All the smart home news, reviews, and gadgets you need to know about (2025)

Robot vacuums that can both mop and sweep your floors have improved significantly in recent years. While they are still not as effective as good ol’ manual labor, if you run them regularly, they will help keep your floors cleaner with much less effort on your part.

The difference is that newer “combo” robot vacuum and mop models are designed to actually scrub your floors. The first robot vacuums that could also “mop” simply slapped a thin, flat microfiber pad on the bot that kind of Swiffer-ed your floor. Basically, all this was good for was getting up fine dirt that the vacuum left behind.

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Almost a decade after launching the first smart fridge with a giant Android tablet built in, Samsung is leaning hard into the idea that we need tablets in all the things.

At CES this year, the company announced its Screens Everywhere initiative, which essentially means putting 7- and 9-inch full-color touchscreens, called “AI Home screens,” in its large home appliances, such as washers, dryers, wall ovens, and cooktops.

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iRobot just launched its ninth new robot vacuum of the year. That’s a record number for the company, which is struggling to dig itself out of the giant financial hole it was left in after Amazon’s bid to buy it fell through.

The new Roomba Max 705 has the same design and lidar navigation as the rest of the new lineup, and comes with an auto-empty dock and 13,000Pa suction power — the highest advertised on a Roomba. The 705 costs $899.99 (€699) and is available to order now at iRobot.com.

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Aqara is adding support for over 50 new Matter device types, making it one of the most comprehensive smart home platforms in terms of Matter support, alongside Samsung SmartThings and Home Assistant.

The company is also bringing advanced bridging to all its Matter controllers, allowing you to integrate Aqara’s many advanced automation features into any Matter-compatible smart home platform via scenes and triggers. This includes Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home. The new update also lets you bridge Matter devices that are not yet supported by a platform into those ecosystems.

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President Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs — including a now 125 percent levy on Chinese imports — will hit the smart home industry hard.

Many smart home device makers are already struggling, thanks, in part, to Trump’s first round of tariffs. Increased competition from budget smart home companies largely based in China has also played a part, and so has slower takeup from homeowners than the industry expected.

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Samsung’s home robot Ballie is finally poised to roll into our homes… and maybe our hearts? Following teasing a release sometime this year at CES 2025, the company has now announced that the cute rolling bot will arrive in the US this summer, with pre-registration open on Samsung’s website.

The ball-shaped robot is equipped with two wheels and designed as a personal assistant for the home. First announced in 2020, it has gone through a number of upgrades over the years and now features a built-in projector, speaker, and microphone.

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Today’s robot vacuums are becoming a bit like cars: with all the features, upgrades, and fancy trimmings available these days, it’s easy to forget that they can just be simple machines that get us from point A to point B. Yes, some bots blow hot air on their bums (mop pads), deftly navigate dog poop, and have arms to pick up your socks, but there are plenty of basic budget robot vacuums that just do a decent job of cleaning your floor autonomously — as long as you tidy up first.

Fancier models have obstacle recognition, and some even use AI-powered cameras to tell popcorn from poop and avoid the latter. If you want one of those, check out my best robot vacuum buying guide. But if you think you can manage the task of picking up after yourself (and your puppy), a budget bot will save you a lot of money and still do a good job cleaning your floor.

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Robot vacuums are impressive devices that will clean your floors well and — thanks to bigger batteries and better robot brains — rarely get tired of doing their job. Over the last few years, they have gone from being utilitarian devices that sweep your floor to full-fledged home robots that can vacuum and mop your home and then trundle off to clean themselves to be ready for the next run.

I’ve been testing robot vacuums for seven years and have run over 70 robot vacuums all over my house. These are my top picks if you’re looking for the best: a robot vacuum that can do it all with limited intervention from you.

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The invention of Matter was a grand kumbaya moment for the smart home. Built on the foundations of almost every concept smart home companies had dreamed up — from Apple’s HomeKit to Google’s Thread — the idea was to create a new technology on top of existing ones. One common standard to make it easier for manufacturers to build smart home devices and easier for people to use them, no matter which smart home platform they use.

But one protocol was left out of the party: Z-Wave, which is widely used in home security systems and embraced by the smart home enthusiast community. It was the latest example of Z-Wave getting left behind as the consumer smart home world explodes in popularity — and the latest reason to question whether the once-thriving standard still has a future.

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In our notification-heavy world, there is still one activity where you might just miss that buzz on your phone or ping on your smartwatch – while you’re vacuuming. Thankfully, Samsung has a solution.

Its newest cordless stick vac, the new Bespoke AI Jet Ultra ($1,099), now has an LCD display control panel that, along with standard features such as power level and battery life, can notify you when you have an incoming phone call or text message. The vacuum, which works with an auto-empty charging station, also features 400AW suction and 100-minute battery life.

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Life safety manufacturer First Alert launched a new line of smart smoke and carbon monoxide alarms this week that will work with Google Home. Following Google’s decision to discontinue its Nest Protect smart smoke alarm, the company has announced it’s partnering with First Alert on the First Alert Smart Smoke & Carbon Monoxide (CO) Alarm.

The new alarms will work with the First Alert and Google Home apps but not with any other smart home platforms. They will also be compatible with existing Nest Protect alarms.

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In this week’s least surprising news, Google has announced it’s discontinuing the Nest Protect Smart Smoke and CO alarm and the Nest x Yale smart door lock. The Nest Protect, which has long been one of the best smart smoke alarms you can buy, has been hard to find for a while now, with users complaining on Reddit that the device either isn’t in stock or that the Google store is limiting purchases to one and shipping them out slowly.

In a post on its Nest community forum, Google says it made the decision to ditch its popular smoke alarm and door lock as part of its move toward “building a platform that all device makers and developers can use to spur innovation in the home.” The company added that as the smart home evolves, it “must continue to refine our portfolio of devices to meet the needs of our customers.”

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Following the news that Google is discontinuing its Nest x Yale Lock, Yale has announced a new smart lock that fits into the Google Home ecosystem and is designed to complement Google’s Nest video doorbells.

However, thanks to Matter-over-Thread compatibility, the Yale Smart Lock with Matter will also work with Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings, and any other Matter-enabled smart home platform. It’s an interesting approach for Google, and a sign it’s embracing the openness of the newer standard.

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According to images seen by The Verge, Amazon is testing changing the name of its Echo smart speakers and smart displays to Alexa. We saw two separate instances of Amazon.com landing pages displaying the name of the Echo Show 5 smart display as the Alexa Show 5, along with new branding for an Alexa Show 15, Alexa Show 10, Alexa Show 8, and Alexa Spot.

Following receiving a tip from Pedro Nunes, a tech journalist based in Brazil, who landed on an Echo Show 5 page on Amazon.com where the product had been rebranded Alexa Show 5, The Verge attempted to recreate the discovery. While most attempts led us to pages showing Echo Show 5, one account connected to The Verge surfaced the aforementioned Alexa Show 5 page.

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The new souped-up Alexa voice assistant, Alexa Plus, is scheduled to arrive in the next few weeks in an early access preview. The good news is that as long as you have (or buy) an Echo Show 8, 10, 15, or 21 smart display, you’ll be able to use the generative-AI powered Alexa across any compatible Echo device you own. It will also work on Fire TV devices, Fire tablets, on the web at Alexa.com, and in the Alexa app.

Sadly, a few Echo devices will be left out of the party. Several early models, including the first-gen Echo Dot, Echo, and Echo Show, aren’t getting the upgrade. Similarly, it won’t work on devices with built-in Alexa, such as Sonos speakers or the Ecobee smart thermostat at launch, but it could come to those in the future. Amazon spokesperson Lauren Raemhild tells The Verge that you can still use the original Alexa on these devices.

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This week, Roborock announced that its highly anticipated Saros Z70 is now available for pre-order. The Z70 features a robotic arm and is one of the most expensive robot vacuums in the world, at $1,899. For the launch, Roborock is sweetening the pot by bundling the new bot with the choice of a free second vacuum cleaner.

The company has also finally dethroned iRobot as the number one selling robot vacuum brand globally in both sales volume and revenue, according to analyst firm IDC. Roborock claimed 16 percent of global market share in Q4, while iRobot, which recently announced it’s in financial trouble, managed 13.7 percent. Fellow Chinese company Ecovacs came in third with 13.5 percent.

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Amazon is discontinuing a feature that allowed users of some of its Echo smart speakers to choose not to send their voice recordings to the cloud. According to an email the company sent to users that was posted on Reddit, it will disable the feature that allowed select Echos to process Alexa requests locally on the device on March 28th, 2025.

The move appears to be connected to the launch of its generative AI-powered Alexa Plus, slated for later this month (March 28th, perhaps?). The email states, “As we continue to expand Alexa’s capabilities with generative AI features that rely on the processing power of Amazon’s secure cloud, we have decided to no longer support this feature.”

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When I saw iRobot’s latest robot vacuums announced this week, my first thought was, “These don’t look like Roombas; they look like midrange models from Roborock, Ecovacs, and Dreame.” Of course, as the original robot vacuum manufacturer, iRobot’s products likely inspired the design of most of its competitors. But Roombas have always had a uniqueness that sets them apart from the crowd.

With these new models, the company is capitulating to the homogeneity of the current crop of vacuums, sacrificing many of its signature features and moving from high-end to middle-of-the-road in a quest to recapture a bigger slice of the market.

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A day after launching a new line of Roomba vacuum cleaners, iRobot Corp. has warned investors that it could shut down in the next 12 months unless it can refinance its debt or find a buyer. According to its latest financial filings, iRobot is heavily in debt. It spent $3.6 million to amend the terms of a $200 million loan it took out in 2023 while a now-defunct deal with Amazon was in review — in order to get more time to figure out its next steps.

Since taking out that loan from the Carlyle Group and facing increasing competition from Chinese manufacturers, iRobot has not found a way to become profitable again and says it expects to incur losses for “the foreseeable future.” With no clear path to paying off the debt, the future looks bleak for the inventor of the robot vacuum.

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After a tumultuous 2024, in which iRobot lost its founder and CEO, Colin Angle, Amazon abandoned its acquisition plans, and the company laid off a large portion of its staff, iRobot is back with a major shake-up of its robotic vacuum line.

This week, the company that invented the robot vacuum over 20 years ago announced eight new models that are definitely not the Roombas you’re used to. Not only do they look totally different, but they also work differently, thanks to a new-to-Roomba feature: lidar navigation and mapping.

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