The BEST Smart Home Tech at IFA 2026!

I'm back here at IFA in Berlin and I spent the last few days looking for the smartest, most interesting tech that I could find for your smart home. Smart lights and sensors, but also products that actually show where the smart home is heading. AI that can manage your comfort automatically, TVs that literally adapt to how you watch them, new matter devices, probably some stuff that we didn't expect to see, and robots. Yes, lots of robots. Some of the brands featured in this video are sponsored. I'll clearly label those and put links to everything down in the video description. So in this video, I'm taking you around the show floor to find the best smart home tech, new products, and biggest announcements from IFA 2026. Let's go. Of course there were robots, robots, and more robots. Sometimes just casually among us, which almost feels a little dystopian to be honest. Not quite as scary though are robot vacuums, and as usual there were more than I could count. I think they're all so good now. These brands often start doing strange concepts just to have something new each year to talk about. That said, one concept that actually made more sense than most of the ones I've seen was from iRobot. Yeah, Roomba is back. They showcased a concept floor and carpet cleaner that's actually like a legit carpet steamer. It uses very hot water and steam for heavy messes, like spaghetti on the floor as in their demo. Then the smaller vacuum mop deploys from the larger unit using an arm to clean under furniture and corners, along baseboards, climb thresholds, and things like that. Again, that one actually kind of makes sense. Aside from the concept, they also showcased their existing robot vacuum models at price points of $6.99, $7.99, and $1,199. I haven't used a Roomba in years myself, but these actually look pretty good. Ecovacs was also showing off their new line of robots, including vacuum mops, their window cleaning robot, and a new pool robot. The new Ecovacs X12S has a new certification for mite removal and allergen removal, which is pretty nice. This one also has a method of cleaning that removable tray inside the base station. If you've had robot mops before, you probably know these can get pretty nasty over time, so that's pretty cool to see. I've been using the current Ecovacs goat robot mower at my house all year, and I really like it. Their new 2027 model includes an all-wheel drive and an improved edge trimmer that can adjust with the edge, which should make it better for those curved flower beds and more complicated lines. They even had an auto washing station for your robot mower, similar to what we see in robot vacuums. This will keep your robot mower nice and clean. I can see this actually making a lot of sense, especially if you have dogs, with potentially a lot of dog poop in the yard that your mower may or may not run over from time to time. Ecovacs released their first pool robot earlier this year, and the new 2027 update will feature LiDAR, similar to the mowers and vacuums, for much better mapping and navigating inside your pool. A solar-powered component floats on the pool surface and communicates with the underwater pool robot using sonar, which I think is pretty clever. This sonar connection solves a common problem with pool robots, which is losing connectivity once the robot is underwater. I was excited to find Drio at IFA since I recently started using some of their smart fans in my own home. Their theme at the show was Air Mastered. The idea is that smart home comfort shouldn't just be about being able to control your devices from your phone. Instead, those devices should actually understand what's happening in your home and make smarter decisions for you without you even having to worry about it. They were showcasing a bunch of new products, including their new Air Purifier 530S. It uses their TurboPure purification system to clean the air an entire room almost five times per hour, and this demo here makes that pretty easy to see. You also get a real-time air quality display, a 30-day air quality report so you can actually see how your air changes over time, plus RGBIC ambient lighting, and you know I love me some RGB lighting. But maybe the most interesting here is Drio Air Intelligence, what they're calling the first AI home comfort ecosystem with energy awareness. It brings together a home wellness score, energy saving status, and home air pilot, which can sense what's happening, analyze it, coordinate across connected devices, and even forecast what should happen next. They're also showcasing their new Adaptive 360 whole room heating and focus heating technology, plus an ultra quiet convection heater capable of zero decibel operation for quiet consistent warmth. I also noticed an outdoor rated misting fan that should be available in the future that I'm really excited to put on my back porch to help with that summer heat in the south. Drio's bigger vision here is moving beyond individual smart appliances towards a home that actually understands your comfort needs and manages it for you. XGemi had one of the coolest projector setups I found at IFA. They basically built out different rooms to show what these things can do for movies, gaming, and everyday entertainment. The big focus was the new Aura 3 Max. Part of what XGemi says is the world's first 4k 120 Hertz ultra short throw projector series. It uses an RGB triple laser system with 5700 ISO lumens and 8001 native contrast, so it can achieve those deeper blacks and more vibrant bright whites. And even in the pretty well-lit halls of IFA, it truly looked incredible. And because it's ultra short throw, you can get a massive 120 inch image from just 8 inches away. It pairs perfectly with XGemi's Ascend floor rising screen, available in 100 or 120 inch sizes, and they do look really nice together. Since the Aura 3 supports 4k at 120 Hertz, visitors at the booth could also enjoy a truly immersive gaming experience. And by visitors, I mean me, of course. The Aura 3 series is available to reserve now, with Kickstarter launching October 20th and shipping expected to begin in December. For a more traditional high-end home theater setup, they were showcasing the Titan Noir Max and even experimenting with two of them side-by-side for a 3D projector experience. It was awesome. I definitely could have stayed here all day, but of course there was more to see. Aqara has taken a pretty big step into smart lighting with a number of new lighting products. The Floor Lamp T1 features 18 individually addressable lighting zones with tunable whites from 2,000 to 9,000 Kelvin, smooth dimming, and up to 1,000 lumens of brightness. The new T2 Downlight is an ultra-thin recessed downlight available in both color and tunable white only versions. They also have an updated T2 Light Strip, H1 Permanent Outdoor Lights, and H1 Outdoor String Lights. They also showed off a new updated version of their Magic Cube, which I'm using to control all the lights right here in the room. None of these lights are necessarily unique lighting products, but what makes them special and what really excites me personally is that all of the new lighting products announced by Aqara will support dual wireless protocols, both Zigbee and Thread. I think having smart lighting options like these that can use Thread or Zigbee and not require Wi-Fi all the time will probably make them very popular. And of course, as you'd expect, they all will support M.A.T.T.E.R. so you can easily connect them to any smart home ecosystem to use alongside your other smart home devices and automations. We also got to see the highly anticipated FP 400 sensor that will be released very soon, in addition to the FP 400 Pro coming sometime in the future that will support fall and sleep detection. I was also told that their first wireless solar-powered camera should be available before the end of the year. Aqara also showcased the U250 smart lock, a retrofit smart lock for the European market that is super fast, kind of a replacement of the U200 smart lock I would say. We also saw some variations of a new U500 smart lock, including one for gates and one for glass and sliding doors. I think these are gonna hit the EU market first and hopefully we'll see them in the US later this year, but nothing was confirmed. SwitchBot is another smart home brand that I've used a bunch in my home. They were showing off a few new products, including the Lock Ultra Max Vision Pro Combo. Yeah, quite a name, right? The Lock Ultra Max is an updated version of their retrofit smart lock aimed primarily for the European users with stronger and faster unlocking than previous models, plus a nice aluminum alloy body. Paired with the Vision Pro keypad, you can unlock your door with palm vein recognition, facial recognition, among many other methods of unlocking your door. They were also highlighting their AI Mind Clip that officially launched during the week of IFA. This is an AI voice recorder that can record your entire day or just important events and meetings, provide detailed summaries, calendar events, and actionable to-do items. I was actually wearing an AI Mind Clip the entire week of IFA, and I'll be releasing a whole video on that very soon, so if you're interested to see how it did for me, be sure to subscribe and check back for that video very soon. SwitchBot was also showing their cute little AI companions called Kaida Friends, plus a new version of their digital e-ink picture frame that should be coming out in the near future. This one has a built-in microphone that you can use to tell the frame to automatically generate new artwork or just tap the frame to make it automatically change the picture without even taking out your phone. SwitchBot also introduced a new mini robot vacuum model, a significant update to their previous one. This one actually has a real roller mop that extends out, still in a very small form factor compared to most other robot vacuums. It has a carpet guard to protect against excessive wetting and an all-in-one base station. We also got an upgraded Curtain 3 with an optional detachable battery pack to basically double the battery life. A new company called Moera, underneath the same parent company as SwitchBot, was demoing a heated and cooled mattress topper. I probably enjoyed this booth as much as any during the show because I was so tired. One side was set to cool while the other was heated. I could definitely feel it. It's using heated and cooled water pumped through the mattress topper. Each side has a remote to independently control the temperature. It also has a microphone and other sensors built in to provide you with sleep tracking and analysis. I was told that it can work completely local without requiring an internet connection, and even better, without requiring a monthly subscription. In addition, I was told that they are bringing MatterSupport to this soon, which is very exciting. The product will be on Kickstarter soon and the price will be around $800, which is pretty affordable when you compare it to other similar products on the market that are often much more expensive and require monthly subscriptions and cloud connectivity. This is a smart home upgrade I'll definitely be interested in making at my home, hopefully soon. While Phil 2 didn't have an official booth at the show, they did have their own event and dropped a number of different announcements. New products, including the Play Screen Sync and the Play HDMI Sync Box 4K will allow you to synchronize your Hue lights to what's playing on your TV. They also announced a new line of Play Gradient light strips, a 360-degree rope light that looks awesome but is very expensive, new pendulum and pendant lights, and pole lights. Their outdoor Festiva line is growing with new curtains, nets, and icicle lights. They also announced a partnership with Nanoleaf that will allow you to bring compatible Nanoleaf shapes into the Philips Hue ecosystem with their new Philips Hue wall light module. Yeelight seems to be going all-in on Matter Over Thread, which is great to hear. They introduced a full line of Matter Over Thread smart lights, including three different size smart ceiling lights, a light strip, and a really cool-looking wireless bedside or desk lamp. It has a really nice double-layered design and can make some really beautiful looking effects with around 68 preset modes, and it's wireless. There are almost no Matter Over Thread wireless smart lights available, so I was actually pretty excited to see this and hear that they plan to release many other Matter Over Thread smart lights in the future. Govee just launched a new version of their permanent outdoor lights too, this time with two LEDs for dual layer up and down lighting. They're also showing off their full lineup of smart lamps, ceiling lights, and more, all with Matter support. These are all Matter Over Wi-Fi. Third Reality is expanding its Thread support to new devices like their soil moisture sensor, smart buttons, and lights, and they will support Thread binding directly between those buttons and lights, which is great to see. They showed an outdoor solar-powered Zigbee repeater and prototypes of a new Zigbee-based key pad and siren that I'm pretty excited about. These, I think, are primarily designed for home assistant integration and should be coming before the end of the year, so I'm told. It was interesting to stop by the Shelly booth, who has largely been much more prominent in the EU market from what I understand, but they are said to be making a big push into the US now. They showcase their wall display that supports Matter Over Thread and can act as a Thread border router, a Matter bridge for controlling and connecting your other smart home accessories. The display replaces a standard wall switch and includes two relays and physical switches, and this is available right now. They also introduced a new compact indoor camera, roughly the size of a golf ball. It's only 1080p resolution, but could be a good option for certain use cases. It's USB-C powered and supports local or cloud storage. No native HomeKit support, but you can connect it in the Shelly app or directly into Home Assistant. We also saw a Shelly Presence Sensor Gen 4, covering up to approximately 42 square meters. It can detect up to six people and supports multiple protocols, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Matter. They also had a few other sensors showcased that support dual protocols, both Thread and Zigbee. Sonoff had something pretty interesting, I think, especially for my Home Assistant friends out there. They presented some new smart cameras with RTSP support and a built-in Zigbee gateway, so Zigbee sensors can pair directly with the camera and can be exposed through Home Assistant. They also showed some new dual protocol devices supporting both Thread and Zigbee, which, again, I'm a fan of. That gives you, the consumer, the option to choose which protocol you prefer to use. I love that we're starting to see more of this from different brands. TCL had some pretty interesting smart locks. I assume these are for the EU market. They also showed their recent D2 Pro Matter smart lock, but more interesting to me was their new smart camera and video doorbell that will be released sometime in the near future with Matter support, likely 2027, I believe. They also had some smart safes on display, and none of these have Matter, but I was told that they will offer a Matter-enabled smart safe in the near future, which is cool because I don't think there's many products like that around. I was actually a bit surprised not to see more cameras claiming Matter support, since Matter was recently updated to support cameras in the 1.5 release. One of the only other ones that I saw that did was Toppo, and they were showcasing their new indoor camera and two outdoor cameras, including a solar powered one. All of these will support Matter. I was told that these are expected to release in November or December of this year. These might be the first Matter outdoor cameras available if they do actually release this year. They also have the Toppo Matter-compatible hub. I'm told it can bridge cameras to Matter, regardless of whether the cameras themselves are natively Matter compatible, which is pretty interesting. A brand called Perlegear was showcasing the first smart TV mount that I've ever seen. Yeah, not smart TV, but a smart TV mount. I thought this was pretty cool, an interesting idea. It's using AI to track when people sit or stand, and the TV mount will raise or lower accordingly. You can even use hand gestures to start or stop different modes. I think something like this could be really useful, especially for those with open floor plans like I have. It's not uncommon to be sitting on the couch watching TV one minute, and then standing in the kitchen doing something entirely different the next minute while still watching TV on the same TV. And at their booth just in front of that was their sister company Amada. They had an app-controlled smart sofa with built-in charging and even a little mini fridge. I really like this setup. I could see using both this couch and this TV mount in my house. The anchor was at IFA with a large booth showing a number of things. I was more interested in the local smart home agent slash AI hub that they announced at IFA called Mindbase. It's being marketed as a privacy-first home intelligence system where devices work together and AI understands home context using an anchor-developed LLM. It should support third-party matter devices and various smart home platforms, and it enables local processing for real-time security camera analysis, event summaries, and smart alerts without relying on the cloud. And it also functions as a NAS. What's really interesting to me is that this seems to be where the future of smart homes may be going. It's a very similar concept to the Ugreen home agent that was also announced right before IFA. Ugreen, who's well known for their NAS systems as of lately, announced this, which is essentially a beefed-up NAS system with its own local AI agent built in right out of the box. It supports matter so you can connect third-party devices to it for voice control, automation, and more. We've been seeing these sorts of features a lot more over the past year or two in the camera space, and it looks like that's gonna be extending to the entire smart home. And with all that built-in storage, your agent can access your photos, videos, security footage, and smart home devices all there locally in your home. It's still very early for Anker's Mindbase, as well as Ugreen's, but Ugreen has already started accepting pre-orders and announced pricing. I actually went to Ugreen's launch event in Boston just before IFA, and I made a whole video about that, so I won't go into the details. But if you want to check out more information about that, I'll leave a link below if interested. HOMI had a small section within the huge LG floor where they were showing their recently announced HOMI Portal smart home controller. This is designed to work with your HOMI setup. It features a touchscreen for viewing stats, the weather, running smart home scenes, controlling music, and more. And it has a proximity sensor and a speaker built in, which will primarily be used for notification sounds and effects. I was told it will ship with a desk mount and a wall mount option, and it's available for pre-order now for $299. It looks nice, but unfortunately, they wouldn't let me touch it for real hands-on, so I guess we'll have to wait for that. I was told that shipping will start in December 2026. And for the first time that I've ever seen at any of these events was Home Assistant! It was really cool to see the Home Assistant booth pretty much packed the entire time. I think their main goal was more about educating and connecting with the community than announcing or showcasing new products or features, but it was great to see so many people here. From what I've learned, the number of people using Home Assistant has really been growing fast over just the past few years. I was able to speak with multiple people at the booth to learn about the different ways they're working on making Home Assistant easier and easier for people to get into. All right, that's a wrap on IFA 2026. I hope you enjoyed the video. Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next one!