Smarter Smart Homes? CES 2025 Shows Off the Cool to the Bizarre
By Melissa Dittmann Tracey, Guest Contributor
About 70% of home buyers are looking for a smart home, and the majority are willing to pay more for a home with smart devices, surveys show. Consumers are looking for convenience and time savings with smart home devices, along with added safety and security.
CES, formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show, showed off the latest smart home product innovations during the tech show’s largest annual conference in Las Vegas earlier this month. Here are a few product debuts that could be soon outfitting more smart homes
Robot roommates: Many people desire to age-in-place at their homes, and robots may be the answer. For example, “Lemmy” is a companion care robot was created to respond to the physical, cognitive and emotional needs of seniors living independently. AI-powered sensors installed throughout the home allow Lemmy to collect real-time information about the person and respond immediately with any necessary support. Lemmy operates through voice commands and connects with home appliances and healthcare devices, keeping seniors connected with friends, family, caregivers and their healthcare professionals.
Voice-controlled home appliances: The ability to take control of more aspects of your home using your voice continues to gain traction, which is helping to simplify smart home tech. Talk to everything from your coffee maker to your trash can. For example, at CES 2025, Hamilton Beach showed off its Smart Coffee Maker that allows you to use your voice to turn it on and off, set your coffee’s brew strength or even schedule it for when to automatically start your coffee. The Simplehuman Dual-Compartment Rectangular Sensor Can features side-by-side trash and recycling cans that can be controlled hands-free with you saying: “Open can,” “stay open,” or “close can.” Then, U by Moen allows you to voice control a wall-mounted shower, without touching the dial, such as by telling it to turn on the water or set it to your preferred temperature.
Refrigerators with AI built-in: Your refrigerator may start to know you better than yourself. Samsung’s 4-Door Refrigerator with AI Home and AI Vision Inside 2.0 can automatically recognize and track food items that go in and out of the fridge, alerting you when items are about to expire and even adding them to your grocery list when they’re running low. It also can make food or recipe recommendations based on your habits and what you have inside your fridge.
Lawn care robots: Simplify yard work—or even keeping a vacant listings tidy—by sending in the robots. For example, at CES 2025, Yarbo showed a robot that can autonomously maintain yards and outdoor spaces, no matter the season. It can mow the lawn, blow off leaves and plow the snow off a driveway or sidewalk.
The Segway Navimow X3 features a built-in trimmer on the side to maintain lawn edges and speeds up lawn mowing robot capabilities (mowing up to 1.25 acres in 24 hours). Meanwhile, Lymow One could be beneficial to those who live on steep hills; it features caterpillar tracks instead of wheels to navigate steep slopes and rough terrain.
Bigger, better, thinner TV screens: Manufacturers each year at CES look to push the bounds of size and image quality on television screens, which could help redesign living rooms and theater rooms in a home. This year at CES ushered in an era of transparent and hologram-like screens, although still in mostly prototype form. Screens also pushed beyond 100 inches or more, 8k picture quality and paper-thin models.
LG showed off wireless OLED models, like its 77-inch 4K OLED Zero Connect Wallpaper TV, a CES Innovation Award honoree. At less than a half-inch thick, the TV can blend into the wall without visible wires by using LG’s Zero Connect Box. It wirelessly sends connections to the TV, eliminating cable clutter and freeing up TV placement to wherever you want it.
Meanwhile, Samsung continues to transform the TV into artwork, with its latest iteration of The Frame. The Frame Pro features colorful artwork when not streaming your latest TV show. The latest model boasts brighter colors and sharper contrasts and more wireless capabilities for installation.
Armed and footed robovacs: Robot vacuums aren’t just rolling around homes for cleaning but now they’re getting the addition of arms, legs and even trays to better serve you. Roborock features a mechanical arm that can pick up toys and socks in its path. You can even tell it where to put the clutter. Or, SwitchBot K20+ Pro can vacuum your floors while bringing you a sandwich on its built-in tray. The device also pulls extra duty as an air purifier and home security system.
Simplifying pet care: Pets have been earning more attention in real estate, with some real estate pros even marketing a property’s pet friendliness in their listings as a selling point. Twenty percent of consumers say a home with pet-friendly attributes would even motivate them to increase the price they offer to pay for a home, according to a survey conducted last year by Quicken Loans. Pet tech innovations were hyped at CES 2025, including an attempt to reinvent pet doors. Pawport says its high-tech security door can retrofit existing “old-fashioned” pet doors. Installed inside and outside, the doors only open when the pet approaches it. The pet wears a small Bluetooth device that sends an alert to the door when they’re near. The Pawport app also allows for remote or voice control, setting a curfew and other scheduling functionality.
Also, a pet camera, Furbo 360 Dog Camera or Furbo 360 Cat Camera, allows you to keep eyes on your pet and even interact with them while you’re away. The Furbo 360 Dog Camera offers barking notifications and a remote treat-tossing feature, while the Furbo 360 Cat Camera allows you to use its dangly feather toy on top to entertain your cats from afar.
Energy monitoring: Utility bills have been on the rise and can affect households’ budgets. At CES 2025, EcoFlow introduced Oasis, which offers an AI-powered home energy management system. You can use your voice to ask Oasis to analyze your home’s energy use over the past week and to then suggest ways to cut down on your utility bills. Or ask Oasis how upcoming weather could affect your home’s energy system and it’ll offer you some ideas.
Changing the mood: Smart lighting is bringing an array of colorful choices to help change the ambience of a home instantly. Smart bulbs and lighting strips are making these easy to add into a home, too. At CES 2025, Lifx launched a new 13-inch by 26-inch ceiling light with 120 color zones while GE showed off Cync Reveal, an under-cabinet and under-counter smart lights that allow you to also change the colors.
Melissa Dittmann Tracey
ABOUT ME:
Melissa Dittmann Tracey is an award-winning journalist who covers the latest real estate news and trends. You can hear her weekly on the syndicated radio show and podcast, Real Estate Today, in her housing trends segment, “Hot or Not?” She is the creator of the Styled, Staged & Sold blog and a frequent contributor to Houselogic.com and REALTOR Magazine. She’s also the host of The Housing Muse podcast at http://www.housingmuse.com. Follow her on Instagram or X @housingmuse.
