One of the first things I set out to do when I joined Engadget in the summer of 2018 was to build a beautiful home office. At my previous job, I didn’t get many opportunities to work remotely, so it wasn’t a priority. That turned out to be a mistake, because when I began working from home I found it quickly wore me down. My kitchen simply wasn’t cutting it as an office – so I set out to change things.
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget
Piece by piece, the office I built in my bedroom came together into a space where I enjoyed sitting down to write. But it wasn’t until this year that it felt like it was complete. The piece that was missing was the BenQ Screenbar, a lighting fixture you install on your monitor.
I put off buying the Screenbar for a few years, mostly because of its $170 CAD ($109 USD) price tag. So why then didn’t I buy a regular table lamp you ask? Well, the Screenbar drew my eye for a few reasons. I live in a small condo in Toronto, so a lamp that could sit on my monitor, instead of my table, was appealing because space is at a premium, especially on my small desk. Additionally, the Screenbar shares a feature I love on the Philips Hue lights. Out of the box, you can adjust the color temperature of its LEDs — no need to buy separate bulbs. BenQ also claims the Screenbar produces less glare than a traditional table lamp due to how you position it on top of your monitor.
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget
Setup is also easy. A USB-C to USB-A cable connects the Screenbar to your computer, providing it with all the power it needs. You don’t need to install any software on your PC to use the device. Four capacitive buttons on the top allow you to turn the Screenbar on and off, adjust the color temperature and brightness, or turn on automatic brightness. BenQ sells a more expensive version of the Screenbar that comes with a puck you can place on your desk for more convenient access to the controls, but that’s unnecessary for most people.
The one downside of the Screenbar is that it takes up space you could otherwise use to mount a webcam. With a flat, 27-inch monitor like my Dell, it’s possible to fit both, but neither could sit dead center.
Depending on your needs, that could dissuade you entirely from considering the BenQ Screenbar. For me, it was an easy decision to make. I don’t need to do a lot of Zoom calls. The position of my office desk also isn’t ideal for video calling. When I sit down to write, my back faces a wall-to-wall window. That’s not an easy scene for a web camera to expose. My solution has been to use my MacBook Air and sit by the side of the window when I need to jump on Zoom.
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget
Looking back now, I wish I had bought the Screenbar earlier. To say it has transformed the atmosphere of my bedroom and office would be an understatement. Winter in Toronto is a long, dark affair. In January and February, the sun can set as early as 5PM. My mood, like many people’s, can vary greatly depending on the amount and quality of light that filters into my home. The fact you can adjust the color temperature of the Screenbar’s LEDs between 2700K and 6500K means it can produce warm, bright, sunlight-esque whites, making it ideal for all-day use and even color-sensitive work like photo editing. In my experience, it’s the perfect solution for a small space.
While we at Engadget are blessed with a passion for cooking, most of us are not blessed with spacious kitchens. But that doesn’t stop us – we use every inch of our tiny apartment kitchens as efficiently as possible. In doing so, we’ve found that some of the most useful cooking tools are the small things – items hiding deep in your drawers or sitting humbly on your countertop that you turn to often and may end up taking for granted. We wanted to highlight some of our favorite small kitchen essentials to remind everyone (including ourselves) that you don’t need to add the latest ultra-convenient unitaster to your kitchen to make great food. Ultimately, it’s the small stuff that matters, both when it comes to recipe ingredients and the tools you keep in your cupboards.
Thermapen One
ThermoWorks
If there was ever an essential kitchen gadget, an instant-read thermometer is certainly it. Not only does it help you cook things correctly, but aso safely. No one wants to serve their guests undercooked chicken. If you’re in the market, Thermapen’s One is the best your money can buy. It’s more expensive than your run-of-the-mill probe, but the One gets its name from its speed: it can provide readings in one second.
What’s more, the One is accurate to within half a degree and the IP67 waterproof housing means it will hold up to any accidents. The display auto rotates so you’re never twisting your neck to read the numbers. It’s also equipped with a motion sensor so that display automatically comes on when you pick up the thermometer. The Thermapen One will serve you well in the kitchen, at the grill and for many other things, making it a go-to for a variety of culinary tasks. – Billy Steele, Senior News Editor
I was late to hop on the Instant Pot train. I picked up the three-quart Instant Pot Ultra on Prime Day in 2020, and even as I waited for it to arrive, I was slightly skeptical about how much I’d really use it. Fast-forward more than a year and the multi-cooker has become one of the most used gadgets in my laughably small kitchen. If I had enough counter space, it would stay out all the time – next to my other cooking MVP, my Vitamix – but sadly it has to sit in a lower cabinet when not in use. But I pull it out often to make soups and stews, to meal-prep large batches of dried beans and even to whip up rice. I grabbed the three-quart model because I mainly cook for myself and my fiancé, but since we always have leftovers, that leads me to believe that the smallest Instant Pot could make a decent-sized meal for up to four people or a big batch of our favorite side dish. While the Ultra model can be difficult to find right now, the newer Instant Pot Pro Plus has many of the same cooking modes along with a fancier display, plus app connectivity. — Valentina Palladino, Commerce Editor
I bought my Microplane after taking an in-store cooking class at Sur La Table where, admittedly, the hosts had an agenda to sell us stuff on our way out. I treated myself to this $15 hand grater, having just been introduced to it in my cooking demo. Today, I use it for everything from mincing garlic, to zesting citrus to grating parmesan over my pasta. The Microplane takes up less cabinet space than my box grater – and it’s never sliced my finger like traditional models either. The only annoying thing about my workflow is that the Microplane is often sitting dirty in the dishwasher when I need it. But at this price, with such a small footprint, it wouldn’t kill me to get a spare. – Dana Wollman, Editor In Chief
I love to cook, but I can’t say I’m terribly precise when it comes to following recipes. If something calls for a tablespoon of oil or a half cup of stock, I’m more likely to just dump it straight in than measure it out. So if you had told me a few years ago that one of my most-used kitchen gadgets would be a cheap kitchen scale, I probably would have laughed.
Then the pandemic hit and I quickly realized my lackadaisical approach would not cut it when it comes to baking. Baking bread, or just about anything else, requires precisely-measured ingredients, and a kitchen scale is far and away the easiest and most reliable way to measure out your ingredients.
I like this one because it’s compact, but can handle up to 11 pounds of weight. And it’s easy to quickly switch between pounds, grams and fluid ounces. And even though my pandemic baking hobby was short lived, I’ve found having a scale handy is actually quite useful. From brewing the perfect cup of pour-over, to weighing out the cat’s food, to managing my own portion sizes, this little scale has earned a permanent place on my counter. – Karissa Bell, Senior Reporter
There are very few items that have earned a permanent spot on my painfully tiny countertop, and my Cosori electric kettle is one of them. I’ve written about it before, about how I finally decided to move on from the dark ages of heating up water for tea in the microwave to something more civilized. But the kettle has proven itself useful in many other ways, like prepping stock by using Better Than Bouillon and boiling water, and making the occasional quick cup of ramen. I like that Cosori’s model has different built-in temperature settings for different types of drinks, and its gooseneck design makes it easy to use for Chemex-made coffee. I’ve thought about upgrading to a new kettle recently, but I always ask myself, why? Cosori’s is still going strong, just the same as the day I bought it. — V.P.
According to my Amazon records, I purchased this small-batch Cuisinart food processor for about $28 on Amazon Prime Day 2017, correctly surmising that I didn’t need anything larger or pricier. For small kitchens and occasional use, the size is right – and so is the price, even if you pay closer to the $40 MSRP. And don’t be fooled by the name “mini” either – the three-cup capacity is enough to whip up pesto, hummus and various other dips and sauces. The only time recently I had to work in batches was when I was grinding up Oreos for the cookie layer of an ice-box cake. No big deal, and certainly not a dealbreaker.
When it comes to cleanup, I like that the plastic cup and lid can go in the dishwasher, though I need to wash the blades and wipe down the base by hand. Fortunately, too, it’s short enough in stature that it can sit even in a cabinet with just 9.5 inches of clearance. And, because it’s so lightweight, pulling it down from above my head never feels like a safety risk. – D.W.
According to my Amazon orders archive (a testament to how much I have, in my own small way, enriched an awful company) I purchased this knife in January of 2016. It had good reviews and was, I believe, less than $40 — my assumption being this would be a cheap, workhorse knife that, were it stolen or destroyed by inconsiderate roommates, would be no great spiritual or financial loss. I have chopped and diced with it; I've hacked into gourds, coconuts and lobsters; I've used it to cleave straight through chicken bones; I regularly run it through the dishwasher.
Over six years later, it remains the best knife in my kitchen — and with the help of a chef's steel, the easiest to cut with too. And no, I have never once given it a proper resharpening either. An 8-incher from trendy upstart Misen which retails for almost twice the price failed to take its place. (Personally I think the weight distribution is off.)
There's no fancy damascus patterning to the steel, and the handle is plastic. I absolutely do not know (or care!) if it features a full tang or what the edge geometry is supposed to be. It's an utterly proletarian knife that, in my many years of use, remains both irreplaceable and indestructible. – Bryan Menegus, Senior News Editor
I’ve accumulated lots of measuring spoons over the years – plastic, metal, some with a key ring attached – but these are the only ones I bother to use anymore. This set, which includes five spoons ranging in size from a quarter-teaspoon to tablespoon, has a magnetic nesting design, ensuring the spoons take up as little space as possible. (I also never find myself ransacking the drawer to find the one missing spoon that I really need at that moment.) Equally important: Each spoon is two-sided, so if I need to use the tablespoon, say, for both wet and dry ingredients, I can keep the two separate and throw just the one spoon in the dishwasher when I’m done. – D.W.
Look, don't ask me exactly which one is hanging off the pegboard I installed in my kitchen — I don't remember and frankly, you're buying bent pieces of wire, so any distinction between different brands is likely trivial. The point is that, while I have the utmost respect for printed media, the best use for a magazine rack is for storing pot lids, a very necessary and otherwise extremely annoying-to-store kitchen object.
What kind you look for depends mostly on what sorts of pot lids you're trying to stash away. Handle-style (is there even nomenclature for this type of thing? I'm talking about these ones) lids work best with a straight rail. For those with knob-type handles, ideally seek out one like this that features a slight concavity in the middle of each rail, as it'll keep the lids from sliding around too much. This is also the best bet if you — like me, and probably most people — have a set of pots and pans cobbled together from a variety of manufacturers and your lid handles are a mix of both varieties.
The only word of caution I'll offer is that, while pot lids might not be as heavy as, say, a cast iron skillet, install your magazine rack securely, either off a pegboard (which I cannot recommend highly enough for its versatility) or make sure it's screwed down into a wall stud. Cleaning up broken glass and buying an entirely new set of lids is no one's idea of a good time. — B.M.
Those puny stick frothers do not cut it. Beyond the fact you have to heat the milk yourself – yeah, I was out already – it doesn’t have the oomph to offer that thick velvety milk needed for your daily flat white. There are several more substantial milk frothers available now, but I swear by Nespresso’s Aeroccino series or its Bluetooth-connected Barista Recipe Maker. I have the latter, because, well, I work at Engadget.
The Barista can whip up hot and cold milk, depending on your selection. It uses induction tech to both heat up the dishwasher-safe milk jug and magnetically spin the whisk inside, which is substantial and also thankfully dishwasher-safe. The results are consistent and ideal for at-home caffeination – which is not a word, apparently.
It turned out to be the final piece of my homemade coffee puzzle, ensuring my brews more closely approximate the espresso-based delights I get in West London’s cafes. While the touch-sensitive buttons and ability to replicate recipes are nice, I could survive without them.
Nespresso has recently introduced its fourth-generation Aeroccino, which is designed to look like a Moka pot, which is cute. It’s also a touch cheaper than my Barista Recipe Maker. – Mat Smith, U.K. Bureau Chief
If you love coffee, you probably already know all the reasons why a pour-over setup will produce a better cup. But even occasional coffee drinkers will benefit from ditching a bulky drip machine for a sleek glass Chemex. In small kitchens, you need all the counterspace you can get, and Chemex’s three or six-cup carafe takes up a lot less space than the typical drip machine. It’s also easier to clean and stash away in a cupboard when not in use (and easier on the eyes if you do leave it out).
Most importantly, it brews a far better cup than any machine. To the uninitiated, pour-over setups can seem intimidating, but a Chemex makes it reasonably foolproof: add grounds to a filter (you can use bonded paper filters or get a reusable one), add hot, but not-quite-boiling, water, wait a few minutes and you’ll have a surprisingly smooth cup of coffee. What’s great about a Chemex is you can put as little or as much effort in as you want. Like other pour-over setups, there’s room for endless experimentation: you can change up the grind size, water temperature and coffee to water ratio to get the “perfect” cup. Or, if you’re less fussy, you can do what I do most mornings and eyeball it — as long as you don’t pour your water too quickly even a hastily made Chemex cup will have a lot more flavor than whatever is coming out of your drip machine. – K.B.
You're probably looking forward to spending more time outside now that the weather is getting nicer, and there are ways you can spruce up your backyard setup to it even more comfortable. Solo Stove's fire pits can cut the chill of spring nights without filling your spot with smoke like traditional fire pits would. Now, thanks to the company's spring sale, you can pick up any of its three fire pits for much less than usual. The smallest in the lineup, the Ranger, is $100 off and down to $200, while the mid-sized Bonfire is down to $240. The biggest of them all, the Yukon, is a whopping $325 off and down to $425.
We've recommended Solo Stove devices in a few outdoor guides, most recently in our fall gear guide, but these fire pits can be used all year round. The biggest perk they have in comparison to cheaper fire pits is that they channel smoke away from you using their double-walled design that pulls air through vent holes and back into the fire. This helps keep the flames hot, reduce smoke and create fine ash.
All three Solo Stove fire pits have solid, one-piece, stainless steel designs, which makes them easy to set up, clean and even transport. The 15-pound Ranger and the 20-pound Bonfire are the most portable of the bunch, while the 38-pound Yukon is probably best left in a permanent spot in your backyard. The smaller two fire pits come with a carry case, and while you can position them correctly on the ground or a concrete patio, we recommend picking up a bundle that includes a stand so you'll have more placement options. In addition to the stand, the "backyard bundle" also includes a shield, which keeps pops and embers from escaping, along with a weather-resistant shelter bag.
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As the weather warms up, it's time for aspiring pit masters to dust off their aprons and meat probes before heading outside for some low-and-slow cooking. Pellet grills have become a popular choice for backyard cooks as they offer the flavor of food cooked over wood with a much more convenient fuel source. However, you still have to go outside to use one, and unless you have a screened-in porch or shelter of some kind, cooking in the rain is no fun. And if you live in an apartment, chances are you can't have a grill in the first place. FirstBuild, a product innovation lab backed by GE Appliances, has built Arden: an indoor smoker that burns wood pellets and "eliminates" the smoke so it's safe to use in your kitchen.
Like an outdoor pellet grill, the Arden has a hopper for the fuel and burns it to produce smoke to flavor foods. The difference here is this countertop unit has a separate heating element that helps to regulate the temperature so it's not solely relying on burning pellets to cook. FirstBuild says the Arden circulates smoke around the chamber before a "game-changing smoke-elimination technology" uses "a catalyst" to get rid of it. The company explains that the small appliance doesn't have a filter you need to clean or replace, it just expels carbon dioxide and water vapor out of the back. Details are scarce on exactly what happens during that process, but it's clear the thing doesn't emit any smoke during a cook.
FirstBuild is using smoke elimination tech here that was built for the Monogram Smart Hearth Oven. That appliance is an in-wall electric unit that's designed to mimic the performance of wood-fired brick ovens used in restaurants for pizza, baking and roasting. The company says the idea for a smoker was first implemented in an old GE fridge that had been converted to a BBQ cooker. In order to bring the device indoors to escape the weather, FirstBuild team outfitted it with the smoke trapping tech from the Hearth Oven.
The company says the smoker generated a ton of interest from its community so it asked if people would buy one and how big it needed to be. The first answer was a resounding "yes," and the second was that it needed to fit on the counter like other kitchen appliances. Unlike the old refrigerator, the Arden is a moveable unit, so you can stash it somewhere else when its not in use — unless you really want to dedicate counter space to showing it off. Despite easy moving, it's still quite a large thing to have out all of the time.
The Arden is about the size of a mini fridge with enough capacity for two racks of ribs, a small brisket or "an average-sized" pork butt. The device can also accommodate a whole chicken standing up on a rack or beer can. Three removable shelves allow you to fit things as needed, but based on FirstBuild's videos, you'll need to cut racks of ribs in half to make them fit. Cook times remain the same as outdoor smokers, so you're looking at three to five hours for ribs and up to 12 hours for a pork butt, for example. The Arden cooks at temperatures between 185-300 degrees Fahrenheit and it allows you to use a meat probe to monitor internal temp. It can also hold foods at a certain temperature once they're done cooking in case you can't get to them immediately.
Since the Arden has separate heat sources for the pellets and the main heat setting, FirstBuild says the device offers more accurate overall temperature. The company says this smoker also uses a lot less pellets since they smolder for flavor instead of burning to heat an entire grill. While barbecuers seem to be impressed by the smoker flavor the Arden prototypes impart, Mad Scientist BBQ's Jeremy Yoder noted that it's not as "complex" in the overall profile.
According to Yoder, the smoke flavor is more on the surface, so while you can certainly taste it, it hasn't penetrated the meat like hardwood coals or a full-size pellet grill can manage (BBQ nerds will also notice the lack of a well-defined smoke ring). Yoder did confirm that the results on pork ribs are a massive improvement over what you can get faking it in a regular oven, and they were even better than what he'd had in some restaurants. There is a smoke level adjustment on the Arden control panel, so presumably you could dial that up to fit your desired taste profile. Speaking of smoke, it's unclear if the smoker stops smoldering pellets temporarily if you open the door during the cooking process.
Like it has in the past, FirstBuild is taking the crowdfunding approach for initial pre-orders. If you snag one via Indiegogo, the earliest devotees can secure it for $599. After that, you'll get a $400 discount off the expected MSRP when the Arden goes on sale ($699 vs. $1,099). Prices will go up during the course of the campaign, so opting in sooner will save you some cash. The only downside to ordering early is backers will have to wait until summer 2023 to get one. However, the product lab crowdfunded the initial launch of the Opal Nugget Ice Maker in 2015 — raising over $2.5 million — so it has a history of delivering the goods. GE now offers a range of Opal machines, so it will be interesting to see what happens if the Arden hits or surpasses that mark.
Robot vacuums have come a long way over the past few years. They’re smarter, more powerful and (marginally) better at avoiding chair legs than they ever were before, and you don’t have to shell out as much money to get one either. There are also many more robo-vacs available now than there once were, so deciding which to buy isn’t as simple as choosing the latest model from the biggest brand. We tested out many of the newest robot vacuums available now to see how they stack up against each other.
Are robot vacuums worth it?
We tackled this question in our budget robot vacuum guide and the answer is yes, especially if vacuuming is one of your least favorite chores. Robots take the hard work out of cleaning your floors – just turn the thing on and watch it go. Any robot vacuum worth buying is semi-autonomous in that it will suck up dirt around your home until its battery is low and then make its way back to its charging dock. You should only have to interact with it to turn it on, empty its dustbin and untangle it if it were to get stuck somewhere.
That’s not to say robot vacuums are perfect. They’re almost always less powerful and less flexible than standard vacuums. Since most robo-vacs are much smaller than traditional models, they often don’t have the same level of suction you’ll get in an upright machine. Plus, their dustbins are smaller, so they will need to be emptied more frequently. While WiFi-connected robot vacuums give you the flexibility to start a cleaning job from anywhere using an app, targeting a small area of your home can be more complicated. Some robo-vacs have spot-cleaning features that focus the machine’s attention on a specific area, which almost – but not quite – mimics the spot-cleaning you’d be able to do yourself with a regular vacuum.
What to look for in a robot vacuum
iRobt / 1996-2001 AccuSoft Co., All rights reserved
As we explained in our budget guide, WiFi is a key feature for most robot vacuums. Some of the cheapest devices aren’t WiFi connected, though, so if you’re looking at the most affordable devices, it’s best to check for that feature before you buy. WiFi connectivity allows a robot vacuum to do things like communicate with a mobile app, which then allows you to control the device from your phone.
Suction power is another important factor to consider. Unfortunately, there isn’t a standard power scale that all robo-vacs adhere to, so it’s difficult to compare suction power among a bunch of devices. Some companies provide Pascal (Pa) levels and generally the higher the Pa, the stronger the vacuum will be. But other companies don’t rely on Pa levels and simply say their robots have X-times more suction than other robots.
Ultimately, we recommend thinking first about the floors in your home: Do you have carpet throughout, or tile and hardwood, or a mix? Robots with stronger suction power will do a better job cleaning carpets as they can get into the nooks and crannies more easily. Some machines have “max” modes as well, which ups the suction power but also typically eats at battery life faster than the “normal” cleaning mode.
Past a certain price threshold, you’ll find advanced features like home mapping, improved object detection and automatic dustbin disposal. Home mapping is exactly what it sounds like: The vacuum uses sensors to map your home’s layout as it cleans, allowing you to send it to particular rooms or areas in later cleaning jobs. Most robo-vacs have some version of object detection, but some will be better than others at actually avoiding things like chair legs and children’s toys. Some, like iRobot’s j7 series, even go so far as to promise to avoid things like pet poop that can potentially ruin your machine.
Finally, for peak convenience, consider a robot vacuum that comes with a clean base. These are basically garbage bins that are attached to the machine’s charging base. At the end of each job, the robo-vac automatically empties its small dustbin into the large clean base – that means you won’t have to empty the dustbin yourself and you’ll only have to tend to the base once every few weeks. Just keep in mind that most clean bases require proprietary garbage bags – another long-term expense you’ll have to factor into the cost of owning one of these devices.
Engadget picks
Best mid-range robot vacuum: Shark AI Robot Vacuum with Base
Shark
Shark’s $650 RV2502AE AI robot vacuum with Base ticks all of the boxes that a mid-range machine should. It offers reliable performance, its mobile app is easy to use and it produces accurate home maps. On top of that, its base is bagless, which means you won’t have to spend money every few months on garbage bags for your robot vacuum.
Setting up the Shark is as simple as taking it and its base out of the box, plugging the base in and downloading the companion mobile app to finish things up. The machine connects to WiFi, allowing you to control it via the app when you’re not at home, or using Google Assistant and Alexa voice commands. The first journey the Shark makes is an “Explore Run,” during which it produces a map of your home that you can then edit from the mobile app.
The Shark produced a pretty accurate floorplan of my two-bedroom apartment, and I was happy to see a “re-explore” option that I could use if the map wasn’t up to my standards. With a completed map, you’re then asked to label rooms in your home. That way, you can send the Shark to only the bedroom for more direct cleaning jobs, select “no-go” zones and more.
The first few times I ran the Shark robot, I had it clean my whole apartment. I was impressed by how quiet it was – or rather, how much quieter it was compared to other robo-vacs I’ve tried. You’ll have to turn up the volume on your TV if it’s cleaning in the same room, but it’ll be hard to hear when it’s sucking up debris down the hallway. It also did a decent job maneuvering its way around the cat toys I left out on the floor. The device’s object detection feature claims it can avoid things as small as four inches, but I found that it was much better at sensing and moving around the three-foot-long cat tunnel on my floor than the many tiny mouse toys.
But even if Mr. Mouse caught the edge of the Shark’s wheels now and then, the robo-vac took it all in stride. One thing I look for when testing robot vacuums is how much attention they need from me during cleanings. The best ones require no extra attention at all – once they start a job, they’re smart enough to putter around your home, move around objects and return to their base when they’re finished. With Shark’s robo-vac, I never had to tend to it when it was cleaning. Now, I did my due diligence and picked up pieces of clothing and charging cables off the ground before running the Shark (ditto for every other robot vacuum I tested), so those things were never in the way. Most companion apps will actually remind you to do this before starting a cleaning job.
This Shark machine comes with a clean base, so it will empty its dustin after every job – and also during a job if its bin gets full before it’s done. In the latter situation, the Shark will go back to cleaning automatically after it’s freed up its bin. That’s a great feature, but I found the best thing about the base to be its bagless design. Shark’s device is unlike most other robot vacuum clean bases because you don’t have to keep buying proprietary garbage bags to outfit the interior of the base. When you want to empty the base, part of it snaps off and opens to eject debris, and it easily locks back in place when you return it. Not only is this quite convenient, but it also brings the lifetime cost of ownership down since you won’t be buying special bags every few months.
Runner up: Roomba j7
Valentina Palladino / Engadget
iRobot’s Roomba j7 is a great option if you want the latest obstacle avoidance technology from the company in an attractive package. The $600 j7 doesn’t come with a clean base, but you can get the same vacuum with one for $200 extra.
The biggest selling point of the Roomba j7 series is its upgraded AI-driven computer vision which helps it detect and move around objects. This includes pet poop – a robot vacuum’s arch nemesis – and iRobot even promises that it will replace your j7 machine if it runs into pet poop within the first year of ownership.
That’s one feature I was happy I never got to test, as my cat kept all of her activity to her litter box. Otherwise, the Roomba j7 did a good job sucking up dirt and debris around my apartment and it didn’t make too much noise while doing so. All of the robo-vacs I tested at this mid-range level had roughly the same level of suction, so there wasn’t a big difference between them when it came to cleaning power.
Like other robot vacuums, you can set cleaning schedules in the iRobot mobile app so you never have to start a cleaning job on the fly. The app also has a “favorites” section, which lets you create profiles that you’ll use all the time like “clean the living room and the entryway.” And if you prefer to use voice commands, the robot supports Amazon’s Alexa and the Google Assistant.
The Roomba j7 has Imprint Smart Mapping, but unlike the Shark, it took more than one runthrough of my home for it to create a complete map. iRobot’s app distinguishes between a regular cleaning job and a “mapping run,” so make sure you’re choosing the latter the first few times you run the machine.
I tested the j7+, which means I was treated to the roaring sounds of the machine emptying its dustbin into its clean base. The emptying process isn’t as simple as an automatically opening flat that shakes dirt from one garbage can to another – the base actually sucks the dirt from vacuum. This was the case for all of the machines I tried that came with clean bases; they’re all quite loud, but the Roomba j7+ was the loudest of them all. The whooshing sounds last for only five to 10 seconds, but it was shocking the first time it happened. Just keep that in mind if you ever decide to run the robot at night when others are sleeping.
Honorable mention: Anker Eufy RoboVac X8 Hybrid
Anker
You may be unfamiliar with Anker’s robot vacuums, but they’re often more affordable alternatives to the iRobots and Sharks of the world. The $649 Eufy RoboVac X8 Hybrid isn’t a budget machine by any means, but it’s a solid robot vacuum that offers a few key features that many competitors don’t have. Plus, you can often find it on sale for $549 or even $449.
Unlike our other midrange picks, the X8 Hybrid doesn’t come with a clean base, nor is there one you can purchase separately. It’s just a standalone robot vacuum, but the “hybrid” indicates that it’s also a mop. It has both a dustbin for collecting debris and a 250-milliliter water tank that you can fill whenever you want to run a mopping cycle. Plenty of other robot vacuums have this feature, and it could be even more useful than a clean base if you have lots of tile or hardwood floors throughout your home.
Besides that, I was impressed with how easy it was to set up the X8 Hybrid, how accurate its mapping technology was and how many extra features it supports. It has four cleaning modes – auto, room, zone and spot – and four suction levels starting with Pure at the low end and topping out at Max. These features give you a lot of control over where the machine cleans and how powerfully it will do so. The X8 Hybrid was in Pure mode the first time I ran it, and I was surprised by not only how quiet it was but also how thoroughly it cleaned considering it was on the lowest suction setting.
There’s also a “tap and go” feature that lets you pinpoint any spot on your home map in the EufyHome app, sending the robot there to clean. Manual controls are also available, which isn’t something you see on a ton of robo-vacs. This option lets you control the machine almost like a slow and slightly clumsy RC car, giving you more control over where it cleans.
It may not have the name recognition that iRobot or Shark do, but the Eufy RoboVac X8 Hybrid is a solid choice nonetheless, especially if you don’t care to add a clean base into the mix. It’s an even more tempting choice if you can snag it when it’s discounted.
Best high-end robot vacuum: iRobot Roomba s9+
Valentina Palladino / Engadget
The Roomba s9+ is admittedly overkill for most people – but it’s nothing if not one of the best robot vacuums out there. You’ll notice its premium features as soon as you unbox it. The s9+ is the biggest but also the most attractive robo-vac I tried, with a corner-friendly design, copper accents and a 1.5-foot tall clean base. The setup was quick and easy, with the machine taking only a few minutes to connect to my home’s WiFi and the iRobot app.
While the s9+ doesn’t have the Precision Navigation feature that the newer j7 does, it has something called “Careful Driver” that uses a 3D sensor to detect and clean around objects. It seems that the main difference is that the s9+ isn’t specifically wired to avoid pet poop, so keep that in mind if you have furry friends around the house. However, with 40x the suction power of a standard Roomba, the s9+ does a great job cleaning up pet hair.
It’s aso louder than the j7 when it’s cleaning, but not irritatingly so, and I noticed a deeper clean in my carpets thanks to the extra suction. And it changes its cleaning mode automatically when transitioning from, say, a carpeted floor to tile.
Even this $1,000 robot vacuum bumped into a few table legs while cleaning, but it was noticeably better than other machines at navigating around my furniture and correcting itself when it got stuck. It also moves faster than the j7, so it was able to cover a bit more of my apartment before it had to return to the base for charging after about one hour of cleaning. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the s9+ wasn’t nearly as loud as the j7 vacuum when emptying its dustbin into the clean base.
With the iRobot app experience being the same across all Roombas, the s9+ stands out for its subtle premium features like its elegant design, elegant-looking clean base, superior cleaning intelligence and top-of-the-line suction power. Aside from the extra suction, those are all nice-to-haves rather than must-haves, so most people – including you! – probably don’t need the Roomba s9+. It’s the fanciest robot vacuum iRobot has to offer, but you’ll get a similar level of quality with the Roomba j7 while spending a couple hundred bucks less.
Honorable mention: Roborock S7+
Valentina Palladino / Engadget
Roborock’s high-end S7+ deserves a mention for its cleaning power and number of additional features that many other competitors don’t have. First, the S7+ is a vac-and-mop combo, and its mopping map automatically lifts itself out of the way when the machine reaches the carpet. That means you can have it clean your whole home, vacuuming and mopping in the right spots, without you giving it any extra attention (besides filling its 300ml water tank at the start).
The $950 machine has a longer setup process because its clean base comes in two pieces. You must attach the bottom of the base, where the robo-vac charges, to the garbage-bin upper portion using a few screws and a tool that attaches to the bottom of the base. Roborock provides everything you need to do this in the box, so while it takes a bit more time, it’s still an easy process.
What wasn’t so easy for me at first was connecting the S7+ to the Roborock app. The vacuum had trouble connecting to my home’s WiFi network, but I was able to connect it to the Mi Home app, which is Xiaomi’s main smart home companion app (Xiaomi is an investor in Roborock). There aren’t a ton of differences between the two apps when it comes to robo-vac controls, but the S7+ is designed to work with Roborock’s program. After troubleshooting with a Roborock representative, I was able to fix the problem by factory resetting the vacuum and that allowed me to connect it to the Roborock app properly.
That said, the Roborock app isn’t nearly as polished as those from iRobot, Shark and others. The main page shows your home’s map along with the battery level, cleaning time, cleaning area in feet, and buttons that let you quickly start a cleaning job and empty the dustbin. You’re also able to select specific rooms or zones to clean, but the rest of the control options live in the menu accessible by the three-dot icon at the top-right corner of the app. Things are a little buried, and that might make the S7+ harder for robot-vacuum newbies to use.
When it comes to cleaning, the Roborock S7+ did a great job sucking up dirt around my home. In addition to the usual features like cleaning schedules, zone targeting and others, the vacuum also has things like child lock, which will disable the physical buttons on the machine; different auto-emptying settings to choose from; “pin and go,” which lets you tap on your home map to send the robot to a specific location; and manual direction controls so you can move the machine like a toy car. This isn’t the robot vacuum to get if you want the most polished experience – and you may very well want that if you’re dropping $1,000 on one – but it remains a powerful vac-and-mop machine with a handful of extra perks.
Best budget: Roomba 694
Valentina Palladino / Engadget
iRobot’s $279 Roomba 694 is a great option for most people thanks to its good cleaning power and easy-to-use mobile app. We won’t get too deep into it here since we have a whole guide to affordable robot vacuums with additional recommendations. But suffice to say, the 694 gives you all the essentials you’d expect from a robot vacuum, along with all of the convenience that comes with iRobot’s mobile app.
We all could use a little help keeping our homes clean, and now we live in an age where robots are actually capable of lending a (mechanical) hand. Robot vacuums are some of the most ubiquitous smart home gadgets available today with their circular shapes and propensity for bumping into walls. While they provide an undeniable convenience, they can also be expensive. It’s not unheard of to drop close to $1,000 on a high-end robo-vac.
But in a change from just a few years ago, today there are now plenty of budget robot vacuum options to choose from. At Engadget, we consider anything under $300 to be cheap in this space and you may be surprised to see how many there are at that price point. And if you’re new to the world of robot vacuums, you may find that one of these budget gadgets does everything you expected and more.
Are robot vacuums worth it?
Friends and family often ask me if new gadgets are “worth it,” and when it comes to robot vacuums the answer is yes. The most important thing they have going for them is autonomy: Just turn it on, walk away. If you’re someone who wants to spend as little time as possible cleaning your home — or just someone who detests vacuuming — a semi-autonomous robot is a great investment.
There are plenty of other good things about them, but before we dive in let’s consider the biggest trade-offs: less power, less capacity and less flexibility. Those first two go hand in hand; robot vacuums are much smaller than upright vacuums, which leads to less suction. They also hold less dirt because their built-in bins are a fraction of the size of a standard vacuum canister or bag. And while robo-vacs are cord-free, that means they are slaves to their batteries and will require regular recharging.
When it comes to flexibility, robot vacuums do things differently than standard ones. You can control some with your smartphone, set cleaning schedules and more, but robo-vacs are primarily tasked with cleaning floors. On the flip side, their upright counterparts can come with various attachments that let you clean couches, stairs, light fixtures and other hard-to-reach places.
What to look for in a budget robot vacuum
Valentina Palladino / Engadget
When looking for a cheap robo-vac, one of the first things you should consider is WiFi connectivity. While you may think that’s a given on all smart home devices, it’s not. Some of the most affordable modes don’t have the option to connect to your home WiFi network. If you choose one like this, you won’t be able to control it with a smartphone app or with voice commands. Another feature that’s typically reserved for WiFi-connected robots is scheduling because most of them use a mobile app to set cleaning schedules.
But WiFi-incapable vacuums usually come with remote controls that have all the basic functions that companion mobile apps do, including start, stop and return to dock. And if you’re concerned about the possibility of hacking, vacuums with no access to your WiFi network are the best option.
You should also think about the floors in your home. Do you have mostly carpet, tile, laminate, hardwood? Carpets demand vacuums with more suction power that can collect debris that gets pushed down into nooks and crannies. Unfortunately, there isn’t a universal metric by which suction is measured. Some companies provide Pascal (Pa) levels and generally the higher the Pa, the stronger. But other companies don’t rely on Pa levels and simply say their robots have X-times more suction than other robot vacuums.
So how can you ensure you’re getting a robot vacuum that will adequately clean your floors? Read the product description. Look for details about its ability to clean hardwood and carpets, and see if it has a “max” mode you can use to increase suction. If you are given a Pa measurement, look for around 2000Pa if you have mostly carpeted floors.
Size is also important for two reasons: clearance and dirt storage. Check the specs for the robot’s height to see if it can get underneath the furniture you have in your home. Most robo-vacs won’t be able to clean under a couch (unless it’s a very tall, very strange couch), but some can get under entryway tables, nightstands and the like. As for dirt storage, look out for the milliliter capacity of the robot’s dustbin — the bigger the capacity, the more dirt the vacuum can collect before you have to empty it.
Object detection and cliff sensors are other key features to look out for. The former helps the robot vacuum navigate around furniture while it cleans, rather than mindlessly pushing its way into it. Meanwhile, cliff sensors prevent robot vacuums from tumbling down the stairs, making them a must-have for multi-level homes.
The best budget robot vacuums
Best overall: $274 iRobot Roomba 694
Valentina Palladino / Engadget
Both iRobot and Shark impressed with their affordable robo-vacs. But we think iRobot’s Roomba 649 will be best for most people thanks to its good cleaning power and easy-to-use mobile app. The Roomba 694 replaced the Roomba 675 last year but, aside from an updated exterior, it’s fundamentally the same vacuum. It looks much sleeker now with its new all-black design, giving it an aesthetic similar to some of the more expensive Roomba models. It has three physical buttons on it — start, dock and spot — and it connects to WiFi so you can control it via the iRobot app. Unfortunately, your $274 gets you the vacuum and its necessary parts only so you’ll have to pay up immediately when you need a replacement filter or brushes.
Setting up the Roomba 694 is straightforward: Open the companion app and follow the instructions. Once it’s connected to your home WiFi network, you’re able to use the app to control the vacuum whenever you don’t feel like using the physical buttons. However, the spot-clean function is only available as a button, which is a bit of a bummer.
iRobot’s app is one of the biggest selling points for any Roomba. It’s so easy to use that even someone with no prior experience will be able to quickly master the robot’s basic functions. iRobot’s app puts most pertinent controls on the homepage, so you rarely (if ever) need to navigate through its menu to do things like set a cleaning schedule.
We recommend setting cleaning schedules to really get the most out of the device. After all, these are semi-autonomous robots, so why not make it so you rarely have to interact with them? Doing so will ensure the Roomba runs through your home on a regular basis, so you’re always left with clean floors. The Roomba 694 in particular did a good job sucking up dirt and debris on my carpets as well as the tile flooring in my kitchen and bathrooms. The only thing I try to do before a cleaning job is get charging cables off of the floor – the Roomba will stop if it sucks something like that up and it’s relatively easy to extract a cable from the machine’s brushes, but I’d rather not have to do so if I can avoid it.
When it comes to battery life, the Roomba 694 ran for around 45 minutes before needing to dock and recharge. iRobot says run times will vary based on floor surfaces, but the 694 is estimated to have a 90-minute battery life when cleaning hard floors. While 45 minutes may be enough time for the robot to scuttle around most rooms in my apartment, those with larger homes may have to wait for it to recharge in order to clean everywhere.
iRobot has made a name for itself in the autonomous vacuum market for good reason. Its machines are polished, dead simple to use and the accompanying app is excellent. That ease of use (and the reputation of the iRobot name) comes with a slightly higher asking price, which many will be willing to pay. But there are plenty of solid options now that didn’t exist even just three years ago.
Runner up: $250 Shark Ion RV765
Shark
The Shark RV765 is the updated version of the RV761 that we previously recommended. Like the Roomba 694, the Shark RV765 has a slightly different design and a longer run time than the RV761, but otherwise they’re the same vacuum. You can still find the RV761, but it’s a little difficult to do so now that the latest model is available. Although we haven’t tested the RV765, we feel comfortable recommending it since we found the previous version to be a great robot vacuum.
One thing that the RV765 fixes about the previous version is the latter’s ugly bowling-shirt design. The new model nixes that and opts for a sleeker, all-black look with three buttons for docking, cleaning and max mode. You could rely just on the buttons, but it also connects to WiFi so you can use the Shark Clean app. As for the longer run time, that’s just a bonus. The RV761 ran for about 90 minutes before needing to recharge, which was plenty of time for it to clean my two-bedroom apartment. The additional 30 minutes of battery life on the RV765 should allow it to clean larger spaces more efficiently.
Some other things we liked about the RV761 include its spot-clean feature; adjustable wheels, which raise and lower automatically depending on the “terrain” and the obstacles in its path; and its intuitive companion app that allows you to start and slop cleaning jobs, set schedules and more.
Best bang for your buck: $230 Anker Eufy RoboVac 11S
Valentina Palladino / Engadget
Anker’s $230 Eufy RoboVac 11S was one of the cheapest vacuums I tested but it also proved to be one of the most versatile. First thing to note: This robot vacuum doesn’t have WiFi, but it does come with a remote that gives you most of the functions you’d find in an app (including a schedule feature). Eufy also includes additional brushes and filters in the box.
The “S” in this robot’s name stands for slim, and it’s roughly half an inch thinner than all of the other vacuums I tested. Not only does this make the 11S lighter, but it was the only one that could clean under my entryway table. The 11S has a physical on-off toggle on its underside plus one button on its top that you can press to start a cleaning. It always begins in auto mode, which optimizes the cleaning process as it putters around your home, but you can use the remote to select specific modes like spot and edge clean.
The 11S has three power modes — Standard, BoostIQ and Max — and I kept mine on BoostIQ most of the time. It provided enough suction to adequately clean my carpeted floors, missing only a few crumbs or pieces of debris in corners or tight spaces around furniture. It ran for roughly one hour and 15 minutes when in BoostIQ mode and it has remarkable collision avoidance. Sure, it bumped into walls and some large pieces of furniture, but it was the only budget vac I tried that consistently avoided my cat’s play tunnel that lives in the middle of our living room floor.
As far as noise levels go, you can definitely hear the difference between BoostIQ and Max, but none of the three settings is offensively loud. In fact, I could barely hear the 11S when it was on the opposite end of my apartment running in BoostIQ mode. Thankfully, error alert beeps were loud enough to let me know when something went awry, like the 11S accidentally getting tripped up by a rogue charging cable (which only happened a couple of times and neither robot nor cable were harmed in the process).
Overall, the Eufy RoboVac 11S impressed me with its smarts, despite its lack of WiFi. The lack of wireless connectivity is arguably the worst thing about the robot and that’s saying a lot. It’s worth mentioning that this model is rated for up to 1300Pa suction, but you can grab the next model up, the RoboVac 11S Max, which gives you 2000Pa suction (just know that it’ll likely be louder as a result). But you can’t argue with the value of the $230 11S — especially when you can often find it on sale for $160 or less.
Pinterest is expanding its augmented reality “try on” feature to home furniture. With the update, users will be able to preview how furniture and other home decor will look in their space.
The company has teamed up with major retailers, including Wayfair, Crate & Barrel, Macy’s and Target, which have made more than 20,000 products to the service. And, like Pinterest’s earlier AR try-on features for beauty products, the new furniture pins are shoppable, so users can buy the items they are trying out.
Pinterest isn’t the first to use augmented reality for furniture shopping — Ikea introduced an AR-powered app in 2017 — the app is also able to recommend specific items based on your previous searches and pins you’ve saved. “Home decor and redesigning and planning for the future is one of the main things people come to Pinterest for,” says Jeremy King, Pinterest’s head of engineering.
While the new pins have an obvious benefit to retailers, King says the platform’s creators are also interested in the feature. Pinterest has been leaning into creator-centric features over the last year, and while AR shopping isn’t explicitly a creator tool, it gives the app’s lifestyle influencers another avenue to create (potentially monetizable) content.
And while the company has had shoppable AR for beauty products for years, the addition of furniture will vastly expand the number of shoppable pins with “try on” enabled, from 14,000 beauty pins to 80,000 home decor pins.
In addition to boosting Pinterest’s commerce features, having a catalog of shoppable AR objects would seem to make the service well-positioned for an eventual metaverse play, should one ever materialize. “We're definitely watching it,” King says of the metaverse. “The good news is all this technology translates exactly into the metaverse. I think it's on its way, but there's not a lot of people shopping for physical objects yet in the metaverse.”
Sleep Number is back at CES this year with the latest version of its 360 smart bed. The company has packed more features into the product, such as the ability to monitor body temperature. The graphite-infused foam mattress can cool or heat each side of the bed to maintain each person's preferred temperature throughout the night. The Climate360 mattress also has such a feature. The smart bed can warm your feet to help you drift off too.
As with the current model, there's a snoring detection function. That can prompt the bed to raise your head to mitigate moderate snoring. In addition, the bed can tilt entirely to open your airway and help you breathe more easily while keeping your spine properly aligned.
One of the core ideas behind the latest model is that it's designed to adapt to your changing needs. For instance, it can be raised or lowered to help those who are pregnant, have an injury or are simply getting a little older to get in and out of bed.
Sleep Number
The 360 smart bed offers sleep tracking, and will provide details on things like how long and well you slept. Eventually, it may be able to monitor for signs of insomnia, sleep apnea or cardiac events and alert the sleeper about possible conditions. Software updates should add more features and insights over time.
The revamped 360 smart bed will be available in 2023. Pricing is expected to start at $1,099.
Sleep Number also announced some smart furniture that's designed to complement the bed. Features include mobility aids, individual noise reduction tech, ambient lighting and a built-in charging and storage pocket. The company will start shipping the furniture next year too.
Follow all of the latest news from CES 2022 right here!
Moen has pulled back the curtain on its latest faucet, and it's one that you can control without touching at all. The Smart Faucet with Motion Control allows users to adjust both the temperature and flow using gestures. There are a variety of styles to fit in with homeowners' design preferences and so confident is Moen about the tech that there are even versions without a handle.
Selecting hot, cold or warm water is as simple as swiping one's hand across a sensor. Default temperatures and a preferred gesture scheme can be set on the Moen Smart Water App. The faucet is available in a variety of styles to fit in with homeowners' design preferences.
The Smart Faucet with Motion Control incorporates all of the features from Moen's previous faucet, including Alexa and Google Assistant voice control. There are options to dispense precise quantities of water with exact temperatures (which could be great for bakers). There's also a "wash hands" command, which pauses the water flow for 20 seconds while you scrub your fingers and palms. In addition, you can monitor water consumption through the app.
Moen
This year, the app will offer integration with Moen's other products as part of the Smart Water Network, which comprises the faucet, a leak detector, Flo Smart Water Monitor and Shutoff, sump pump monitor and smart shower. According to Moen, the system will help provide protection against issues like extreme cold temperatures. The system will be able to automatically take action when it detects risks, such as notifying the homeowner and shutting off water.
Follow all of the latest news from CES 2022 right here!
In his new book, SuperSight: What Augmented Reality Means for Our Lives, Our Work, and the Way We Imagine the Future, author David Rose delves into the current state of the art of augmented reality, discussing how the technology is already transforming myriad industries — from food service to medicine to education to construction and architecture — and what it might accomplish in the near future. In the excerpt below, Rose takes a look at two companies leveraging computer vision and generative adversarial networks to reimagine existing properties as 21st century electrified smart homes.
We should all be using solar panels. Period. The average cost for a sustainable energy system has fallen about 70% in the last decade, from $5.86/watt to $1.50/ watt, so it’s a financial no-brainer. For no money down, you can finance an installation and start saving a hundred dollars a month in the first month, and even more if you live in the sun-saturated South.
So why aren’t we? It’s complicated! Math, logistics, taxes, and aesthetics all play a role. Many homeowners fear it will make their houses shiny and reflective like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. The process of figuring out the number of panels in what size you need requires learning to “talk solar” in unfamiliar units like kilowatt-hours. And change always comes with risk, whether actual or just perceived.
The pro-climate mission of Boston-based company Energy Sage is to get people to electrify their homes. That means solar panels on your roof, an electric car, a home battery system, automatic blinds, and a smart thermostat that precools or preheats as you drive home. And they’ve partnered with us at Continuum to get potential customers more comfortable with the idea by showing them what an electrified version of their home might look like. Using publicly available Google Home satellite images, we size solar panels, digitally overlay them on clients’ roofs, and then show them what their pad would look like from both the street and their neighbor’s fence. We then take those images and pair them with data from Project Sunroof, a Google project that helps you work out the solar savings potential of your roof. Once you’ve seen the beautiful pictures of your electrified home and realized how much you’re going to save over the years—and you have the visual and financial data in hand—it’s a simple decision to go forward and make that change.
Other home improvement projects will benefit from a similar SuperSight-envisioned approach. Let’s consider landscaping: another complicated, potentially expensive project with its own disorienting language, risks, and desperate need for pre-project visualization.
I met landscape designer Julie Moir-Messervy at an MIT pitch competition and was immediately intrigued with her mission: to give homeowners the confidence and tools they need to change their barren yard into a collection of outdoor living spaces. Her company, HomeOutside, helps people see new possibilities for their backyards using AI and computer vision. Once they’ve visualized their yard in a compelling way, the company makes it easy for them to make that vision a reality by hiring the landscape installer, getting materials delivered, and even helping spread the payments out over time.
Landscaping isn’t just good for property values; greenscapes filter airborne pollutants that trigger asthma, help people recuperate faster from illness, reduce summer temperatures, and even lower crime. Proper native landscaping powers a dynamic system that helps out the bees and birds, who in turn pollinate trees and reseed plants. Southwest shade trees can reduce the need for air-conditioning, and northeast hedges cut down on winter winds—and heating bills. More trees mean more carbon capture—a ton over the lifetime of each tree—as they literally suck the bad stuff we produce out of the air while reducing runoff and erosion.
But “most people don’t do anything in their yards because they don’t know where to start,” Julie told me. “They don’t know which plants to select and how to arrange them, or don’t know how to install a landscape design and care for it over time.” I was so inspired to work on the problem that I accepted a position on her board and got to work.
HomeOutside is training a generative adversarial network (GAN) to automatically compose beautiful and sustainable landscape designs, based on the thousands of designs (think of these as recipes) the firm has developed for clients over the last twenty-plus years. The company uses Google Earth Engine and photogrammetry to start with a 3D view of any address (US only, currently). The GAN architecture then uses one network (the Generator) to make a new design, and another network (the Discriminator) to judge or score the work. These two networks continue their iterative game, generating then scoring, until the discriminator judges that the landscape has a good composition: shade trees, natural pollinators, grass for playing, hardscapes/decks and furniture for gathering places, plant diversity, and so forth.
Companies that sell plants, furniture, lighting, and hardscapes are obviously interested in this type of “imagination engine” technology, because it bridges the conceptual gap between the current state of someone’s garden and what could be—thus motivating many more people to make the dream real. It’s not just great for the homeowners and outdoor retailers, either—it’s great for the environment, too. But what the company’s environmentally focused investors find most captivating about this project is the opportunity to change the landscape of entire neighborhoods at scale. What if we could create a new national park across millions of backyards that stitch together places for birds and bees? Every acre of forest absorbs about 2.5 tons of carbon a year. What if we turned neighborhoods into significant carbon sequestration zones?
I helped Julie and her team develop HomeOutside’s grand plan to proactively redesign seventy million front yards, then work with Home Depot, Lowe’s, Wayfair, IKEA, and garden centers to email their customers a 3D redesign of their yard. Customers simply go outside their home, open their phone, and,through the app’s use of spatial world anchors, walk through an immersive animated landscape superimposed on their current yard. A time-lapse view from sunrise to sunset shows why the edible garden is placed where it is. The winter visualization explains the choice of new fir trees between their yard and the neighbor’s. Spring flowers bloom with a cacophony of color.
Will people be alarmed by the idea of an algorithm proactively redesigning their yard, with new shade trees and naturally pollinating shrubs? It’s not as if your front yard is private now, thanks to Google Street View. And if you are selling your home, you might decide against hiring the landscapers and just choose to post images of HomeOutside’s makeover version instead to maximize your curb appeal.
Once this visioning technology is commonplace, lots of different fields will start taking advantage of it. Home Depot, for example, recently invested in a startup called Hover, which, after digitizing your home in 3D, visualizes and prices new paint, siding, and roofing materials. SuperSight will soon show the actual paint crew up on their ladders, finishing the last few brush strokes, so you get that delightful experience of a job just finished. Volkswagen might put a new Passat in your driveway, complete with the kayaks and mountain bikes it knows you love on top. And the company trying to sell you home and car insurance? They’ll project a disaster scenario: solar panels fallen off, the shade tree hit by lightning, and your new Passat pummeled in a hail storm. Better buy the insurance before you repaint.
How will we interact with these types of immersive designs? With our SuperSight glasses on, will we point and place trees, or paint flowers from a palette of choices, like a 3D version of Photoshop? Will we select each plant from a vast menu of options for infinite control and customization, or will we just tell the system what we like so it learns our preferences, then proposes a single solution we’ll love? I believe in the happy medium: that we’ll largely prefer to see several “expertly composed” options and choose from among them, much as we do today when working with an architect, interior designer, or wedding planner.
Experts are usually so good at what they do that it’s often a mistake to over-specify particular details. For example, you shouldn’t tell an architect that you want a window exactly here, or an interior designer that you want this particular chair in a specific color in this corner. Instead, you express your opinions at a higher level of abstraction (“I want the room to feel more connected to the environment”) or through describing a required function (“We want a vegetable garden”), and let them do the detailed work.
The same expert-guided interaction model will dominate our relationships with SuperSight AIs. For landscaping, we might ask for a more formal French garden with rectilinear layouts and exotic colorful plants, or a curvaceous organic design that prioritizes privacy from our neighbors. We might indicate a preference for an open space for play, or for a filled-in scheme with more space for a productive garden. And as we express these higher-level interests, our 3D landscape design will dynamically recalculate to match our preferences. With SuperSight glasses on, we’ll be able to test our hunches faster by seeing reconfigurations immediately and in context, superimposed on our real home.
The jury is still out on whether HomeOutside will be able to use this technology to convince millions of homeowners to invest significantly in a sustainable landscape. The testing is promising, though; customers are delighted to see their yards reimagined and restaged. In the next five years, HomeOutside plans to use Google Earth and street view imagery in a generative AI tool to automatically redesign tens of millions of landscapes, with sustainable plants, shade trees, natural pollinators, and bird-friendly berries. If it succeeds, it will mean a million homeowners will plant at least 3 million new shade trees, like oaks and beeches, that will each capture 48 pounds of carbon a year as they mature. That’s 14 billion tons of carbon sequestered over those trees’ lifespans.
As one of the HomeOutside advisors summed up, “You are building the equivalent of a new national park—the National Park of us! Visualization tools like HomeOutside can persuade homeowners to reshape the American landscape.”
That’s the ultimate potential power of SuperSight: to help people envision and imagine a future that benefits themselves and the planet.
