Smart stuff that should be on your 2022 holiday gift list

Last year, I recommended the then-new Nanoleaf Lines, and I’m building on that recommendation in 2022. While I love the Lines as they are, Nanoleaf now has a way to make patterns over the standard 60- and 120-degree Lines connectors. For $99.99, you can get started using the Nanoleaf Lines Squared product, which uses 90-degree connectors. My wife prefers the angular look of the original Lines, but I’m a straight and right angle kind of guy. As with the original Lines, you can sync your lights to music with the included Rhythm module. I really like these as a gift because they’re not ridiculously expensive and can be that first step into the wide world of connected lights for your friends or family. I should mention that my wife doesn’t like most of our smart home products. However, she’s a fan of the Lines line (ha!), so that’s pretty telling. — Kevin C. Tofel (Image courtesy of Nanoleaf)

If you have a pup who is an escape artist, or simply want to make sure you can keep an eye on your dog even when you’re not around, then the Fi Series 3 dog collar is a great gift. For $192 (which includes a one-year subscription for cellular service) and a $20 activation fee, you get a combined activity and location tracker for your pet. I love the security of being able to turn on GPS tracking if my pup gets loose, and especially like the LED that’s built into the collar, which I can turn on for evening walks or even remotely as a means to help track my dog if she gets free. The collar is a bit bulky for smaller dogs, but it’s worked just fine for my fluffy 20-pound mix. It has a six-day battery life without using the cellular radio and lasts up to two days if you turn on the most active level of tracking. Because it uses GPS, it’s not going to work super well in dense, urban areas, but in my tests in the suburbs and rural areas it worked really well. And the peace of mind associated with being able to find your dog when it gets lost is, for many, pretty much priceless.  — Stacey Higginbotham (Image courtesy of S. Higginbotham.)

Need a gift recommendation for someone that spends most of their time cooking, either indoors or outdoors? After Stacey turned me on to the $99.95 Meater Plus smart thermometer, I picked one up for myself. The Meater Plus has a nice bamboo charging station that also acts as a Bluetooth repeater. But the really awesome gift for someone you love is the Meater Block (pictured), for $369.95, which has four thermometers and a block with controls and a repeater. The wireless thermometer itself has a Bluetooth radio inside and two temperature probes, which lets you see both the ambient temperature and the internal temperature of meat, fish, or poultry from a range of 165 feet. The Meater Plus is really meant for outdoor grilling, but I’ve used it in our standard oven as well as my June Oven. The companion app is excellent and has dozens of cooking options so you can fine-tune your meal for rare steak, medium pork, and more. It also estimates when the food will be ready and can notify you when there’s just five minutes left. Well done, I say! The product, that is. Not my food. — Kevin C. Tofel (Image courtesy of Meater.)

After a decade living in a smart home, I’ve collected quite a few buttons, but these from Shortcut Labs are probably the most versatile. The Flic 2 buttons start at $169.99 for a starter kit, which has three Bluetooth buttons and a hub to ensure that pressing a button anywhere in the home elicits a response. The Flic buttons work with a variety of services, including IFTTT, Hue, Alexa, HomeKit, Nanoleaf, Sonos, Slack, and many more for the home and web. I like using them to consolidate all of my different lighting services, and can use the button press instead of my voice to avoid waking up my husband at night after he falls asleep. I also use them to turn off any music I’m listening to when my phone rings. There are a ton of options, so your gift recipient is bound to find something that works for them. Plus, you can add more Bluetooth buttons as stocking stuffers, for $29.99 each. — Stacey Higginbotham (Image courtesy of S. Higginbotham.)

In 2021’s gift guide, I recommended a low-cost Wi-Fi 6 router system to help boost the signal of your loved ones. This year, I think you can do much better, and at a reasonable cost. You could stay in the budget category with three Google Nest Wi-Fi Pro routers, for $399. But I have found the resulting network performance to be adequate at best, so why do that? Instead, I say you can’t go wrong with an Eero Pro 6E 3-pack, which is on sale for $419. Even if you think a Wi-Fi 6E system isn’t needed because there are so few devices that can support it, this is a future-forward gift for when 6E starts to appear in more hardware. Besides, if you forgo Wi-Fi 6E to save money, you won’t save much as the also excellent Eero Pro 6 3-pack is on sale for $389. I say spend the extra $30 and future-proof that networking gift. — Kevin C. Tofel (Image courtesy of Eero.)

With the Matter smart home interoperability protocol live and soon to appear in devices, it’s a good time to gift some generic smart home gear knowing it will work with much of the mainstream gear people already have in their homes. I think a smart lock is a pretty handy device, especially one with a keypad so your friends and family can forgo keys. One of the most flexible locks on the market is the new Yale Assure Gen 2, which comes in versions that have touchscreens or flat, black buttons as well as those that are either keyed or keyless. Because I often unlock my door after taking my dog for a walk in the cold while wearing gloves, I own the keyless version with buttons. But I’ve tested the touchscreen version, and it’s very responsive as well. The lock also has a lot of flexibility around radios with its Bluetooth-only option, Wi-Fi and soon, a Matter-compatible module. The lock starts at $159.99 for a button-based keyless version that supports Bluetooth and runs as high as $259.99 for a keyed, touchscreen version with Wi-Fi. You’ll give your loved ones the gift of never needing house keys ever again. — Stacey Higginbotham (Image courtesy of Assa Abloy.)

Everyone loves buttons! Well, I actually didn’t until Stacey wore me down by talking about the usability and simplicity of them. So the $49.95 Philips Hue Tap Dial Switch is my pick for a useful, inexpensive, and powerful button set. Yes, this is only for folks that have a Philips Hue bridge and lights, so you’ll want to make sure your recipient is part of that club. If they are, you’re gifting them a four-button switch that includes a rotary dial to dim lights. Each button has multiple press options so you can control up to 12 scenes across several bulbs. Ideally, I’d like to see the Philips Hue Bridge update to Matter so as to allow these buttons to work with non-Philips devices. But even if that doesn’t happen, this will still be one of my favorite products. I have one on my office desk, but you can mount the Tap Dial Switch anywhere with the included wallplate. — Kevin C. Tofel (Image courtesy of Kevin C. Tofel.)

Do you have a developer friend or DIYer who is keen to connect weird devices in the middle of nowhere? Or a friend who spends time in a remote mountain cabin but wants to send a few emails each day? This is a highly specific use case, but the Swarm Eval Kit makes for a pricey yet useful gift for anyone who wants to send a few bits of satellite data a few times a day. The kit costs $499 ($449 through the end of this month) and provides a Swarm module for satellite connectivity, a solar panel, and a tripod to set the whole kit up wherever they might choose to put it. The kit requires a $5/month Swarm satellite subscription, which honestly is pocket change these days. So if you want to monitor the temperature of a remote locale, an open-close sensor in a field, or the location of a few cows, this is an option. — Stacey Higginbotham (Image courtesy of S. Higginbotham.)

After years of being asked how to remotely reboot a router, I’ve given in and taken the $54.95 Rebooter for a spin. It both monitors your home internet connection and reboots your router after an outage, automatically — which is rather ingenious since you can’t remotely access your router if the internet is down. The Rebooter is a smart extension cord that is always checking to see if your home internet service is available. Simply plug your router into the Rebooter and if it detects a connection outage, it will cut the power to your home router for a few minutes. It will then return the power — effectively rebooting your router — once the ISP connection comes back. You can also schedule reboots or use voice commands with Amazon or Google to initiate one. This is a perfect gift for anyone (like me) tired of running down to the basement for router resets. — Kevin C. Tofel (Image courtesy of Kevin C. Tofel.)

Most years we throw a smart plug on the list because they make for such useful items to have in the home. Maybe you plug your holiday lights into the smart plug so you can use voice control to turn them on or off. Maybe you use it to plug in a curling iron so you can make sure that’s turned off after you leave the house. People love these things! And with the Matter smart home interoperability standard, it’s now easier to buy smart plugs that will work with a variety of other devices — a Nest thermostat can now more easily signal the smart plug to turn on a fan, for example, and a motion sensor could trigger the plug to turn on a light. Many plugs are likely to support Matter next year, but so far the Eve Energy smart plug for $39.95 is the only one that will work with Matter as of Dec. 12, which means when your recipient plugs it in on Christmas, they can have Matter support right away. Yes, it’s pricier than the $10 TP-Link outlets, but this one has the Thread support that Matter needs, and it will act as a Thread border router to make their Matter smart home more reliable over time. It also tracks home energy usage, which is always nice to see. — Stacey Higginbotham (Image courtesy of Kevin C. Tofel)