Which Apple Home products are good to buy in 2024?

I'm Eric wander welcome back to my channel so CES is com and gone and we have a pretty good idea about what products are coming in 2024 and I'm going to list eight ideas of ways I think are good to upgrade your smart home in 2024 and picking any of these should give you a nice quality of life Improvement while also hopefully not buying technology that's going to be obsolete the day after you get it and let me know in the comments below which of these ways are most interesting to you and thanks to opal and their Tad camera for sponsoring this video more on them in a minute now first on the list is upgrading your TV area now this has a few different options depending on your setup the first is that if you're in the market for a new television consider getting one that supports Apple home or home kit and you got to be careful because there's also a supports Apple AirPlay badge that is totally separate now when you have a TV that supports Apple home you can scan the homekit code on the screen add it just like any other accessory in your smart home and then control the power as well as the TV input right from Apple home and you can add that to any kind of automations or scenes or setups you have for your TV which can make it way easier for you and your family to get the right setting depending on whether they're watching the big game or a movie now if you want to upgrade the audio for your TV Apple last year released the homepod 2 and a definite upgrade from the built-in speakers in your TV is adding a stereo pair of homepod twos combined with an Apple TV to run the audio from your TV I've been testing this more and more and I think Apple's recent additions of things like enhancing the dialogue with the Apple TV audio settings makes this a really nice setup now it's not going to be a surround home theater kind of style audio but it's still going to give you way better audio than you'd get from smaller speakers like the ones in your television now if you're into something more fancy like let's say a Sono Soundbar I'd recommend holding off because rumor is sometime in maybe the next like 12 to 14 months Sonos will release a new version of their Arc Soundbar and I think that's worth waiting for now maybe you're happy with your TV and audio setups but one other thing you might not have thought about is to add some accent lighting under pieces of furniture like let's say an entertainment center things that then can just add a little bit of brightness when you need it to get up to go to the kitchen to get a snack or something and we have a lot of great m supported LED light strips out there that you can use for this now my current pick in this category would be the Nano Leaf Essentials light strip that supports matter and then you have a light that you can change to different colors and brightness levels right in your movie time scene or automate with a motion sensor when the other lights are off and also stay tuned in this category in 2024 because goie will be releasing a new what they call spotless LED light strip that has diffusion built in in you won't be able to see the individual LED lights on the Strip just the glowing light and if LED light strips aren't really your thing GE sync is coming out with some under cabinet lighting that supports matter that I'll be checking out later this year as well now for letting yourself or your friends in to watch the big game or movie a home key Smart Lock is a great Improvement this is where you can just tap your iPhone or Apple watch that's part of your Apple home and then it will unlock the door for you and I'm going to talk about my current favorite home key Smart Lock in this category as well as some others to look out for but first thanks to opal and their tadpole camera for sponsoring this video I've heard a lot of great things about the tadpole since it's launch so I was very excited to try it out when opal wanted to sponsor a video you've probably picked out clothes you like to look professional at the office but when you're working remote or joining a video call most of us don't pay enough attention to our video and audio quality improving this not only looks professional but it helps other people in the meeting hear you clearly and see your facial expressions and gestures opel's new tadpole can give you exceptional video quality for your laptop or iPad video conferencing in an apple like design the camera has a Sony 48 megapixel sensor which is Bend to a sharp 1080p image with a six element lens in front of it but the camera is Tiny and can clip on the top of your laptop or tablet and connects with a braided USBC cable after plugging it in it just works without any software opal also has a free app you can download if you want to tweak your camera settings my favorite feature is that when you're using the Tad pulse built-in directional mic the USBC connector has a tap to mute button just tap on the top of the connector to mute and unmute for calls when you're muted the connector and the camera both show a red light when I'm in a meeting it's easy for the software mute button to get buried by other tabs or Windows on my Mac now I have a quick control right by my keyboard to unmute and chime in when needed but I'm also certain I'm muted when I see that red dot well I love YouTube my primary job is leading a remote software development team after using an opal tadpull in plenty of remote meetings at home it's also earned a spot in my travel bag to improve my video quality in the poor lighting of offices and hotel rooms to learn more and get an opal tadpull for yourself check out the link in the description and use my promo code Eric with a c to get 15% off your order thanks again to opal for sponsoring this video so my current pick for hom key locks is the sled encode plus and it's actually become much more available than it used to be there was a long time where if you tried to get it you'd had to wait a while or just go through all these listings of it being out of stock now one of the reasons I like this Legend code plus is because it supports home key it also has a key pad on there which you can control right inside the home app to give other guests and family members specific codes they can use to unlock the front door and it also seems to handle situations well where you can't use let's say the sled supplied strike plate or you have some kind of funky situation where your door and your door frame don't always line up just perfectly because a lot of deadbolt smart locks want to just go straight into the deadbolt and if you have a door that maybe is just a little bit off then that's going to have problems and the slay and code plus seems to handle that better in my experience than other locks I've tried now keep that in mind if you're thinking about upgrading to a Smart Lock on your door you might want to just check the door and the door frame and make sure everything lines up nice ly the same way when you open and close a door otherwise adjusting or fixing your door or your door frame might be the first thing you need to do and another one I'll be checking out is the aara u300 now it looks like this has all the hardware to support home key and it has an NFC Reader and things but a car hasn't officially announced home key support for this lock now the cool thing about this lock is that it works with the handle it's not for the deadbolt so this could be a nice way to add a Smart Lock maybe with home key to something like the door to your garage or your office or another place where a lock makes sense but you don't have a deadbolt number three on my list is adding buttons to control Apple home scenes so I've talked about in the past how important Apple home scenes are as sort of a building block for doing Automation and other controls in your home and then you can tie those scenes you create to buttons and then when you add a button into the Apple home app you have an option usually for a single press double press or a long press on that button so you basically get three controls in one and you can do some more advanced stuff where you tie that to some kind of an automation so depending on what time of day or other conditions are when you press that button it'll do different things now there are a variety of different good buttons in this category I've recently started playing with twoo smart button and it's cool cuz it has magnets on it so you can stick it places that are magnetic but you can also put on a wall mount and the tool button just by itself works with matter over thread which is fantastic now I also like the flick buttons while they require a hub and have announced matter support hopefully coming later this year their buttons are really small so you can easily stick them a lot of different places so for example back to the TV scenario earlier we have these little SE tables around our couch where we watch TV and I've put buttons underneath of those sea tables where then as we're ready for more let's say of a dim light movie scene I can just press that button and it'll turn off all the main lights and then we're ready to watch our movie and then when it's done I can press that same button again and it'll turn on sort of this dim lighting so we're not overwhelmed by the brightness of the lights after this movie and then can get up and see everything and go on with our lives and so sometimes having buttons like this where you know based on the type of content you're going to watch whether you want the lights off or not then you just hitting a button is easier than trying to say well if I'm watching TV and it's a Wednesday after 700 p.m. then just turn off the lights because that might annoy people in your home more than just you just have to press the button when you as a human know it's the right time number four on my list is getting a robot vacuum now as we look into 2024 there are two new models at at least that are built to the matter spec meaning that they should work with matter which means that someday they should work inside Apple home so a little bit of a leap of promises there but I think both these look like they'll be good vacuums regardless and that's the robo Rock S8 Max V Ultra and the ecox debot X2 combo now even if you don't really care too much about matter support which I think is kind of a nice to have feature there are so many great robot vacuums out there at so many different price points that if you've never had one it's so nice to not have to worry about cleaning your floors in a particular area of your home and if you have one consider getting an additional Robot vacuum maybe for another floor I have one down here that cleans just my office and it's really nice to just always have my office vacuumed I basically never have to vacuum my office myself because the robot takes care of it number five on my list is improving your outdoor smart home now Lutron has my favorite outdoor smart plug if you use their light switches in your home it's very expensive for a smart plug but it works really well and so I'd recommend checking out their outdoor smart plug if you're considering that there are also some more affordable options out there for outdoor smart plugs but we've also had a lot of options for outdoor lighting Nano Leaf announced some this year at CES now something I have tried is the Sonos move 2 that came out late last year and it's a really nice outdoor speaker that then you can use also inside and it not only works with Sono system but it supports Apple's AirPlay too so you could use it with your iPhone or other Apple devices to play audio that way and even combine it in those cases with homepods you might have but it could be a great way to get into the Sonos system if you don't have that already and yes it even works as a Bluetooth speaker if that's something you're into especially for maybe having a friend play some music from their phone now it's definitely bigger than a lot of bluetooth speakers but that's because it also sounds good and so you just grab the built-in handle carry it out to a backyard or back deck and you're going to have a great listening setup and with the new version you get better touch controls on top you get better battery life homeid secure video is Apple's way of storing recorded clips from your security cameras right in iCloud so you don't need to pay for an additional Video subscription if you already pay for iCloud plus with additional storage and these recorded Clips don't count against your storage allotments now there are a bunch of pros and cons to homekit secure video that I've talked about in previous videos but the right now there are so many good options of home kit secure video cameras for inside your home and I would look at something like the tplink too c125 that I recently reviewed on this channel number seven on the list is adding sensors for automation now I think aara has some recent updates here that are really good to consider the first is the acara P2 Door and Window sensor now this sensor works with matter over threads so you don't even need to be into the accara system to use this sensor and this will tell you when a door let's say a closet door or really any door in your home is opened or closed and you can adjust the smart lighting around there with Automation in apple home and the other added benefit here that we got late last year is the ability to see logs that are private and secure inside of Apple home about when these door sensors are opened and closed so it's a nice Peace of Mind way to check if a door has been opened or closed over the past few days and then also I find these door sensors handy as we're leaving the home and thinking oh did we leave that door open for the cats to get around the house or is it closed and you can just check in the home app yes the door's open open now if you're already a little bit more advanced in Smart Home setups I would recommend checking out the accara fp2 this is a very futuristic millimeter wave sensor it's sort of like the next generation of way to detect people in rooms compared to what you've seen in a lot of typical motion sensors for years and years which is passive infrared and the millimeter wave is way more precise and you can do all kinds of cool automation with this and aara keeps adding more and more features with software updates to this sensor now you don't even need an aara Hub to do this it'll connect straight to your network and then go right into Apple home and then aar's app also has a lot of ways you can customize and dial in the settings for this sensor and even if you have some of those sensors in particular rooms in your home consider where it might be a good place to add them over the next year number eight on my list is to monitor your energy Now Eve is a great European company that makes Smart Home Tech for apple and now everything with matter and they have the eve Energy Smart plug as well as what's coming out very soon the eve energy outlet and both of these allow you to monitor your energy use from those plugs and you can even make smart home automations based on that so when let's say some kind of a appliance connected to it starts using less energy maybe that means that it's off and you could change a color of light somewhere else in your home it can also just be good for troubleshooting like making sure that uh Smart TV or something else is not taking up too much power you can cut power to things to save energy so if you're concerned about using less energy whether that's to save money or save the environment or both Eve has a lot of great products in this sort of Eve energy category with their smart plug and smart Outlets that are worth checking out thanks again so much to opal and their tadpole camera for supporting my channel by sponsoring this video you can find links to that down in the description below as well as I'd love to hear in the comments which of these categories are things that you're most interested in doing for your smart home in 2024 and I'll also leave links to some of the videos I've done on these topics down in the description below so check that out I think it's going to be a really exciting year for Smart Home Tech now thanks so much for watching and I hope to see you in the next video

Channel: Eric Welander

Views: 52,517

Keywords: Eric Welander, apple, apple ecosystem, HomeKit, Apple Home, apple home products, apple home buyers guide, apple home products 2024, apple homekit must haves, ces 2024, apple smart home ces, apple smart home upgrades

Id: b9bunwRWBA8

Length: 16min 31sec (991 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 28 2024