173 articles
The Kasa Matter Smart Outdoor Plug sits in one of the most practical corners of the smart-home market: the outdoor smart plug that lets you automate dumb seasonal lights, patio lamps, fountains, and other backyard gear without replacing the devices themselves. This is not the glamorous side o...
The ThirdReality Motion Sensors sit in a much less glamorous corner of the smart-home world than cameras, speakers, or robot vacuums. That usually means they matter more than people expect. A motion sensor is one of those small devices that quietly makes a home feel smarter: lights turn on wh...
The SwitchBot onero H1 Humanoid Robot sits in one of the strangest corners of consumer tech right now: the not-quite-practical, not-just-for-show home robot. It is not a robot vacuum, not a smart speaker, and not a toy in the usual sense. Instead, it is a 1.3m-tall wheeled humanoid robot ...
The TESSAN European Plug Adapter USB C 2-Pack sits in a very practical category that people usually only think about a week before a trip: the travel plug adapter that tries to reduce how much charger clutter you bring. It is not a travel converter, not a battery bank, and not some premium ga...
The Wyze Smart Plug sits in one of the most practical corners of the smart-home market: the simple Wi‑Fi outlet adapter that turns a "dumb" appliance into a controllable one. That sounds small, but this category does a lot of real work. A smart plug can put lamps on schedules, restart a flaky...
The HomePod Mini sits in a slightly unusual spot in the smart-speaker market. It is not the cheapest small speaker you can buy, and it is not trying to be the loudest either. What it really offers is Apple's idea of a compact home speaker: a small, voice-controlled audio puck that can pla...
Renters have been the quiet casualty of the smart-home boom. Most guides assume you can swap out a deadbolt, mount a doorbell, run speaker wire in the wall, and call the installer for a new C-wire in the furnace closet. If you're renting — a condo in Toronto, a basement suite in Vancouver, a down...
Matter is the smart-home standard that everyone has quietly been waiting for since roughly 2017, and the standard that everyone — including the companies that made it — keeps explaining badly. If you've read five articles about Matter and still aren't sure whether it replaces Wi-Fi, or Thread, or...
If you've ever stood in your kitchen watching a video buffer while your router sits two rooms away, you already know why mesh routers exist. A single router—no matter how powerful—can't push a strong signal through walls, floors, and the general chaos of a Canadian home. Mesh systems solve this b...
Cats are wonderful. They're independent, low-maintenance, and endlessly entertaining. They're also tiny fur factories that shed on every surface in your home—furniture, carpet, hardwood, and somehow inside drawers you never open. Add litter tracking to the mix, and you've got a cleaning challenge...
Let's be real—$100 CAD doesn't buy you Sony XM5 or Bose QC Ultra level noise cancelling. But it does buy you surprisingly capable ANC headphones that block out enough noise for commuting, studying, and working from home. The budget ANC market has improved dramatically, and several options under $...
MacBooks have beautiful displays. They also have one screen. If you've ever tried to work on a 13" or 14" MacBook with a dozen tabs, a Slack window, and a design tool open simultaneously, you know the pain. A portable monitor gives you that second screen anywhere—coffee shops in Vancouver, co-wor...
