Some of My Favorite Smart Home Products Are Getting More Compact
The only thing I didn’t like about the Mammotion Luba robotic lawn mower I tested last summer was its size. It’s a huge, four-wheel-drive robot, and I live in a city where we don’t have huge lawns. Meet the Luba Mini, a half-sized version of the Luba designed for smaller lawns (and tighter budgets). In fact, if you’ve been paying attention this spring, miniature versions of some of my favorite tech have been everywhere. These mini-me versions, according to the companies themselves, are driven by two market needs. While smart home technology is incredible in terms of functionality and independence, it often comes at a price. But it’s not just price that’s causing our tech to shrink; many companies have realized that many people want automation even when they don’t have an acre of lawn to mow or a wall of windows to wash. Here’s how some of my favorite tech devices have shrunk to become more accessible and affordable.
Mini lawn mowers
Mammotion has released mini models of its Luba (AWD) and Yuka (2WD) robotic lawn mowers, and I’ve been testing them out for the past month. In terms of size, they’re ideal for most suburban and urban lawns under ¼ acre, and have nearly the same functionality as the larger models. That’s the point, according to senior product manager David Cheng, who told me, “We weren’t just downsizing our existing models — we were filling a real gap in the market for homeowners looking for smart, cordless perimeter lawn care that’s suitable for smaller outdoor spaces.”
Mammotion lawn mowers require an RTK tower, which is a highly accurate GPS method that allows triangulation between the mower, the tower, and the satellites. Using your phone as a remote control, you guide the robot around the perimeter of your lawn to set zones and create paths between zones for the robot to navigate on its own. The mini has the new advantage of being able to map spaces on its own, without you having to walk around. If your yard has clear boundaries, I’ve found that this works just as well as mapping the area on its own.
The larger Yuka model has a grass clippings hopper that can be trained to dump clippings anywhere, something the mini doesn’t have. However, I didn’t find the hopper very useful on the larger version, so that’s no loss.
I found that the mini had trouble, no matter which version of the mapping you used, reaching some edges of the yard. If overhanging bushes cast a long shadow, the AI interpreted that as a no-go zone and avoided it entirely. However, that was the only performance penalty I found between the models. The mini has another advantage: it’s much less noticeable when parked on a dock, given its size. While you can install a 4G chip in your robot and set up notifications in case someone grabs it and walks away, you just know where someone went with it.
The models use the same app, and the mini models mow just as well as the original models. At a significantly lower price, this gives you a reason to invest in a robotic lawn mower if you’re put off by their large size or high cost.
Smaller Smart Grills
Last summer, I tested every smart grill on the market, and my favorite was the Brisk It Origin. I used it heavily this fall, winter, and spring because it turns smoking (a relentless task that requires a lot of overnight grill supervision) into a seamless, hands-off process. You tell the grill what you want to cook, and the AI kicks in to tell the grill how to do it, and it notifies you when it’s time to flip the food or add basting; when it’s done, the grill turns itself off.
Of course, you can edit the smoking program, create one on the fly, or just use the smoker manually as a grill. I went from someone who rarely smoked on the grill to someone who does it once a week. At my recommendation, a barbecue enthusiast down the block added the Brisk It to his three-smoker lineup and told me it was his favorite. Still, the original Brisk It costs just under $600, so I was excited to test out the Zelos, a smaller, less expensive Brisk It with all the features of the Origin, albeit in a smaller space.
According to Christopher Huang, CEO of Brisk It, my experience isn’t all that unique. “More than 70% of American adults say they want to cook more at home, but cite time and effort as their biggest barriers… and while more than half of home cooks express interest in smart kitchen technology, only 15% actually use it regularly.”
Even as a very enthusiastic home cook who is willing to put in the time, I can’t deny how useful smart home automation is to me in the kitchen. The smart grill is so much more, as the notifications and messages about the grill and food temperature mean I don’t have to stand over the grill. The Brisk It even helps control the stall that grilled meats often experience.
Last month, I set up a Zelos (a thirty-minute affair) and invited the neighbors over. I was concerned about the smaller grill space (the Origin has 580 inches of grill space, while the Zelos has 450 inches). While I could fit more racks of ribs on the Origin, the Zelos fit a full rack, plus a whole tray of chicken thighs, and I used the top rack to smoke a bunch of veggies.
It didn’t escape my attention that since the smaller grill uses less fuel (both are pellet-powered, though the control unit requires electricity), I’ll likely use it more often.
Again, the app experience is the same for both models, it’s very functional and dare I say, quite fun. The AI the app uses is great for finding new recipes, a feature I’ve found unsatisfactory in practice in other products. At the reduced price, the Zelos would make a terribly attractive Father’s Day gift, as it would also free Dad from having to tend to the grill all day.
Small robot for washing windows
To be completely honest, the only reason I haven’t tested the Winbot window cleaning robot is because I just don’t have the space for a window. The Winbot is about 13 square inches and works by sucking up to your window and then putting it through a four-step cleaning process. I know people with Winbots, and if you have large square or rectangular windows, especially ones where some part of the window is out of reach, it seems worth it. However, if you have arched windows, the Winbot struggles with shapes that don’t match the robot’s own design, which has 90-degree angles. The Winbot isn’t designed for curved glass either. That may seem like a lot of limitations, but I spent a winter in Arizona looking at a lot of glass patio doors, patio rooms, and walls of dusty windows and thought, “Ah… that’s what the Winbot is for.”
Except now there’s the Winbot Mini, with an 8.5-inch footprint. At that size, almost all of my windows are fair game, so I’m looking forward to trying it out. That was the point, according to Michelle Jones, a U.S. spokesperson for ECOVACS, who said, “We saw an opportunity to bring the power of our larger window cleaning robots to U.S. homeowners who have smaller or segmented windows and don’t need a stationary cleaning station.”
But Ecovacs also points to a more specific problem that I think plagues many smart tech products: By the time a company develops the technology, the solution is often too complicated. Ecovacs has recognized this, too, and simplified the offering in the Winbot Mini. The Mini ditches the larger model’s rubber bumpers, but that means better edge-to-edge cleaning. The Mini is also more portable, since it doesn’t have the heavy station of the full-size model.
What the mini loses seems like a worthwhile tradeoff for the price: The larger Winbot has twice as many cleaning programs and more safety features (12 versus the Mini’s 9), but in both cases, what the Mini has feels sufficient. At around $250, the WinBot Mini feels like a luxury piece of tech that’s affordable for most people.
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Shelf Lite
For the past six months, I’ve been installing Shelfy in my fridge. A small, rechargeable device, Shelfy uses a catalyst on a ceramic filter, activated by LED lights in the device, to mimic the photosynthesis of chlorophyll. In simple terms, it purifies the air in your fridge, removing ethylene gas, which helps ripen vegetables, while also eliminating odors and preventing cross-contamination.
I can confirm that this product does help improve the smell of your fridge, and while I can’t confirm the extra twelve days of freshness Shelfy claims for vegetables, it has definitely extended the shelf life of my fruits and vegetables.
In particular, I notice a difference in fruit. I buy strawberries and blueberries with some regularity year-round, so I traditionally know how long they last before they start to mold (two to four days). With Shelfy charged, I can go a full week on strawberries and ten days on blueberries. That’s a huge difference, and it creates savings in my grocery budget. Shelfy CEO Paolo Ganis puts the number on the savings, explaining that “the average family throws away about $1,996 worth of food per year — money that could easily be saved by better food preservation.”
Shelfy isn’t big or particularly expensive (it costs just under $150), but Vitesy just unveiled a Kickstarter for Shelfy Lite, which will cost just $66 (the project is already funded). “Through a series of user surveys, we kept hearing that people liked the idea of Shelfy, but they wanted a version that was more accessible: smaller, more affordable,” Ganis said.
The Lite adds a few modes to the unit, one for the regular fridge, one for the crisper drawer, and a power mode for when someone buys a particularly stinky cheese. The Lite improves battery charging and performance over the original model, and comes in some extra accent colors if that’s something you care about. The Lite is only slightly smaller than the original Shelfy, but at less than half the price, that doesn’t seem like a big deal.
What I liked about the Shelfy is that there are no filters to change; you just wash and wet the ceramic filter when you charge the device every few weeks. When you’re not charging it, there are no annoying beeps or notifications – it’s a quiet helper.
Smart Home Hub for Less
Sometimes I even forget that there are smart home hubs outside of Samsung, Amazon, Apple, and Google. But Homey , a hub that keeps all your connections local, has gained momentum in the last few years since its introduction. Homey places a strong emphasis on automation through its “Flow” platform, which is every other platform’s version of a routine or automation. Homey fans claim that Flow is much more flexible, and while I’ve never found Alexa or Google Home challenging, Homey is known for its appeal to newbie smart home enthusiasts. That said, at just under $400, the Homey Pro hub was an expensive way to get into smart home tech compared to other platforms.
Jasper Foppel, head of marketing at Homey, was open about their strategy, explaining that their usage data and feedback made it clear they needed to rethink their offering. Instead of trying to offer everything (Homey Pro supports 60 apps), the Homey team chose the core technologies they saw being used in the U.S. market (Matter, Thread, Zigbee) and narrowed the app coverage to the 25 most common. “This approach allowed us to significantly reduce cost and complexity,” Foppel said, “a privacy-friendly, locally managed smart home hub for $199.”
The Homey Pro Mini still prioritizes local first connection, including backups, but it does have an option for cloud backups. The Mini is on pre-order and will ship sometime this month.