Best of CES 2025: The smart home & home security gear we loved

It’s been another banner year for home security and smart home at CES, and after scouring the show floor, we’ve rounded up the smart products that stood apart from the rest.

Among our picks: a video doorbell and a smart deadbolt with their own screens (about time), a Matter-enabled smart lamp that can control other Matter devices without an internet connection, a smart pet door that opens when your pets approach from either side, and a smart toothbrush that promises to scour your teeth and gums in 20 seconds flat.

So without further ado, here’s the smart security and home gear that quickened our heartbeats this week in Vegas, starting with…

SwitchBot Video Doorbell

Availability: Early 2025
Price: TBD

SwitchBot

Wouldn’t it be nice to see who was at your doorstep without fishing out your smartphone—or, you know, opening the door? You can with help from the SwitchBot Video Doorbell, a wired- or battery-powered unit that comes with its own 4 x 3 display, which you can mount in the kitchen, your living room, or even right next to the front door.

The display can be outfitted with 512GB of local storage—meaning no need for the cloud—while the doorbell itself supports 4K video and offers a 165-degree field of view. – Ben Patterson, senior writer

Lockly Vision Prestige

Availability: Q4 2025
Price: $499.99

Lockly

Looks like the whole video-doorbell-with-a-display thing is catching on, because Lockly was showing off its own take at CES this week. A smart lock rather than a video doorbell, the Lockly Vision Prestige comes with not one, but two integrated displays: one on its exterior, and a second on its interior escutcheons, thus saving you the trouble of mounting an extra display (although you’ll lose the ability to put the Lockly’s display wherever you like).

Similar to the SwitchBot doorbell, the Lockly Vision Prestige boasts 2K video resolution, and it also does facial recognition, among other tricks. – Ben Patterson, senior writer

Feno Smartbrush

Availability: Now
Price: $299

Feno

One of the biggest obstacles to dental care is “compliance” – ensuring that we not only brush twice a day, but that we cover every portion of our teeth and gums. So, what if you didn’t have to navigate every nook and cranny inside your mouth? Would your compliance improve? This is what makes the Feno Smartbrush so intriguing.

You insert this strange-looking device inside your mouth, and then 18,000 bristles work in concert to deliver 250 strokes per tooth. The whole process takes only 20 seconds. The system also includes smart features like an oral scanner and an app that lets you share data with your dentist. It’s a strange concept, certainly, but Feno maintains its brushing experience beats traditional electric toothbrushes for dental health. – Jon Phillips, editorial director

Read more: The World’s First Connected Smartbrush (Feno.co)

LIFX Luna Lamp

Availability: February
Price: $69.99

LIFX

With its first ever smart lamp, LIFX drew inspiration from an early product: its own SuperColor Ceiling light, an eye-catching, multi-zone fixture that won our Editors’ Choice award last year. Packing in 26 discretely addressable color zones, the Luna Lamp can be mounted on a wall or placed on a flat surface, like a countertop or a bedside table.

The Matter-enabled Luna Lamp also boasts a quartet of programmable buttons that can control either the lamp’s own settings or other nearby Matter devices—even without an internet connection, thanks to Matter’s device-to-device binding functionality. – Ben Patterson, senior writer

Schlage Sense Pro

Availability: 2025
Price: TBD

Schlage

Just as we’d rather not deal with a phone for peeking at our porch, so would we prefer to skip our handhelds when it comes to unlocking the door. That’s why we’re bullish about the Schlage Sense Pro, a smart deadbolt with an ace up its sleeve: Ultra WideBand (UWB) technology, which allows the device to unlock itself when it detects you’re nearby.

Besides UWB, the Schlage Sense Pro supports NFC tap-to-unlock functionality, as well as PIN entry using the included keypad. Best of all, this Matter-enabled deadbolt supports Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings. – Ben Patterson, senior writer

Pawport Smart Pet Door

Availability: Early 2025
Price: Starts at $499

Pawport

Give your favorite four-legged friend the freedom to come and go as they choose while keeping your home safe with the Pawport Smart Pet Door, a retrofit-style device that slides in front of an existing pet door.

With help from an included Bluetooth collar tag, the steel-and-aluminum Smart Pet Door senses when your pet approaches, opening its doors automatically, while a sensitivity gauge keeps the doors from accidentally closing on your furry friend. You can also control the door remotely with the Pawport app, while pet “curfews” can keep your pet inside during designated hours. – Ben Patterson, senior writer

Direction9 software TV keyboard

Availability: TBD
Price: N/A

Saving a word in the Direction9 keyboard

Jared Newman / Foundry

A solution to the tedious task of keying in user names, passwords, and other text-entry fields on TV screens, this software keyboard from Direction9 takes its cues from the pre-iPhone days of T9 text prediction. Essentially, you use your TV remote’s arrow keys to navigate clusters of letters and numbers, with Direction9’s text prediction technology doing its best to quickly guess what you’re trying to type (you can disable the text prediction when keying in strong passwords and such).

It’s a promising concept, but for now, it’s just that: a concept. Direction9 is fishing around for device manufactures who might be interested in licensing the keyboard, and hopefully the company will drum up some interest during its demos at CES. – Ben Patterson, senior writer

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Created 10h | Jan 9, 2025, 12:40:05 PM