Every January, I pace the show floor looking for smart home gear that I would actually trust in my own home. This year’s CES was less about jaw-dropping gimmickry and more about problem-solving: machines that scrub better, secure entryways intelligently, light our homes with understanding, and conserve energy without skimping on aesthetics or intuition — all of it without falling into a confusing loop of third-party apps. The Consumer Technology Association laid out the stage; the story was what companies big and small are building for real use cases, not just booth buzz.
My own filter is straightforward: I want utility; I’ll also take some degree of interoperability and then something with reasonable levels of preparation (pricing and timing that add up). With the Connectivity Standards Alliance expanding Matter’s device classes and brands embracing on-device AI and UWB, these are the 13 standouts I’d buy tomorrow if I could.
Robots That Actually Do the Chores in Real Homes
Roborock’s Saros Rover is the first floor-care bot I’ve seen that makes me feel like stairs are a solved problem. Its wheel-leg architecture scales risers one by one, leans to maintain contact, even “hops” micro-obstacles. Watching it clean a staircase so uneventfully makes me feel like we’ve at last passed the ceiling of flat floors. Roborock says it is working on tweaking it for release, and it appeared much closer to a product than a lab toy.
Narwal’s Flow 2 takes AI investment to the bridge of your nose. In addition to objects, it recognizes lost articles, marks them on the map by priority and hushes itself near a crib. That’s the “do less tapping, get more done” design I pine for. It is scheduled to ship in April 2026 for a price likely to fall somewhere around $1,500, the cost of the old model.
Navimow’s X4 mower is the racecar chassis way of doing things, which they claim offers enhanced traction and maneuverability. Preorders begin January 16: the X430 blankets as much as 1 acre for $2,499, and the X450 squirts up to 1.5 acres for $2,999. Lawn bots are maturing as boundary-free navigation and smarter obstacle handling take hold; this is a viable next step for larger yards.
Beatbot’s AquaSense X ecosystem takes on the most annoying part of pool bots: post-clean maintenance. Its dock rinses the cleaner’s euphemistically called debris basket and then dumps the gunk in a bin that you need to empty every once in a while. It’s the kind of lifecycle usability — less mess, fewer chores — that wins CES Innovation Awards and actually changes behavior.
Locks and Entry Tech That Solve Real Problems
The Lockin Veno Pro is the correct sort of deadbolt replacement: new access, not complicated. Look for app control, no-brainer install and a price around 350 bucks when it’s available later this year. It is targeted at households that value reliability over gimmicks, and I felt it was engineered toward being more broadly adopted.
The Lockin V7 Max goes large where U.S. homes seldom venture: a full mortise lock that has twin cameras and on-board displays so you know who’s there without reaching for a phone. It’s not due until Q3 2026, and it’ll be north of $1,000 by the time it arrives — luxury pricing for what should actually be an integrated entry experience.
The U400 from Aqara is the smart UWB lock that gets it right for its value. A hair under the price of a competing Ultraloq model, this one supports Apple’s Home Key and fingerprint recognition. UWB versus plain Bluetooth tightens proximity and cuts false unlocks to virtually nothing (in my testing of the category, it’s the difference between magic and annoyance).
AuraCharge is kinda cheating: It fires invisible light beams to keep a smart lock’s battery full. No more midnight switching or dead smart lock fiascos caused by someone ignoring an alert. As long as it stays within eye-safety limits and some basic positioning guidance, this is the sort of infrastructural ease that can silently lift an entire home.
Lighting and Entertainment as Unified Control Centers
Govee’s Ceiling Light Ultra combines a bright, tunable-white (2,700K to 6,500K) fixture with pixel-level addressability for ambient scenes and notifications. It’s not often that a ceiling light can be concentration lighting and a discreet status display for doorbells, timers or energy events. Launch is expected this year.
By combining Google TV with Gemini we’re building a smart home command center right into the biggest screen in your house. I saw photo edits transform into stylized videos in seconds, then watched sports briefs narrated with a sportscaster’s voice. The cherry on top is native voice control for devices and scenes — a user interface, if you will, that cuts down on app-jumping (and the associated interface learning curve for families).
Energy and Appliances That Do Each Other Good
EcoFlow’s Ecosystem Alliance connects its home energy hardware to more than 15 brands, including Shelly, Google Nest and Bosch. The aim: coordinated automations to move loads, buffer against outages, and respond to utility signals, without spreadsheets. As the Connectivity Standards Alliance incorporates additional appliance categories into Matter, this kind of cross-brand orchestration is the tipping point.
Hisense’s ConnectLife kitchen suite includes AI agents that learn your cooking habits and sync across appliances. Imagine ovens that heat themselves according to your calendar, hoods that automatically adjust their settings for cooktops and refrigerators that nudge you in the direction of what’s near spoilage. Available at Lowe’s, it is a concrete step beyond “smart” to actually useful.
SwitchBot Weather Station is a modest product with an outsize effect: room-level temperature and humidity readings paired with two programmable automation buttons. Tap to turn off lights at bedtime or open a window and trigger a “fresh air” scene in the morning. Simple cues are undervalued, and this effortlessly bridges data to action.
Why these thirteen? Because they shape lives, not just spec sheets. Parks Associates has been documenting the growth of multi-device households, and the winners these days are the ones that make that fiddling around minimal, respect privacy and play nicely with others. If CES is an augury, 2026 could be the year that smart home life feels less of a hobby — and more like home.
