LEVEL UP YOUR SMART HOME

Whether you want to get your new business off the ground, eat more healthily or enjoy your downtime more, upgrading your smart home can help get you there

A smarter home can also help you enjoy a better worklife balance and find more ways to unwind

At this time of year, many of us are thinking about our goals for the future. Whether you’re looking to improve your work-life balance, eat better, improve your fitness or save more money, it’s easy for your momentum to wane as the year progresses and your ambitions come into contact with reality.

Fortunately, smart tech can prove invaluable in ensuring you remain committed to your goals for the coming year. Not only can it help you keep track of your commitments and achievements but it can actively make achieving them easier by helping you get in the zone or provide handy tips and advice. So as you refresh your home this spring, it’s definitely worth considering how smart tech can help you achieve all your aims this year.

Here are just a few ways EE’s smart home devices can help.

Work smarter

More and more of us are working from home than ever before, whether that’s telecommuting to the office or launching our latest side hustle. But if you’re going to smash your productivity goals, you need to know that your home is smart enough to take the strain.

First of all, you want to be sure you can get the best out of your internet whether you’re working in your dedicated home office or perched at the breakfast bar in your kitchen. Fortunately, banishing Wi-Fi cold spots throughout your house is a breeze, thanks to EE’s Smart Wi-Fi devices – these mesh routers will help extend your Wi-Fi signal so it reaches every nook and cranny of your home. Moreover, you only need a single password to connect anywhere on the network.

If you’re going to make a decent impression during that meeting, you’ll also want to avoid the dreaded stutter of buffering video calls. EE’s Wi-Fi Enhancer can help here – this add-on for the Smart Hub Plus allows you to enable Work Mode. During working hours you can set your home broadband to prioritise connections from professional apps like Zoom or Teams, protecting your connection from bandwidth bandits in your house.

Eat healthier

Perhaps one of the most common ambitions people have for improving their lives is to eat a healthier, more

nourishing and varied diet. And upgrading your kitchen to a smart kitchen is one of the easiest ways to ensure you’re able to make your meals more wholesome and nutritious.

Not only are smart screens an affordable way to watch TV or video call with friends in your kitchen, they’re also a great hands-free way to look up ingredients and follow recipes. Investing in an air fryer can help you cook food using much less energy – many also feature smart functionality like apps that allow remote cooking and offer personalised recipes.

If you really want to go the whole hog, why not pick up a fully fledged smart oven? Some premium brands offer full smartphone control and allow you to monitor how your food is cooking via in-built cameras – perfect for days you want flawlessly cooked food ready for when you get home.

Get fit

But part of the joy of having a smarter home isn’t just how it can help you bust through your chores or be more productive at work. A smart home can also help you enjoy a better work-life balance and find more ways to unwind.

Fancy converting your spare room into a smart gym? EE’s Smart Wi-Fi devices will help ensure all your smart fitness kit can easily access your home Wi-Fi. Even better, EE’s Smart Hub Plus is compatible with Wi-Fi 6, ensuring you don’t experience any lapses when streaming workouts. On top of that, it pauses connections to devices that aren’t in use, meaning you can be sure your Peloton or smart weights aren’t hogging any bandwidth once your exercise sesh is over.

Kick back

If you don’t find the idea of working up a sweat relaxing, why not get your game on instead? Building your own smart gaming room is easier than ever. Wireless surround setups will allow you to enjoy 3D audio without having to faff around laying wiring, while multiple smart lighting brands will react to the action on-screen, immersing you more deeply in those virtual worlds.

And there’s no need to worry about whether your internet can keep up. EE’s Wi-Fi Enhancer also unlocks Game Mode, which can help turbo charge your gaming experience. Its built-in geo-filtering will automatically connect you to the best quality servers to cut latency to an absolute minimum. Need that extra edge when playing Overwatch 2? Then fire up the Ping Optimiser and watch it trim your lag to the absolute minimum.

Of course, gaming is best enjoyed in moderation. So if you want to banish distractions in the run-up to bedtime – or just want your kids to stop hogging your PS5 – the Smart Hub Plus’s Wi-Fi Controls allow you to schedule a Wi-Fi freeze or pause connections at a device level. You can even group devices, allowing you to schedule access for whole areas of your house.

And should you want to tackle your professional, fitness or gaming goals on the go switch to EE Broadband, save £20 monthly on upgrades and new SIMs and unlock unlimited data on your existing EE mobile plans.

For more information on how EE can help power up your new smart home, head over to: ee.co.uk/home