smart home Archives - COOLCURATION

October 24, 2026 — No Comments

Siri AI on HomePod: Why Your Old Speakers Miss Out

Smart homeSiri AI

Last updated: 16 October 2026

By Stiv · Design, technology and personal finance

The new Siri is coming to HomePod mini 2. Not to the HomePods I already own.

Siri AI on HomePod stops at the new HomePod mini 2. Apple confirmed on 14 October 2026 that the original HomePod mini will not get it, and the first HomePod is not on the list either. I own two first-generation HomePods and three original minis, so every speaker in my home is on the wrong side of that line.

I have pre-ordered an Apple HomeView to see how much the new Siri changes things. It will replace one of my three minis, the one in the kitchen. That was always the plan, to be honest. It has just been a long wait.

Published by Stiv in Apple, Consumer Tech, Technology lover

Tags: apple, apple home, Apple HomeView, Apple Intelligence, Apple TV 4K, Apple UK, HomePod, HomePod Mini, ios 27, Siri, Siri AI, smart home, smart home UK

October 22, 2026 — No Comments

Best Smart Lighting UK: What I Use at Home, and What I’d Skip

The best smart lighting UK picks from my own home: Hue bulbs, a lightstrip, switches and sensors, with prices and running costs.

Published by Stiv in Buying Guides, Consumer Tech, Smart Home, Technology lover

Tags: aqara, buying guide, energy saving, Eve, home automation, hue bridge, matter, philips hue, smart bulbs, smart home, smart lighting, smart plugs, Tapo, thread

October 13, 2026 — No Comments

Apple Welcome Home Event: What It Means for Your UK Smart Home

Apple Welcome Home event, UK view: HomeView, Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini 2 prices, release dates and the new LG cameras.

Published by Stiv in Apple, Consumer Tech, Smart Home, Tech News, Technology lover

Tags: apple, Apple event, apple home, Apple Home Collection, Apple HomeView, Apple TV 4K, Apple UK, Apple Welcome Home event, HomePod, HomePod Mini, matter, Siri AI, smart home, smart home UK

September 28, 2026 — Comments are off for this post.

Best Smart Heating Controls UK

Smart heating controls priced for UK homes, with the Energy Saving Trust payback maths: about £600 to fit and £100 a year back.

Published by Stiv in Buying Guides, Energy, Money saving, Smart Home

Tags: draught proofing, Drayton Wiser, energy bills, energy saving, Energy Saving Trust, Google Nest, heating, Hive, home automation, infrared heating, matter, smart heating controls, smart home, smart thermostat, tado, Tapo, thermostatic radiator valves, Warm Homes Plan

September 23, 2026 — Comments are off for this post.

Best Smart Home Starter Kit UK 2026: Apple, Google or Alexa

Three ways into a smart home and one box you replace if you change your mind. Apple, Google and Alexa priced side by side, plus the Matter kit that works with all three.

Published by Stiv in Buying Guides, Consumer Tech, Smart Home, Technology lover

Tags: alexa, apple home, Apple Home Collection, Apple HomeView, aqara, blink, briiv, echo dot, echo show, eero, Eve, google home, home automation, HomePod Mini, levoit, matter, nest hub, netatmo, nuki, philips hue, ring, smart home, smart locks, smart plugs, smart speakers, smoke alarms, Tapo, thread, x-sense

August 6, 2026 — Comments are off for this post.

Best Garden Gadgets UK 2026: 12 Picks Worth Buying Now

Twelve garden gadgets tested against real independent reviews, with confirmed UK prices, one honest downside each, and a plain answer on what to buy now versus wait for Black Friday.

Published by Stiv in Buying Guides, Consumer Tech, Green fingers, Smart Home

Tags: garden gadgets, garden gadgets UK, outdoor tech, robot lawnmower, smart doorbell UK, smart garden, smart home, smart home UK

May 23, 2026 — Comments are off for this post.

Best Father’s Day Tech Gifts UK 2026: The Beyond-Obvious Edit

Father's Day Tech Gifts2026 Edit

The tech gifts he doesn't know he wants yet.

Last updated: 23 May 2026

By Stiv · Design, technology and personal finance

Father's Day tech gifts tend to arrive in two flavours: the painfully obvious and the quietly disappointing. After all, your dad already owns an iPhone, a pair of AirPods, and a smart speaker he shouts at across the kitchen. So this year, skip every one of those. Instead, this edit of Father's Day tech gifts is for the dad who has the obvious stuff already, and who secretly wants the interesting stuff he has not discovered yet.

Father's Day 2026 falls on Sunday 21 June, which gives you roughly a month to order. Moreover, every pick below sits in that sweet spot between "I did not know this existed" and "I cannot believe I lived without it." Some we own. Some we have tested. Some we have researched obsessively and quietly added to our own wish lists. All of them passed the same test: is it well designed, does it solve a real problem, and would we be genuinely excited to unwrap it?

Some links in this guide are affiliate or referral links. This costs you nothing extra and helps support the site.

Best under £100AncestryDNA Kit£79

Best under £150Fairphone Fairbuds£129

Best splurgereMarkable Paper Pro£699

Most unexpectedBird Buddy Pro£199

For the audiophile dadTeenage Engineering OB-4around £599

For the tinkering dadBambu Lab A1 Minifrom £149

Published by Stiv in Consumer Tech, Gift Guides, Technology lover

Tags: Analogue Pocket, fathers day, fathers day gifts, gadgets, gift guides, gifts for dad, Nothing, smart home, tech gifts, Teenage Engineering

May 11, 2026 — Comments are off for this post.

Best Portable Speakers UK 2026: 12 We’d Actually Buy

Last updated: 11 May 2026

By Stiv · Design, technology and personal finance

Long before the AirPods era, before Sonos was on every shelf, before "Bluetooth speaker" stopped sounding faintly novel, there was the Jawbone Jambox. We had one of the original models knocking around for years. Tiny, weirdly heavy, sounded like a pocket-sized rock concert, and felt like the future. Then Jawbone went bust, the Jambox died, and the entire portable speaker world quietly got a lot better. So in this guide to the best portable speakers UK shoppers can buy in 2026, we're rounding up the speakers we'd happily replace that old Jambox with today.

A good portable speaker turns a garden into a festival, a kitchen into a club, and a park meet-up into something worth staying for. A bad one sounds like music playing inside a tin can from three rooms away. Here's how to pick the right one without overpaying.

This guide contains affiliate links. If you buy through our links, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Published by Stiv in Buying Guides, Smart Home, Tech News, Technology lover

Tags: audio, Bang and Olufsen, best portable speakers, bluetooth speakers, Bose, JBL, Marshall, portable speakers, smart home, Sonos

April 16, 2026 — Comments are off for this post.

FYTA Beam G2 Review UK: The Best Smart Plant Sensor We’ve Tried

Last updated: 16 April 2026

By Stiv · Design, technology and personal finance

This is an opinion piece. Views expressed are the author's own and do not constitute professional advice.

This review contains referral links. If you purchase through our link on the FYTA Beam detail page, you get 10% off. Our opinions remain entirely independent.

Cool Factor: 4/5

We have been searching for a reliable smart plant sensor for years. After failed attempts with Xiaomi and Parrot, we finally landed on the FYTA Beam G2. This FYTA Beam review covers four months of daily use across 13 sensors in a London flat, and the short version is: it is genuinely the best plant tracking system we have found. Not perfect, mind you. But properly impressive.

Published by Stiv in Green fingers, Green Living, Reviews, Smart Home, Technology lover

Tags: FYTA, FYTA Beam, FYTA Beam G2, indoor plants, plant care, plant sensor, reviews, smart home, tech

March 29, 2026 — Comments are off for this post.

Dyson Spot+Scrub AI Review UK: Overpriced, Outsourced, Underwhelming

Last updated: 22 March 2026

By Stiv · Design, technology and personal finance

This is an opinion piece. Views expressed are the author's own and do not constitute professional advice.

This article contains affiliate or referral links. If you click through and sign up I may earn a commission or referral bonus at no extra cost to you. It does not affect my editorial view.

Cool Factor: 0/5

This Dyson Spot Scrub review is not one we ever expected to write. We've reviewed hundreds of products across CoolCuration and never once handed out a zero. Not once. But the Dyson Spot+Scrub AI, priced at a staggering £1,049.99, has earned the dishonour of being our first. It's a robot vacuum that somehow offers less suction than its predecessor, appears to be manufactured by a third-party Chinese ODM, and arrives stamped with a premium price tag that only the Dyson name can justify. For a vacuum cleaner, the Dyson Spot+Scrub AI really does suck. Just not in the way you'd want it to.

Published by Stiv in Reviews, Smart Home, Tech News, Technology lover

Tags: best robot vacuums, Dyson, Dyson review, Dyson Spot Scrub AI, robot vacuum, robot vacuum review, smart home