Posts tagged with "Smart Home"

Just the Best: MacStories’ Black Friday 2025 Picks

Black Friday deals started very early this year, and we’ve covered a lot of ground on the MacStories Deals Mastodon and Bluesky accounts since publishing our Early Black Friday Picks. A lot of those deals are ongoing, so it’s worth revisiting that story as you start your holiday shopping in earnest.

However, today, I wanted to hit the highlights of what we’ve covered over the past week on MacStories Deals and add some new deals to the mix that you probably haven’t seen yet, so buckle up, it’s time to go shopping.

MacStories Pixel Icons

All three MacStories Pixel Icon sets are 40% off until Monday, December 1.

Two of the icon sets are specially-designed for Shortcuts. We’ve all been there. You work hard on a shortcut and want to give it the perfect icon, only to realize that Apple doesn’t offer what you want in the Shortcuts app. The MacStories Pixel Icons fill that gap with an extensive set of painstakingly hand-crafted icons with multiple color options created by MacStories’ long-time designer, Silvia Gatta. We also offer a set of Perspective icons that are perfect for OmniFocus Pro and other uses.

Visit our dedicated MacStories Pixel page today to preview all three icon sets and purchase them for 40% off until Monday, December 1.

Apple Hardware

There are a lot of Black Friday deals on Apple hardware, but most of them are good, not great. I’m picky, so I’m only going to focus on just the great deals.

One of the best deals on Apple hardware during Black Friday is the M4 13” MacBook Air with 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage. If you want more memory or storage than that, you’ll have to settle for a smaller percentage discount, but even with more memory and more storage, you’re still doing better than any other deal this year. The 15” M4 MacBook Air with 16GB of memory and a 256GB SSD is a good deal, too.

Among the many iPad deals, the best is on the 128GB iPad mini with an A17 Pro chip. I’ve had a mini since they were released and love it. The size makes it an excellent reading and video-watching device.

AirPods 4 are also heavily discounted for Black Friday. Apple’s most affordable wireless earbuds come with active noise cancellation and without. The model with no active noise cancellation slightly edges out the model with ANC as far as the discounts are concerned, but both models are a bargain.

However, the very best deals available from Apple in terms of the percentage discount are a 4-pack of AirTags and the Apple Pencil Pro. If you need either, now is the perfect time to buy them.

Smart Home

The holiday season is a great time to catch up on projects and start new ones. For me, that’s often tuning up my smart home setup and setting up some new devices thanks to Black Friday sales. Here are the best ones I’ve seen:

Aqara already makes some of the most affordable smart home devices out there, so you really can’t go wrong with their Black Friday deals. One of my favorites is the FP2 Presence Sensor. It’s far more sophisticated than a simple motion sensor. To start with, it can tell when you’ve left a room, which motion sensors can’t do. I’ve used an FP2 Sensor in my office to control lighting for a couple of years, wrote about it for Club members, and have been really happy with it.

Other great deals from Aqara include its U100 Smart Lock that works with Apple Home Key and HomeKit, the Aqara M3 Home Hub that I recently set up at home and love, and 4MP Camera Hub G5 Pro, an outdoor HomeKit camera that I reviewed earlier this year.

My Aqara 4MP Camera Hub G5 Pro is paired with an Ecobee Smart Video Doorbell, which is also on sale for Black Friday. I’ve used various Ecobee smart home products for years and have never been disappointed. The same goes for its smart doorbell. I’ve had it installed for over a year, and it’s been reliable despite facing the sun on some very hot summer days.

Black Friday is also a great time to buy a robot vacuum and mop. There are lots of deals, but the model I’ve tested for the past couple of months and love is the Narwal Freo X10 Pro. It handles vacuuming and mopping, navigating via LiDAR and does an excellent job compared to other robot vacuums I’ve tried. I’ll be reviewing the Freo X10 Pro about it soon, but now’s the time to get it at a steep discount.

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MacStories Setups Update: An Apple Gear Refresh, Dual-Screen Gaming, and HomeKit→

Our desk setups. Federico (left) and John (right).

Our desk setups. Federico (left) and John (right).

As we head into the final weeks of 2025, Federico and I figured it would be a good time to update the MacStories Setups page. There’s an ebb and flow to the gear and apps we test each year, and as the fall OS update season fades into the past, it’s not unusual for one or both of us to take stock of our setup and make changes. That’s been very true for both of us this year, but in different ways.

Federico has been focused on simplifying his hardware setup and testing a long list of apps and services. In contrast, I’ve made fewer gear cuts, focusing more on strategic changes to the gadgets I use and settling on a core set of work apps.

The result is that Federico’s hardware setup changes have primarily been updates to his Apple and portable gaming gear. He made the transition from the iPhone 16 Pro Max to the iPhone Air, and couldn’t be happier with the result. He also replaced the M4 iPad Pro with the latest M5 model and moved from the AirPods 4 to the AirPods Pro 3.

Both of us ditched our previous Apple Vision Pro head strap solutions for the Apple Dual Knit Band, which has been a big upgrade. It’s comfortable, and having one dial to adjust both bands is both clever and far simpler than other solutions I’ve tried.

Ayn Thor.

Ayn Thor.

Federico also added the Ayn Thor to his handheld gaming lineup. The Thor, which I also bought this fall, is a dual-screen OLED gaming handheld that runs Android. It’s perfect for emulating dual-screen systems like the Nintendo DS and 3DS, but it has also been excellent for game streaming and testing the emerging world of emulating SteamOS on Android. If game tinkering is your thing and this sounds intriguing, we have two episodes of NPC: Next Portable Console that go in-depth on the Ayn Thor.

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One Month with the Aqara G410 Video Doorbell

Last month, after an advanced preview at CES back in January, Aqara released an update to its G4 smart video doorbell dubbed the Doorbell Camera Hub G410 Select. I had been keeping my eye out for this release ever since its announcement, and it just so happened to coincide with the passing of my existing smart doorbell from Netatmo. That was more than enough reason to purchase the G410, and over a month of daily usage, I’ve been enjoying several of the camera’s excellent new features while also wishing for some improvements in other areas.

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Philips Hue Adds Flexibility to the Play Line with New Wall Washer Lights

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been testing a pair of Philips Hue Play wall washer lights along with a Play HDMI sync box 8K that the company sent me to test. The wall washer lights are a new and interesting approach to accent lighting for the Hue Play line that I like a lot, but they also come with a premium price tag, so it’s worth taking a close look at what they offer.

Philips Hue's Play wall washer lights. Source: Philips Hue.

Philips Hue’s Play wall washer lights. Source: Philips Hue.

I’ve been using Philips Hue Play lights for a while. I have two Play gradient light tubes in my office; one sits behind a shelf on my desk, providing a backlight to my work environment, while the other is on the top of a tall bookshelf, illuminating what would otherwise be a dark corner of the room. I typically set them to a natural light color using Adaptive Lighting in Apple’s Home app, but they can do fancy gradient colors, too, which can be a fun way to mix things up.

A more traditional Play wall washer setup than mine. Source: Philips Hue.

A more traditional Play wall washer setup than mine. Source: Philips Hue.

But the downside of tube lights is that they take up a lot of horizontal space. That’s where the new wall washer lights come in. They’re cylindrical with a vertical and angled slice taken out of one side, which is where the LEDs are located. Most notably, though, at around six inches tall by a little more than three inches wide, the wall washers work in a much wider variety of places than tube lights. That compact footprint has been perfect for fitting behind my TV, where I’ve already crammed gaming consoles, a Wi-Fi router, and other gear.

Other highlights of the Hue Play wall washers include:

  • ColorCast, Philips Hue’s term for the way the wall washers generate highly saturated multi-colored gradients,
  • 1035 lumens of light, which is impressive for such a small device, and
  • the ability to display white light in a wide 2000–6500 Kelvin range.

The Play wall washers require a Hue Bridge and are compatible with HomeKit, allowing you to use either the Hue app or the Home app to turn them on and off, dim them, and change their colors.

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A Firmware Update that Promises to Turn Smart Lights into Motion Sensors→

Jennifer Pattison Touhy has a story on The Verge today about a technology debuting soon that turns existing smart lights into motion sensors:

Sensify is a proprietary technology based on wireless network sensing (WNS) that works with Zigbee-based smart devices, like Hue smart lights. According to Pattison Touhy:

WNS works by detecting disturbances in radio frequencies and can also be applied to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Thread technologies. McKinney says Sensify requires three or more devices positioned around a detection area to detect motion and occupancy in the space. The tech also allows for precise detection zones based on where the devices are situated. “The devices send messages to each other, look at underlying network diagnostic information, and process it to provide occupancy sensing decisions,” says McKinney.

The story goes on to explain the performance of the technology:

Performance-wise, McKinney says Sensify is “equivalent or superior” to passive infrared sensing (PIR) tech, which is traditionally used for motion sensing. It also doesn’t need line of sight, as PIR does. However, it’s not as precise as technologies like mmWave sensing, which can determine if someone is in a room through as slight a movement as breathing. “The lights will still likely turn off if you’re still, even if you’re in the space,” he says.

That’s great to hear and something I hope is enabled by manufacturers without charging an additional fee or subscription. I know that may be wishful thinking, but even if there is a fee, it may be worth it to not litter your home with less accurate motion sensors everywhere and could give Hue and other Zigbee-based device makers an advantage over other companies.

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HomePass 2 Brings a New Design, Maintenance Features, and a Freemium Model

Back in 2020, John opened his review of HomePass 1.7 in this way:

My HomeKit setup started out simple enough with a few Hue bulbs, but over time, it has grown to include security cameras, door sensors, electrical outlets, and more. As the number of accessories connected to my network grew, so did the hassle of managing them.

I know this is the case for many people, myself included. There seems to be an ever-growing selection of third-party apps for HomeKit, and developer Aaron Pearce has released some of the best. Where other apps add more functionality and, thus, complexity, Pearce has focused on simplicity and pure utility. The best example of that approach has always been HomePass.

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Tadoº Announces New Range of Smart Heating Products Supporting Matter Over Thread

Tadoº, the European-based smart heating company, has announced a new line of products called tadoº X. These products feature upgrades from the company’s previous V3+ range, support the new Matter smart home standard, and are built on the Thread protocol for a more reliable connection.

Tadoº also announced a new product, the Heat Pump Optimizer X. This device controls heat pumps, an increasingly popular way to heat homes that is more efficient and not dependent on fossil fuels. Tadoº says the new tadoº X range “has been designed to make Smart Thermostats and the new Heat Pump Optimizer X more accessible for millions more households across Europe to cut both their energy bills and impact on the climate.”

The tadoº X line includes the following products:

  • Smart Thermostat X
  • Smart Radiator Thermostat X
  • Wireless Temperature Sensor X
  • Heat Pump Optimizer X
  • Bridge X (which serves as a Thread border router)

Amongst the notable upgrades, the Smart Radiator Thermostat X now features a USB-C rechargeable battery that can be detached without removing the whole device from the radiator. The Heat Pump Optimizer X can be used with tadoº’s smart energy tariffs to shift operation times to periods of the day when energy prices are cheaper. Finally, the tadoº Bridge X that serves as a Thread border router, allowing your devices to connect to each other and the Internet, is not necessary if you already have a HomePod mini or the Wi-Fi + Ethernet version of the latest-generation Apple TV 4K, as these also serve as Thread border routers.

The smart radiator thermostat now has a removable, rechargeable battery.

The smart radiator thermostat now has a removable, rechargeable battery.

As before, the tadoº range is compatible with the Apple Home app, but most features – such as advanced scheduling and checking battery levels – are only available in the tadoº app. The devices also integrate with an optional subscription called ‘Auto-Assist’ that gives access to additional features including Energy IQ, Care & Protect, Geofencing, and Open Window Detection. This service costs €3.99 per month or €29.99 per year, but each tadoº X product comes with 12 months free.

The tadoº app. Image: tadoº

The tadoº app. Image: tadoº

I have personally used tadoº products for over three years now (and covered them recently in our home accessories roundup), and I’ve seen genuine savings in my usage. (tadoº claims an average of 22% savings based on internal usage data.) One flaw I’ve sometimes encountered is dropped connections, as the previous V3+ range could only connect to a single bridge that had to also connect via ethernet to my router. The move to Thread should hopefully alleviate these issues.

I will have to wait for the new tadoº range, however, as it is not launching in the UK yet. In response to an inquiry about this, tadoº told me the company has a September target release date in the UK and other European countries. They also confirmed an additional product, the Wireless Smart Thermostat X, which connects to traditional gas boilers like the one I have, will be released at that time. This will enable efficient usage through the ability to remotely turn the boiler off if no radiator thermostats are on.

Another detail provided to me is that the Auto-Assist feature, which was previously complimentary to Apple users, was a limited offer through Apple. As such, after the 12-month trial, the service will now cost the standard €3.99 per month or €29.99 per year, even if you are an Apple Home user.

The new tadoº X range is now available in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, and Denmark.