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CONNECTED GADGETS TO ENHANCE LIFESTYLE
Lifestyle-enhancing gadgets for your home.
1 LG Hub Robot lg.com TBA
Although LG is a huge and successful electronics company, it has never really had the sort of reputation for leading-edge innovation enjoyed by rivals such as Apple and Samsung. That could change, though, if its barrage of high-tech product launches at this year’s CES show are any indication.
The real showstopper was LG’s Hub Robot, a cute little voice-controlled home assistant, complete with blinking digital eyes. It’s based on the Alexa voicerecognition technology used in the Amazon Echo, and can play music or check the weather forecast, just like Alexa. However, LG has taken things further by including features such as face recognition, so that it knows when individual family members leave or arrive home. It can even remember different greetings for each member of your family.
LG is developing other versions of the Hub Robot that can perform a variety of different tasks. There will be smaller “mini-bots” that you keep in individual rooms to work in conjunction with the main Hub Robot, as well as a lawnmower robot for the garden. Well, that’s the plan, at least, but then we’ve been promised robot slaves for so long now…
2 Griffin Connected Toaster griffintechnology.com $100
If you were worried by recent news reports about certain burnt foods being carcinogenic, then Griffin has the solution – in the form of its Connected Toaster. The toaster uses Bluetooth to talk to its app on your iPhone, and can store personalized toast settings for different members of your family, or different types of bread. Griffin’s got a smart coffee machine coming up as well, so you can link them together for the perfect smart breakfast.
3 Koogeek LB1 koogeek.com TBA
Koogeek might not be the biggest name in smart home technology, but it does a neat range of smart scales and fitness products – and its latest venture is this Wi-Fi-enabled smart LED bulb. HomeKit support is built right in, so you can use Siri voice commands to adjust the brightness, or select any of its 16 million different colors to suit your mood. The company is also about to release a “smart socket” that supports HomeKit – which would allow you to upgrade your existing light fittings with HomeKit support.