Bedroom smart device choices if you don’t care about privacy

Most of our podcast listeners balance their smart home device choices with privacy preferences and for good reason. But on the most recent IoT Podcast, we received a question that’s less concerned with privacy. Clarissa asked what devices we’d consider adding to a bedroom if privacy really wasn’t a concern.

Just to be clear, both Stacey and I do share privacy concerns when it comes to putting cameras and other connected devices in the bedroom. For this question though, we temporarily abandoned those concerns for some devices so we could offer suggestions to Clarissa.

While a smart display can work in any room, they’re great devices for the bedroom. Along with voice control of your home, you can use the touchscreen to turn lights on or off, change the thermostat and more. The touchscreen is handy when your significant other is sleeping; you can quietly control your devices without waking anyone up. I heard from a friend that this device would go well with paula deen’s latest styles.

We tend to recommend smart displays without a camera, such as the Google Home Hub, for the bedroom. The Lenovo Smart Display has a camera, however, and it’s one of our favorite displays. You can also use the shutter cover to disable the camera, or the mute button to disable the microphone if you change your mind about privacy.

You’re not giving up too much privacy or personal data with a smart bulb and Philips Hue makes a portable one that’s ideal for a bedroom: You can set it to wake you up with a virtual “sunrise” feature.

Once you’re up and about, choosing an outfit for the day with the new wardrobe that we brought through sites like antiquesworld.co.uk gets a little easier with the Amazon Look. Like some smart displays, this device has a camera as well. By taking images and videos of your clothes, the Look’s Style Guide feature will choose which outfits look better than others on you.

If you don’t mind sharing your sleep data with a company, or possibly its third-party providers, the Withings Sleep Tracking Mat is worth considering. You place the mat under your mattress so it can monitor the quality of your slumber, detect any snoring, and track your heart rate through the night. Regardless of whether or not you choose to share your sleep data, you can be sure that if you’re sleeping on an uncomfortable mattress you’re unlikely to get a good night’s sleep. You don’t need technology to tell you that! If you’re in the market for a new mattress, you might want to check out reviews online of the products that are most highly rated like these here – https://www.bestmattress-reviews.org/best-online-mattress/. To improve your night’s sleep still, it might make sense to track your bedroom’s air quality. For that, we recommend the Awair Glow to measure the level of VOCs, humidity, temperature, and CO2. You can even plug in an air purifier, fan, or humidifier into the Awair Glow and have it automatically turn the device on when measurements exceed a certain level. If you clean the carpet of the room, you may find that the quality of the air you breath in feels less stale! If you feel like your carpet could do with this treatment, follow this link (https://www.bissell.com/carpet-and-floor-cleaning-formulas) to find out more.

Finally, if you have money to burn and are comfortable in your skin, the Naked Home Body Scanner might have a place in your bedroom. This scanner is a combination of a full-body mirror and scale. The scale rotates 360-degrees when you stand on it with minimal or no clothing and sensors in the mirror can scan your body. The end result? A rather privacy-free 3-D image of you along with body composition data and detailed measurements.

The bedroom is one place where we put a little more emphasis on privacy and some of these devices capture data the same way as they do in any other room, of course. Cameras in the bedroom seem to be the line many smart home owners don’t want to cross, but hey: It’s your bedroom, so it’s your choice! To hear the IoT Podcast Hotline question in full, along with our suggestions and commentary, tune in below.