Smart home: the best tech designed to make everything from your fridge to your front door smarter in 2019
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New smart home technology for 2019 promises to make our lives better in every way.
Want to start watching a movie in the living room, then watch the rest on the bedroom ceiling? There’s a gadget for that.
Want to know the contents of your fridge while you’re standing in the supermarket aisle? There’s a gadget for that.
Want to control your smart home via voice from every room in the house? You guessed it…
Technology can make our homes safer and warmer, but also more fun and more stylish. We’ve picked out the best new hi-tech products that will serve you well in 2019.
1. Smarter FridgeCam
The company that brought us the Wi-Fi kettle now has designs on your fridge.
Rather than buying a whole new “smart” fridge, mount this wireless camera inside your existing fridge. It uses a wide-angle lens and light to take a snap of the contents every time you close the door. Your app therefore always has a photo of the contents.
Stood in the supermarket aisle, or on the train ride home, you can answer life’s all-important questions, like “do we have any cheese?” If you want to get super-organised, annotate the photos for a detailed visual inventory.
Bonus: you’ll also know when family members raid the fridge.
Priced £149.99, Buy it here
2. Nuki Smart Lock 2.0
Smart front door locks just got smarter. This new one simply fits to the back of your existing cylinder lock.
Unlock it using your front door key as before, or tap it with smartphone or smart watch. Add the Nuki Bridge (€99) to grant smartphone access to others via the secure app from anywhere.
You can give new users permanent access (like giving someone a key) or temporary access (like lending them a key). Revoke it at any time. You can even grant one-off access for a tradesperson.
Smart but with the reassurance that your key still works, as a backup or for friends or family who don’t do smartphones.
Priced €229; Buy it here
3. Anden Valet
Phones and other personal tech increasingly use wireless charging, helping you cut clutter.
The Anden Valet goes further and tidies away up to four spare straps for the Apple Watch while offering a stylish space for charging. Its clever design uses the charging cable that comes with the watch.
It’s made to order in London and finished by hand, using natural oils. Choose from sustainably sourced solid walnut, rippled maple, cherry wood or a limited-edition Glacier Corian.
Priced from £89.99; Buy it here
4. KitchenAid Free Standing Microwave Oven
This new microwave-oven-grill combi brings foodie features and speedy results perfect for busy families. Roast a chicken in 30 minutes, bake homemade focaccia in eight.
There are more than 50 built-in recipes and five pro functions, developed with chefs. For example, proof bread dough at precisely 38°, melt ingredients like chocolate perfectly, steam two dishes at once without the flavours mixing.
Meanwhile its metal crisp plate heats up quickly to give dishes like pizza, French fries and even halloumi a better, crispier texture than cooking with a regular microwave alone. Fast food and not a soggy bottom in sight.
Priced £499; Buy it here
5. Nanoleaf Light Panels
Get creative with light thanks to these modular triangular lights. Connect them together in a pattern to create a statement wall, then control each light’s brightness and colours via app.
This starter pack gives you nine panels plus Nanoleaf Rhythm, which turns them into a real-time music visualiser – so you can see your listening.
As well as app control, Nanoleaf works with Apple Home, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. Or buy the Nanoleaf Remote (£49.99, pictured in foreground) a programmable dodecahedron. Each of its 12 sides represents a lighting mood; turn it over to change mood.
Priced £180, Buy it here
6. Keecker
This is a wireless home cinema projector with a difference. You don’t mount it on the ceiling or wall, you don’t even put it on a coffee table, instead this “home multimedia robot” rolls into the room like a remote-controlled toy.
Summon Keecker via app or with your voice. Park it in the middle of the room and have it project a movie in high definition on any plain white wall, or even on the ceiling for lazy film nights in bed. It boasts a built-in 4.1-channel sound system and six-hour battery life, enough for a double bill.
Meanwhile its 360° video camera lets Keecker double as a mobile security camera that you can control from afar to check on your home.
Priced £1,690, Buy it here
7. Wondrwall
We want our homes to be smarter but we don’t want more devices and clutter. Wondrwall replaces light switches in every room with small, plain white panels that contain all the sensors you need.
Each unit contains 13 different sensors that monitor temperature, humidity, power, motion, light and sound. In a typical three-bedroom house, the result is a network of more than 100 sensors.
The system works with popular smart systems to control heating, lighting, security and more, as well as putting a microphone in every room for Alexa voice control throughout the house.
Priced around £756 for a two-bed apartment, wondrwall.co.uk
8. Duracell Powerbank
We’re ever more reliant on our devices: without them we are literally lost, out of touch with friends, family and colleagues.
Charge this compact power pack at home and take it everywhere. When you’ve caned your battery, it will come to the rescue. It comes pre-charged, so you can even buy one in an emergency and use it immediately.
The smallest model is extra compact and charges a smartphone nearly twice over. The largest model can charge an iPhone five times over and has sockets to charge two devices at once, yet it still fits in a pocket.
Priced £19.99-34.99, Buy it here
9. Circle Home
Control and monitor home internet access, tailoring it for each family member and device. For example, children’s access can be filtered for safety and have time limits for different apps.
Set a time for a digital detox. Use your app to dole out rewards: guitar practice buys ten more minutes of gaming, perhaps.
The result isn’t just safer, it works better for today’s smart homes. You can’t threaten to turn off the Wi-Fi when everything from your doorbell to your music streaming relies on it.
Circle Home is largely available in the US for now but you can get it here on amazon.co.uk
Priced around £145, Buy it here
10. Nota Nota
This unusual piece of home technology won an iF Design Award in 2018. It’s a smart device that lets you blend your own bespoke perfume.
Nota Nota comes with a dozen “tola” scents, from moss to leather, saffron to magnolia. You choose which to blend together, all controlled via an app.
The idea is that you make a custom blend, just as you’d mix a drink. Create a small bottle of perfume but also name the blend and save it in case you want to mix it again. Users can even share perfume designs with each other.
Priced £695 from Smartech Selfridges, or Buy it here