposed to work with everything: buy a plug, lock, or thermostat with the Matter logo and it shows up in Apple Home, Google Home, Alexa, or SmartThings. For the core categories, that promise mostly holds in 2026. But “Matter compatible” doesn’t guarantee a device will work in your home. Three things … Read more

If you have shopped for smart home gear lately, you have probably seen both names on the box and wondered which one to buy. The matter vs thread question comes up constantly, and it is built on a misunderstanding: these two are not competitors, and you are not choosing between them. They do completely different … Read more

Last updated: October 2026 Picking from the best smart displays used to mean a straight fight between Amazon’s Echo Show and Google’s Nest Hub. In 2026 that has changed. Amazon now sells a full range of Echo Show screens at every size, all rebuilt around its Alexa+ assistant, while Google is down to a single … Read more

Last updated: September 2026 Alexa Hunches were Amazon’s way of letting Alexa act on a hunch: Alexa quietly learned your daily habits, then stepped in when something looked off, like a light left on after you said goodnight. The feature had its fans and its critics, but the bigger news is that most of it … Read more

If you want to stop dragging a hose around the yard, the choice usually comes down to a smart sprinkler controller vs hose timer. They both automate watering from your phone, both can skip a cycle when rain is coming, and both save water. But they are built for two completely different yards, and picking … Read more

Short answer: yes, a robot vacuum with HomeKit is finally possible, but not in the way most people expect. Apple never built a “vacuum” accessory type into HomeKit, so for years no robot vacuum could show up in the Home app at all. That changed with iOS 18.4 in March 2025, when Apple added support … Read more

Last updated: September 2026 A robot vacuum used to be a device that lived entirely in its own app, cut off from the rest of your smart home. That changed. Picking the best smart vacuum in 2026 is no longer only about suction and mapping, because these machines are now one of the few large … Read more

Last updated: September 2026 Picking the best Google Home devices in 2026 is a different exercise than it was even a year ago. Google retired the Google Assistant on its smart speakers and displays and replaced it with Gemini for Home, discontinued the long-running Nest Mini and Nest Audio, and launched a new Google Home … Read more