Smart homes have gotten really good at making things really complicated. Turning on a light can involve multiple steps, compared to just flipping a switch. Homey, the Dutch-based smart home platform owned by LG, thinks it has a solution.
This week it launched the Homey Portal, a touchscreen smart home controller that looks very promising, if very expensive. Preorders open today at an introductory price of $249/€249, with units shipping in December.
A 2.8-inch round touchscreen device with a stainless steel dial, the Homey Portal can sit on a desk or mount to the wall and is powered by a USB-C cable. You tap the icons to control devices like lights, speakers, thermostats, and shades, and you can twist the dial to adjust brightness, volume, and temperature.
The idea of a dedicated smart home control device that can connect to everything in a smart home is compelling. App, voice, and button control have their place, but they’re not as easy as walking up to a switch and just knowing what to do. The problem so far has been interoperability; not everything works with everything. Homey, with its claimed support for over 70,000 devices from over 2,000 brands, plus Matter, Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Thread, is well-positioned to tackle this.
The Portal invites comparisons to an Echo Show or Google Nest Hub, but it feels more focused. “We’ve always wanted a smart home to feel as simple as flipping a light switch,” said Stefan Witkamp, CEO at Athom, Homey’s parent company. It’s designed to give a direct, physical way to control your home, “instead of doing everything through an app,” he said.
In many ways, the Portal looks like the smart home controller I’ve always envisioned Apple building for Apple Home: simple, intuitive, and uncluttered.
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In Homey’s demo video, the interface adapts its UI to each action you want to take. For example, tapping the lights icon brings up a screen to turn the room’s lights on or off and adjust the color; then you can adjust the brightness by twisting the dial. There’s also a weather icon that shows a short forecast along with a built-in timer.
The screen is customizable, letting you add controls for different elements of your smart home, and it works with Homey’s Flow automation engine, so you can trigger scenes and automations.
Homey demoed setting up a livestream of your doorbell camera to appear on the Portal when it rings, along with a prompt to open your smart lock. There’s no microphone, so no voice control;Homey integrates with Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Siri Shortcuts for voice control.
The company says the Portal is designed to be set up for different zones in a home, such as the kitchen, living room, and bedroom. Along with controls for that room, it can monitor and manage energy use in each. But at $299/€299 after the introductory price, outfitting three rooms would cost nearly $900 — and that’s before adding a Homey hub.
The Portal itself isn’t a hub and requires a connection to one of Homey’s platform options: the Homey Cloud for $3.99 a month (free for up to 5 devices), the Homey Pro Mini hub ($249), a 2023 or later Homey Pro hub ($449), or a self-hosted Homey server on your own hardware.
The benefit of the hubs is local communication. Compatible devices will continue to run without an internet connection and can still be controlled by the Portal, according to Homey. The company also just announced a new device update feature that allows you to update Matter, Z-Wave, and Zigbee devices directly through Homey; no need to use the manufacturer’s hub or app.
Homey, which was founded in 2014, draws comparisons to Home Assistant, with its selling point being a more plug-and-play setup. However, Homey is closed-source and now owned by LG, whereas Home Assistant remains an open-source platform managed by the nonprofit Open Home Foundation. Homey runs as an independent smart home platform today, but also integrates with LG’s AI Home platform, with a focus on home energy management.
We’ve seen several companies launch smart switches with displays that similarly try to solve the control problem, including Aqara, Shelly, and Brilliant, but most require hardwiring and don’t have as many integrations as Homey. Homey’s advantage appears to be ease of installation and breadth of support.
I’ll be checking out the Portal in person this week at the IFA tech show in Berlin and look forward to testing it to see if it can earn a spot in my smart home.
