The Best Smart Home Tech at CES 2026
Matter really Mattered, this year.
The smart home has been drifting into a world of interoperability lately that I never would have expected just a few years ago. And at CES 2026, that was on display—from smart locks that will support the new universal Aliro digital key standard to cameras that work with Matter, and therefore (eventually) with every major smart home platform in existence, there’s plenty to look forward to if you’re a fan of not being locked into any one ecosystem.
I also saw companies exploring new technologies (especially in smart locks, where on-device authentication in the form of palm vein scanning and facial recognition seemed to be everywhere), new hubs, sensors, and AI ideas that seem to make sense and aren’t the focus of the show. There was also a lot of maturation in certain categories, from robotic lawn mowers to pool cleaning bots. Even Thread, a key wireless protocol for the Matter standard that lets smart home devices form a mesh network independent of home Wi-Fi, made a good showing.
Best Smart Lock
Lockin V7 Max
No smart lock has it all, but the V7 Max feels like it’s close. Wireless optical charging, palm and finger vein scanning, facial recognition, Matter support, and indoor and outdoor touchscreens and video cameras—all in a slick-looking, slender mortise door lock—make it one of the most compelling smart locks on its way to the market. Will it be expensive? Oh my, yes—Lockin hasn’t announced pricing, but its predecessor, the V5 Max, started at 39,990 New Taiwan dollars, or around $1,270 U.S. dollars.
Best Thermostat
Aqara Thermostat Hub W200
Smart thermostats have almost exclusively been the domain of Nest and Ecobee for years, but Aqara debuted what could be a banger of an alternative at CES 2026: the Thermostat Hub W200. It’s more than just a thermostat; it has a millimeter wave presence sensor (that’s the kind that can tell if a person is in the room even if they’re sitting still), can work as a video doorbell monitor with Aqara video doorbells, and functions as a smart home hub for both Aqara and third-party Matter devices. Aqara is also the first company to announce compatibility with Apple Home’s new Adaptive Temperature and Clean Energy Guidance features.
Best Smart Light
Govee Ceiling Light Ultra
Govee’s new Ceiling Light Ultra lies in a murky area between smart light and display, thanks to a 616-LED array of lights sitting under its plastic cover. With these, the 21-inch light can show vibrant colors, sure, but it can also display images with a lot more detail than something like its Curtain Lights. As a result, at CES 2026, I could make out the fuzzy animated visual of a rotating Earth just under this Matter-compatible light’s cover. There was a lot of lighting at the tech show, but the Ceiling Light Ultra was the most interesting that I saw, by far.
Best New Smart Home Feature
Philips Hue Spatial Aware
Signify’s Philips Hue didn’t have anything in the way of new products to show, but still managed to impress me with its new SpatialAware feature. The feature lets you use your smartphone’s camera and LiDAR sensor to identify where Hue lights are positioned relative to one another, in order to use that information in scenes. In the company’s CES 2026 suite, that meant that one scene spread color over many lights so that they resembled a sunset. One brighter, yellow light served as the sun, while the remaining shades of yellow, orange, pink, and red appeared to radiate out from that to the other lights, their hue depending on where they were in the room. The feature is coming in spring 2026, but only to owners of the Philips Hue Bridge Pro.
Best Robot Vacuum
Roborock Saros Rover
The Saros Rover can climb and clean stairs, something robot vacuum companies have been racing to achieve in recent years. That potentially beats even what I saw just a few months ago with the still-unreleased Eufy Marswalker or Dreame Cyber X, both of which are little mech suits/headcrab-likes that let separate robot vacuums drive up and down stairs to get between floors, but not clean the stairs themselves. At CES 2026, we saw the Saros Rover really could climb and clean stairs (very slowly). Of course, whether it’s worth paying however many thousands of dollars that Roborock will presumably ask for the Rover depends on whether or not it’s actually a good robot vacuum besides.
Best Smart Home Sensor
Aqara Spatial Multi-Sensor FP400
Aqara, which already makes the FP2, one of the best millimeter wave presence sensors I’ve used, is stepping up its game with the Spatial Multi-Sensor FP400. For the uninitiated, presence sensors are a bit like occupancy sensors, but more precise and able to tell if someone is in the room even if they’re not moving, and can trigger automations based on specific regions of a room. The FP400 builds on that by being able to track up to 10 people at once, and by triggering automations based on when someone stands, sits, or lies down, according to the company. Like past Aqara presence sensors, it’ll be Matter-compatible. Aqara didn’t announce a release date or pricing.
Gizmodo is on the ground in Las Vegas all week bringing you everything you need to know about the tech unveiled at CES 2026. You can follow our CES live blog here and find all our coverage here.