The best smart home technology at CES 2026

No smart lock has all of this, but the V7 Max it feels like it’s close. Optical wireless charging, palm and finger vein scanning, facial recognition, Matter support, plus touchscreens and interior and exterior video cameras, all in a slim, sleek mortise door lock, make this one of the most compelling smart locks on its way to market. Will it cost a lot? Oh god, yes, Lockin hasn’t announced pricing, but its predecessor, the V5 Max, started at 39,990 new Taiwan dollarsor approximately US$1,270.

Smart thermostats have been almost exclusively the domain of Nest and Ecobee for years, but Aqara launched what could be an awesome alternative at CES 2026: the W200 Hub Thermostat. It’s more than just a thermostat; it has a millimeter wave occupancy sensor (it’s the kind of sensor that can tell if a person is in the room even if they’re sitting still), can work as a video doorbell monitor with Aqara video doorbells, and works as a smart home hub for third-party Aqara and Matter devices. Aqara is also the first company to announce compatibility with Apple Home’s new Adaptive Temperature and Clean Energy Guidance features.

The new Ultra ceiling light from Govee sits in a murky area between smart lighting and display, thanks to an array of 616 LED lights placed beneath its plastic cover. With these, the 21-inch light can display vibrant colors, sure, but it can also display images with much more detail than something like its model. Light curtains. As a result, at CES 2026, I was able to make out the blurred animated visual of a rotating Earth just under the cover of this Matter-compatible light. There was a lot of lighting at the tech show, but the Ceiling Light Ultra was by far the most interesting one I saw.

Signify’s Philips Hue had nothing to show in terms of new products, but still managed to impress me with its new SpatialAware feature. The feature lets you use your smartphone’s camera and LiDAR sensor to identify where Hue lights are positioned relative to each other, so you can use that information in scenes. In the company’s CES 2026 suite, that meant having a scene spread color across many lights so they looked like a sunset. A brighter yellow light served as the sun, while the remaining shades of yellow, orange, pink, and red seemed to radiate from it toward the other lights, their hue depending on where they were in the room. The feature will arrive in spring 2026, but only for owners of the Philips Hue Bridge Pro.

THE Saros Rover can climb and clean stairs, something robot vacuum companies have strived to achieve in recent years. This potentially beats even what I saw just a few months ago with Eufy Marswalker or even unreleased. Cyber ​​X Dreamboth of which are small mechanical/crab-like suits that allow separate robot vacuum cleaners to move up and down stairs to pass between floors, but not to clean the stairs themselves. At CES 2026, we saw that the Saros Rover could actually climb and clean stairs (very slowly). Of course, whether it’s worth paying the thousands of dollars Roborock will likely charge for the Rover depends on whether or not it’s a good robot vacuum.

Aqara, which already makes the FP2, one of the best millimeter wave occupancy sensors I’ve used, is stepping up its game with the FP400 space multisensor. For the uninitiated, occupancy sensors are a bit like occupancy sensors, but more precise and able to know if someone is in the room even if they’re not moving, and can trigger automations based on specific regions of a room. The FP400 builds on this by being able to track up to 10 people at a time and triggering automations based on when someone stands, sits, or lies down, according to the company. Like the old Aqara presence sensors, it will be compatible with Matter. Aqara has not announced a release date or price.