Tag: household

The Best Smart Home Accessories to Boost Your Curb Appeal (2026)

Posted on by faz_business


I tried the battery version, which does require you recharge it every couple of weeks, but the wired-in version is the top recommendation on our guide to the Best Video Doorbells.

A Better Birdhouse

I had a new-to-me problem this spring: bird invasion. A little bird made a nest in my front-door wreath without us noticing. One evening, my sister opened the door, and the bird flew out of the nest and straight into our house. After a 30-minute battle to get it outside again (and keep my cat from eating it), it wasn’t until we saw the bird fly off the door again the next day that we realized it was calling our home its home, too.

If this is a common problem at your house, our resident bird-gear tester Kat Merck has a solution: a smart nesting box. Birdfy makes a few different smart bird feeders we like for bird-watching, and the Nest Duo is a birdhouse that lets you watch the birds while they nest inside of it. It’s a slim, attractive box that will add to your front yard’s style while also packing two solar-powered cameras (one facing the entrance, one focused inside) so you can bird-watch from multiple angles. It comes with different hole sizes to appeal to different species, metal predator guards to prevent chewing around the hole, and a remote control to reset or recharge the camera without disturbing your feathered neighbors.

Stylish Smart Lights

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Govee

Outdoor Clear Bulb String Lights

I’ve liked Govee’s smart outdoor string lights before, usually for my holiday decor, and have previously recommended something similar with a bistro-light-like look that happened to be smart. These clear bulb string lights are part of Govee’s current lineup and have a contemporary twist with a triangle in the center instead of the wire filament. These are a fun option for outdoor lights you can enjoy on warm nights, and they can do every color and shade of white without looking as bulky as permanent outdoor lights. (Added bonus, these lights are also Matter compatible!)

Fresh Bulbs

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Cync

Smart LED Light Bulb, PAR38

If you have light fixtures you want to remote-control, add an outdoor smart bulb. There are tons to choose from, and you can usually find one from any brand you already have at home. The only downside is that outdoor-rated smart bulbs are usually 4.75-inch-diameter PAR38-style bulbs, so they’re best for downward-facing floodlights on your porch or balcony. They’ll likely be too big to fit in a wall fixture as a replacement for a normal-sized bulb. Don’t just grab any smart bulb—not all are outdoor-rated. Check for mentions of outdoor use and waterproof ratings to make sure they’re safe to use. I’m a big fan of Cync bulbs, and the brand has an outdoor version of the Cync Full Color bulbs I like to use indoors. You’ll be able to add fun colors as well as shades of white, so you can turn the porch a spooky orange or red for Halloween, pink for Valentine’s Day, or the colors of your favorite sports team on game day.

Remote-Controlled Garage

Chamberlain

MyQ Smart Garage Controller

Chamberlain

MyQ Smart Garage Door Opener with Integrated Camera

If your garage is the centerpiece of your home’s curb appeal, you can control it as easily as a smart door by adding a smart controller. You can do two different styles: I have the Chamberlain MyQ professionally installed smart garage opener, which means the device that controls my garage has these smarts built into it (plus a camera, but I find it doesn’t work great with how far the device is from my Wi-Fi router), or you can get a smart garage controller that can add smart features onto an existing garage door. Both let you check whether the garage is open or closed and operate it remotely, and you can add a video keypad that doubles as a video doorbell and can let you open or close the garage without your phone.

Smart Shades

SmartWings

Motorized Roller Shades

Lutron

Caseta Smart Shades

The front of my home faces west, so it’s absolutely baking at the end of the day. What I need to add are some of our favorite smart shades to automate closing the shades on that side of the house at the right time of day. These also give your home a nice, cohesive look and immediate, controllable privacy from the outside world. WIRED reviewer Simon Hill recommends the SmartWings shades as his top picks, and Lutron’s Caseta shades if you’re looking for a more upgraded look.

Invisible Swaps

Looking to add some smarts without touching your existing setup? These switch-ups can make your front door and yard smart without being visible.

Yale

Approach Lock

This smart lock just swaps out the inner half of your front-door lock to make it smart without requiring a new key or changing your exterior hardware. You can also add on a keypad—or not, if you’d rather keep the smarts a complete secret.

Cync

Outdoor Smart Plug

This outdoor plug is visible at the outlet itself, but if the outlet is covered by something or is around the corner from your front door, no one will know that your lights or other electrical devices are connected to this smart plug.

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The Auk Mini Herb Garden Is Still Up to $30 Off (2025)

Posted on by faz_business


I test a lot of indoor gardening systems throughout the year, and the midcentury-chic Auk has remained my all-time favorite for herbs. Not only can you plant whatever seeds you want in its coco coir substrate (though it does come with parsley and basil), it takes very little maintenance, requiring only periodic refills of water and nutrients. There’s also no app to worry about, or pumps, or pH testing needed. This makes it a perfect no-muss, no-fuss gift for cooks, gardeners, or anyone at all interested in growing their own herbs.

  • Courtesy of Auk

  • Photograph: Kat Merck

  • Photograph: Kat Merck

I almost never see it on sale, and Auk confirms it very rarely is, so if at any point you were on the fence, this is your last chance post–Black Friday and –Cyber Monday to save $20 to $30 on the bundle (with free shipping!), depending on which finish you choose. This includes the Auk planter itself and everything you need to start growing, including both pump bottles of nutrients and a bag of coco coir. The sale ends on Monday, December 15, so there are only a few more days to take advantage.

The least expensive style is also Auk’s newest release, with a base made of 100 percent cork sourced from Portugal. You can also opt for an oak wood bottom, for $10 more, or darker walnut (shown above) for $35 more. Buyers can choose either black or white for the non-wood portions.

“The new Cork Edition embodies what Auk stands for: natural plants, and natural materials,” said Didrik Dimmen, Auk’s CEO, in a statement. “Growing your own herbs at home isn’t just good for you, it’s better for the planet, too. Less plastic packaging and waste, and now, another natural aesthetic option to match.”

6 Best Smart Locks (2025) for Front Doors, Slider Doors, and Even Garages

Posted on by faz_business


Ultraloq U-Bolt Pro for $170: WIRED reviewer Julian Chokkattu also tested the U-Bolt Pro from Ultraloq, which uses the same app that the Fingerprint models do. He says it took a few attempts to connect to Wi-Fi, but once connected it worked well with no Wi-Fi issues during the year he tested it. It has built-in Wi-Fi, uses four AA batteries that last around two months (less in super colder weather), and has a hidden mechanical keyhole as a backup in case the battery dies when you’re not home, and you get two spare keys. There’s a charging port underneath so you can give it some juice during emergencies if the lock is dead and you don’t have the key, but we wish it was USB-C instead of Micro USB. It’s a good lock, but he prefers the Fingerprint models since it has a nicer build quality and it has eight batteries, so the lock lasts twice as long.

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Photograph: Nena Farrell

Yale Assure Lock 2 Touch for $300: I’ve been testing this lock for a few weeks in tandem with ADT’s security system and Google Home. Unlike the other locks in this guide, I didn’t install it—an ADT tech did, and installation can be included in an ADT security package like the one I’ve been testing. For the lock itself, it’s worked well. It’s a full dead-bolt replacement, and came with a single key, and has both a keypad and fingerprint reader for entry options. The fingerprint reader is speedy and efficient, and my husband says the keypad has been easy to use (you activate the keypad by touching the Yale button, but if your finger is registered to the app, that’s also the fingerprint reader button). Instead of using the Yale app, I primarily control this app with the ADT+ app, but there are versions of this lock that don’t use or require ADT’s service. I do wish I could set it to lock after every 10 minutes, rather than three, but that’s the longest option the ADT+ app gives me to set it. I can also partially control it in the Google Home app, but only to lock and unlock it, not to dive into detailed settings like passcodes and auto-lock times.

Yale Assure Touchscreen Lever Lock for $240: I’ve been testing this no-dead-bolt lever door handle with its sleek-looking keypad for four months on the door to my house from inside my garage. Unlike Yale’s Approach Lock, it won’t sense you coming, but it awakens with even a light touch to the keypad. It’s easy to lock and unlock and view the activity log on the Yale Access app, or you can use a pin code to unlock. You can also create different codes for different people to know exactly who’s been coming and going and when. It works with Google Home, Apple Home, and Alexa, and has also got two physical keys for backup in case of battery failure. Setup wasn’t exactly a breeze, requiring the Bilt app to install and then the Yale app to configure, and online reviews are quite voluminous in their complaints of both battery life and the handle becoming loose over time. Neither of these issues has arisen during our test period; however, we will update this review with further observations as time goes on. —Kat Merck

Avoid These Smart Locks

We haven’t loved every smart lock we’ve tried. These are the ones to skip.

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Defiant Smart Deadbolt

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Defiant Smart Deadbolt Powered by Hubspace for $100: The shoddy build quality is a huge turn-off on this smart lock from Defiant. The buttons are mushy, it’s very loud, and what is the point of Wi-Fi connectivity if it never connects to Wi-Fi? I finally got it paired with the Hubspace app, but the lock never stayed connected to my Wi-Fi, so I had none of the benefits. —Julian Chokkattu

Eufy FamiLock S3 Max for $400: This lock is cool because it includes a camera, letting the device double as a digital peephole (convenient for smaller family members!) and has a super interesting biometric option that uses the veins in your palm for authentication. Unfortunately, once installed, the lock didn’t work on my door, even though it was the correct size and placement.

Tropf-Blumat Watering System Review: Key to My Gardening Success

Posted on by faz_business


A couple summers ago, I started to have a plant problem on my roof deck. Specifically, I had no reliable way to water my herb garden for an extended period of time. Yes, I could ask my neighbors to do it once in a while, but I’m gone a lot and didn’t want to blow all of my goodwill credit in one place.

My setup posed problems, too. It’s a garden in pots, troughs, and planters—known as a container garden—that follows the periphery of my 10- by 17-foot deck. A sprinkler on a timer wouldn’t work, because I didn’t want to soak my entire deck and waste water, and watering spikes or globes wouldn’t last long enough. Plus, I had a variety of sizes of pots and planters, ranging from four 20-liter galvanized tubs to a pair of 100-gallon troughs, along with a 1-cubic-foot ceramic pot that isolates my mint, and a mini trough for my sage.

Altogether, it’s a nice little setup, but everything has different watering needs. Talking to people in garden centers confirmed there weren’t many options for the kind of automated watering I wanted to do.

Drip Drop

Ludicrous amounts of research later, I zeroed in on a solution. An Austrian company named Blumat has a system that uses a spike-shaped sensor (called a “carrot,” more colloquially) that has a ceramic cone under a sealed water chamber. The whole thing is capped with a diaphragm that’s connected to a tiny valve at the very top, making it like an autonomous, fancy, sealed, freestanding valve that controls flow through a 3-millimeter drip tube. When the soil around the cone becomes dry, osmosis through the ceramic pulls down a diaphragm at the top, gradually opening the valve and allowing water to flow through the tube. When the soil is moist, the diaphragm rises and the valve closes.

Hand holding a coneshaped valve

Photograph: Tropf Blumat

There are lots of specialized Blumat kits and parts, and figuring out exactly what I needed was daunting, so I called Sustainable Village, a Blumat dealer in Colorado, for help. It’s possible to wing it, but you will likely benefit from doing the same.

This meant I needed several different parts of what they call the Tropf-Blumat system (“tropf” is German for “drip”), including the sensors; stuff called “drip tape,” which is like a soaker hose; and little strings of “drippers” that connect to the sensor and distribute water around medium-size pots. There was also a “flow reducer” that connects to the spigot and regulates the pressure, a pencil-thick rubber feeder tube, and a roll of 3-millimeter drip tubing that connected the feeder line to the sensor in each pot.

The Blumat site recommends the Tropf setup for “plants on balconies, patios, in greenhouses, and raised beds.” The representative guided me toward a pair of kits and a couple of individual items.

Two boxes and accessories for a plant watering system including tubing and valves

Photograph: Tropf Blumat

Some Assembly Required

When everything arrived, there were enough bits and bobs that it reminded me of an adult Lego set, complicated enough that I cleared the table and chairs out of my dining room, made cardboard cutouts of my pots and troughs, and laid out all of my new material. This was extra work, but it allowed me to get organized, since every installation is essentially custom. My 20-liter tubs and sage trough would each have one sensor to control the flow to a string of drippers to distribute water evenly. The hundred-gallon troughs each got an extra-large sensor that controlled flow to the drip tape that zigzagged across the surface of the soil.

After a couple of hours setting up, I turned on the spigot and held my breath. Some of the drippers began dripping very slowly, and some did not. Nothing visible happened in the big troughs for a while, as it took some time for the drip tape to start sweating out drops of water. Soon it became clear that by having one sensor per container, the flow to each could be customized. A plant that was particularly thirsty or sun-drenched got more water, while a slow-sippin’ succulent in the shade got less. Over the next few days, I checked the soil in each pot and used the valve on top of each sensor to adjust the flow.

10 Best Robot Vacuums (2024): Mops, Budget Vacs, Great Mapping

Posted on by faz_business


No other product I’ve tested has advanced as quickly as the humble robot vacuum. Just a few short years ago, they were mostly annoying, overpriced devices that fell off steps and got stuck on rugs. Now you can find robot vacs at every price point with an incredible array of features, including mapping capabilities, self-emptying bins, and even cameras.

Vacuuming an ever-changing household is a complex task, and no robot vacuum is perfect. However, I test them in one of the most challenging environments possible—a carpeted, two-story family home with messy kids and a shedding dog—and I find them indispensable. Whether you’re choking on cat hair, need to lighten your chore load, or just want to spend more time with your family, we have a pick that will help.

Looking for more cleaning solutions? Check out our Best Dyson Vacuums, Best Cordless Vacuums, and Best Air Purifiers guides for more.

Updated April 2024: We added the Eufy S1 Pro and X10 Pro Omni, the Dyson 360 Vis Nav, the TP-Link Tapo RV30C Plus, and the Dreame X30. We also added more information on the iRobot and Amazon acquisition and noted a new Samsung robot. We also updated prices and links throughout.

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