I’ve been using smart home products for something like a decade, ever since I bought my first house and discovered it had some very inconveniently placed light switches. Rather than reroute the wiring for those switches, I went the comparatively cheaper route of buying a handful of Philips Hue bulbs—the simple white ones, I ain’t rich—and a smart speaker to control them. I didn’t know at the time that this would turn into a hobby, but here I am.
2026 has proven to be one of the best years yet for that hobby. Mostly because of Matter, the universal smart home standard that lets smart home device makers create products that work with any smart home platform without having to worry about the disparate requirements of each. More accurately, it’s because these days, it’s weirder for a new device to hit the market that doesn’t support Matter than one that does.
As such, this is a fairly Matter-heavy list. Not everything here adheres to that standard, mostly because this is also the year I started really looking in earnest at home backup battery systems and robotic lawnmowers.
