Our home appliances and gadgets are becoming more and more high-tech. While there’s no harm in doing your household chores manually, being able to reallocate the time you’ll spend doing these tasks into more meaningful pursuits make the purchase of smart appliances worth it. These gadgets and gizmos will make an excellent addition to your smart home.
Lutron Serena Smart Shades (starts at $350)
Window shades aren’t really something you pay a lot of attention to, but when your bedroom is outfitted with blinds that listen to Siri and automatically roll up or down, you’ll be very grateful for this simple luxury. That’s the promise of Serena Shades, which you can integrate with other smart home gadgets like lights and thermostats for an overall experience. It’s especially useful for windows in tricky, hard-to-reach places, as well as homes with elderly or disabled residents. Setup can be a little tricky, but worth enduring for the comfort you’ll get.
Husqvarna Automower 315X ($1999.95)
Remember when you’d mow your neighbor’s lawn as a kid to augment your allowance? Well, we’re sorry to say that your former job can now be done by a robot. The Husqvarna Automower 315X is perfect for folks with medium to large lawns. It features GPS navigation, a patented weather timer, LED headlights, theft tracking, and Amazon Alexa connectivity, and it has no problem mowing in the rain. If you hate your noisy old lawnmower and have an extra $2000 lying around, this would make a nice addition to your home.
Nixplay Seed Wave 13 inch Widescreen Digital Smart Frame ($249.99)
The Nixplay Seed Wave takes your usual digital frame to a newer, smarter level. Its high-definition screen is paired with two powerful five-watt speakers for a unique auditory experience. Just link the Seed Wave to your phone, tablet, or laptop via Bluetooth, and start streaming music on your smart frame. Your favorite memories will now be accompanied by the soundtrack of your life.
Toto Aquia IV Washlet ($2154)
Much has been said about Japanese smart toilets: They’re not just perfunctory objects intended for the relief of your excretory system. Boasting multitudes of buttons for heated seats, built-in bidets, air-purifying functions, and noisemakers to cover up the squelchy sound of your pooping, they’re definitely worthy of the moniker “porcelain throne” (they do a splendid job of flushing, too). And while America still has a long way to go before welcoming smart toilets into their homes as easily as they embraced the invention of automatic litter boxes, Japanese toilet company Toto aims to change this with their Washlets: Water-efficient, high-tech toilets you can have installed in your house. If you’re thinking of investing in one of these, consider the Aquia IV Washlet, a remote-controlled toilet guaranteed to revolutionize your bathroom breaks. Trust us, you’ll never want to use an ordinary toilet again.
SimpliSafe Home Security System (starts at around $230)
One of the worst things about going on a vacation with your family is that niggling fear of your subsequently empty house getting broken into. SimpliSafe’s revolutionary home security system should help assuage your fears, giving homeowners the chance to monitor their homes remotely in an easy and affordable way. Their range of proprietary wireless equipment includes smoke detectors, sirens, panic buttons, and sensors for everything you can think of—entry sensors, water sensors, glass break sensors. Use the equipment with SimpliSafe’s 24/7 monitoring plans, which will alert the authorities in case of accidents or emergencies.