CES 2024: Smart Home Highlights Worth Paying Attention To

I just got back from Las Vegas and my feet are killing me. Four days of walking the CES show floor will do that. But between the sore legs and questionable convention center coffee, I actually came away more optimistic about the smart home than I have been in years. Here is what stood out to me and what I think is genuinely worth your attention heading into 2024.

Matter Was Everywhere (And That Is a Good Thing)

Last year at CES 2023, Matter was the buzzword nobody could escape, but almost nobody had shipping products. This year was different. I lost count of how many booths had "Works with Matter" badges on actual, purchasable devices. Samsung's SmartThings Station was being demo'd with seamless Matter pairing. TP-Link had an entire wall of Tapo devices running Matter natively. Even smaller brands like Meross and Aqara were showing Thread-enabled sensors that pair over Matter in seconds.

The most impressive demo I saw was at the Connectivity Standards Alliance booth itself. They had a setup where a single smart home — lights, locks, thermostat, blinds — was being controlled simultaneously by Apple Home, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa. No hubs, no bridges, just Matter. It worked. Not perfectly, mind you. There was a noticeable half-second lag on the blinds when triggered from Google Home, and one of the smart locks threw an error on its third attempt. But the fact that it worked at all across three ecosystems without any custom integration is genuinely remarkable compared to where we were two years ago.

Robot Vacuums Keep Getting Smarter

I am not usually the person who gets excited about robot vacuums, but Roborock's Saros Z70 made me reconsider. It has a robotic arm. An actual articulated arm that picks up socks, small toys, and other obstacles off the floor before vacuuming. I watched it gently grab a crumpled napkin, place it on a shelf, and then proceed to clean the area underneath. Is it a gimmick? Maybe. Does it solve one of the most annoying problems with robot vacuums — having to pre-clean before the robot cleans? Absolutely.

Samsung's Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI also deserves a mention. The obstacle avoidance has gotten genuinely good. During the demo, they threw random objects on the floor — cables, pet toys, a pair of headphones — and the thing navigated around all of them without getting stuck once. The AI object recognition identified each item and showed it on the app in real time. Two years ago this kind of navigation was unreliable at best. The progress is real.

Smart Displays Are Having an Identity Crisis

Google showed up with new Nest Hub concepts that look more like digital picture frames than smart displays. Amazon had a prototype Echo Show that pivots to follow you around the room. Samsung's new smart display concept basically looked like a small TV with Bixby bolted on. I get the sense that nobody has quite figured out what a smart display is supposed to be in 2024. Is it a kitchen assistant? A video calling device? A home control panel? The answer from every manufacturer seems to be "yes, all of those," which usually means it does none of them particularly well.

The exception was a smaller company called Brilliant, which showed an updated version of their in-wall smart home control panel. It replaces your light switch with a touchscreen that controls everything — lights, music, thermostat, cameras. I have been skeptical of in-wall panels before, but this one was genuinely responsive and the interface was clean. If you are building or renovating, it is worth a look.

The Sensor Revolution Nobody Asked For

Aqara announced millimeter-wave presence sensors that can detect whether you are sitting still in a room, not just walking through it. This is a huge deal for smart home automation because traditional motion sensors lose track of you the moment you sit down on the couch and stop moving. The Aqara FP2 was already good at this, but the new sensor is smaller, cheaper, and supports Matter natively over Thread. I am planning to replace every motion sensor in my house with these once they ship in Q2.

There was also a surprising amount of air quality monitoring tech on display. Multiple companies showed sensors that track not just temperature and humidity but also VOCs, CO2, PM2.5, and even radon. The integration with HVAC systems is getting tighter too — several smart thermostats were demo'd triggering ventilation based on real-time air quality data from paired sensors.

What I Am Skipping

I am going to be honest: the "AI-powered" everything trend at CES this year was exhausting. Every other booth had slapped "AI" onto their marketing materials. An AI toaster. An AI mirror. An AI pet feeder that "learns your pet's eating patterns." Most of this is pattern recognition that has existed for years, rebranded for the ChatGPT era. I am not saying AI does not have genuine applications in the smart home — it clearly does, especially in areas like camera analytics and energy optimization. But the hype-to-substance ratio was worse than usual this year.

I am also still not sold on smart refrigerators. Samsung and LG both had new models with massive screens and cameras inside, and they have been pushing this concept for a decade. I have yet to meet a single person who regularly uses the screen on their fridge for anything other than checking what it looks like inside without opening the door. At $3,000 to $4,000 price premiums, just use your phone.

Looking Ahead

If I had to sum up CES 2024 in one theme, it would be "maturation." The smart home industry is not chasing wild new concepts as much as it is refining what already exists. Matter is moving from promise to reality. Robot vacuums are solving their last-mile problems. Sensors are getting more capable and less expensive. That is not as flashy as some breakthrough new product category, but it is exactly what the smart home needs right now. The foundations are getting solid enough that the average person — not just us enthusiasts — can start building a reliable connected home without a computer science degree.

I will be writing deeper dives on individual products over the coming weeks as I get review units. For now, if you are in the market for smart speakers or smart displays, I would hold off on any purchases until March. The CES announcements always take a couple months to actually hit shelves, and prices on current-gen stuff tend to drop once the new models get official release dates.