TECH TRENDS

Take a look at some home products that will help you work smarter, not harder, while shaping how you live in and enjoy your home.

By Alina Hoarau

We don’t have Jetsons-style homes in the sky, but technology has come a long way. Smart home devices allow you to optomize and control your applicanes for easier, smarter living. Most of today’s smart home products are compatible with Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s Assitant. The following are some of this year’s top trends in home technology and gadgets.

The smart fridge has become the ultimate home technology. Your very own fridge can connect to the internet, and most brands of this type of technology are equipped with an application that connects to your personal device(s). From collecting your favorite recipes to entertaining the kids with television in the morning, the smart fridge enables you to save time and effort. Imagine forgetting what was in your fridge and whether or not that milk is good or not. With the smart fridge, you can store all of that information and view it via your mobile device to make those grocery trips that much easier.

While robot vacuum cleaners have existed for some time now, this type of technology has seen a multitude of advancements. As one can expect, these devices make their way through your home, moving in each and every direction, while cleaning your floors. The advancements in this product have been sharpened and and certain robot vacuum cleaners now have the ability to map out the floorplan of your house and users can even create zones in the house for the vacuum to avoid cleaning. In addition, robot vacuum cleaners now have the capability of emptying themselves, leaving you with little to no work.

Through the use of electronic devices, users can engage in a threedimensional world by simply putting on a headset, which is essentially a pair of extremely thick goggles secured around your head. We have finally reached the age in which such a dream of living in a story-world has become a reality. Users can play interactive games with the use of hand controllers so that their motions are mimicked and translated into what they are seeing on screen.

Many have turned to air purifiers to provide their homes with an environment that is not only fragrant but hygienic. However, the limit is endless as this product has been used in offices as well as cars. Users can select their desired aroma while ensuring clean air in the surrounding areas.

A smart home secuity system connects to your WiFi network so you can monitor and control your security devices using your smartphone. Not sure if you locked the door on your way to work? No problem. Want to get alerts on your phone when motion is detected in your home? You got it. Depedning on your needs, you can setup a system that you monitor yourself, or you can pay a subsciption fee to have professionals surveillance your home and contact local authorities when alarms are triggered.

If you don’t want to install an entire smart security system, there are plenty of individual devices available that let you monitor your home from anywhere using your smartphone, including indoor and outdoor security cameras, video doorbells, motion sensors, and smart locks.