The 7 best smart home gadgets of CES 2025

There's a lot to keep track of at CES: TVs, cars and AI (so much AI), but the latest innovations in smart home devices are always a huge draw. Homes are becoming increasingly complex places with a myriad of different products and platforms handling cleaning, entertainment, climate control and security.

Sure, there's the obvious hardware that makes an appearance in Vegas each year, like the 7 best robot vacuums we've seen, but there's also been a plethora of new products to serve those aforementioned sectors.

The Tom's Guide team has been walking the show floor for the last week and has been documenting their findings on our rolling live blog. So here are my seven picks of the most intriguing smart home gadgets we've seen at this year's show.

1. Lockly Styler

This smart lock is the obvious first pick for the best smart home innovation as we awarded it the best smart home device in this year's Tom's Guide CES Awards. Although we'll have to test it ourselves to see if it merits a place on the list of best smart locks, it's certainly one of the best-looking we've ever seen on first inspection.

The smart lock uses several different mechanisms for unlocking: A 2K security camera at the top, a doorbell button, a keypad with numbers that change position to deter thieves, an RFID reader and a fingerprint reader inside the handle (your index finger naturally touches it when taking hold) and a standard key lock.

The price is likely to be the most off-putting feature of this device, as it will cost a hefty $699 when it goes on sale. But as you'd guess from the name, this is a fantastic-looking device, and the elongated bar form factor will look great on a sleek, modern front door.

2. SwitchBot K20+ Pro

There are a lot of robot vacuums to choose from at CES, but one of the most interesting from a smart home perspective is the SwitchBot K20+ Pro. Why? This little robovac can dock with many accessories — a fan, an air purifier, a security camera, and an iPad holder, for example. This gives it enormous potential to be something of a smart home jack-of-all-trades.

For example, you could use it as a standard robot vacuum but then have it serve double duty as a patrolling sentry by attaching the security camera while you're out of town on a trip. What's more, because SwitchBot is opening up the underlying ecosystem, FusionPlatform, to third parties, we could have a whole family of attachments and automations to make this product even more useful in the future.

Pricing for the vacuum or the various modules has not been announced, but the company hopes to release some or all of the kit in May or June 2025.

3. Samsung Vision AI

Artificial intelligence had to make an appearance on this list at some point, and Samsung's announcement of Vision AI at CES 2025 had the company proclaiming it would create "adaptive, intelligent companions to simplify and enrich daily living."

While the primary usage seems to be putting it into the company's TV sets, it's also being used in more conventional smart home tech. Samsung is putting Vision AI into the Samsung Bespoke Smart Fridge from last year. The result is a refrigerator that can scan its own contents and analyze what’s there to figure out what you’re running low on. Helpfully, Samsung also announced a new partnership with Instacart, allowing said fridge to prompt you to easily order more groceries if it thinks you’re running low. All the information is displayed on the 9-inch screen on the front of the fridge.

Vision AI lets the fridge recognize “up to 37” different kinds of food, including fresh fruit and vegetables. So, you'll soon have no excuse for not eating your recommended daily veggies.

4. Bird Buddy Petal camera

Want to know the kinds of insects that are making themselves at home in your yard? You'll want to check out the new Petal camera from Wonder — the company known for the Bird Buddy smart bird feeder.

The Petal uses a 4K, 12MP camera atop a flexible "stem" that will identify the insects that land nearby thanks to an AI the company calls Nature Intelligence. You'll get a notification on your phone when the camera spots something interesting, and you can interact with a chatbot to learn more about it, for example, whether you've got carpenter bees in your yard.

One neat feature is that you can accessorize the camera with a solar "leaf" that keeps its battery charged while interchangeable lenses will give you different views of these little botanical visitors.

According to Wonder, the Petal will be available in spring but pricing is yet to be announced.

5. AI Motion Pillow

One of the most significant uses of your home is sleep. There's been a whole heap of sleep-related tech on show at CES 2025, but the AI Motion Pillow will interest anyone who has to deal with snoring in the bedroom. The device uses high-quality memory foam and AI to try and position your head to prevent or stop snoring.

There are a lot of anti-snoring solutions out there but this is interesting because it's a non-invasive design. The smarts are in a small white box called the AI Motion System, which records sleep time and snoring to build a pattern. From there, it starts to learn when you start snoring and activate airbags inside the pillow to gently alter head position to stop it from happening.

6. Ecobee Smart Thermostat Essential

Take a look at the best smart thermostats you can buy and you'll see the Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium tops our list. However, the downfall of the product is its $250 price tag — which was just addressed at CES 2025 with the introduction of the Ecobee Smart Thermostat Essential.

At $129 it's nearly half the price of the Premium model with only a few small trade-offs — like being made of plastic rather than nickel. Despite this, it retains one of the company's best features: compatibility with Ecobee's remote sensors so you can monitor the temperature and occupancy in multiple rooms to better manage how hot or cold you want your house.

This gives Nest a run for its money and is scheduled to go on sale in March at all major retailers. It'll also come with a 3-year warranty and is Energy Star certified.

7. Ring Smart Smoke Alarm

Ring is synonymous with smart home tech, but while it made its name in video doorbells, it's now branching out into smoke alarms. Announced at CES as part of a partnership with Kidde, the company's first smoke alarm will notify users in the event of a fire in their home.

If it picks up smoke, the detector will blast out a siren and send an alert to the Ring app. For additional safety, customers can sign up for a 24/7 Smoke & CO Monitoring service, where an agent will contact any emergency contacts you have in your Ring app, as well as the local police and fire departments.

The Ring Smart Smoke Alarm will be available in April exclusively through The Home Depot and will retail for $54.97. If you want to sign up for the monitoring service, that will be available on April 2 for an additional $5 per month.

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