When we talk about the smart home, we often talk about grand visions of perfectly automated everything. You know the ones: you wake up well rested thanks to some bedside light thing, and as you stretch luxuriously toward the ceiling, a sensor notices and turns on the coffee pot, starts steaming the sauna, and plays a curated playlist of all your favorite songs. It sounds nice! It is... mostly not how the smart home actually works.

But you know what does work and is pretty smart? Swapping out the lock on your front door for something that lets you enter with a code or a fingerprint or even just knows when you’re nearby and opens right up. In recent months, we’ve seen a slew of smart locks, along with some new video doorbells, that make a smart front door seem like a pretty good idea.

On this episode of The Vergecast, The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison Tuohy takes us on her recent adventures in smart home gadgets. She explains why door locks are so cool right now, why wireless power might make them even cooler, and why we needed yet another protocol to make it all work. Speaking of protocols, there’s been some recent Thread news, so we talk about that. We also catch up on the state of Matter and whether Apple’s and Google’s new software updates might make a difference in your house.

After that, The Verge’s Chris Welch joins the show to do some good old-fashioned earbud mic testing. Microphones matter more than ever as we interact with multimodal AI models and make TikToks all day, but too many headphone makers still make sacrifices. Bose, Apple, Google, Nothing, and Samsung have all released new models recently, so we put the buds to the coffee shop test.

Finally, we answer a hotline question about wearables — more specifically, whether ugly wearables (or wearables that make you ugly) ever even had a chance.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with the smart home:

• Ki is bringing wireless power to kitchen appliances
• The Eufy Smart Lock E30 is the company’s first Matter device
• The Ultraloq Bolt Mission from U-tec is the first smart lock with UWB
• Assa Abloy buys Level Lock to bolster its smart lock business
• TP-Link Tapo D225 Video Doorbell Camera review
• Ring’s entry-level wireless doorbell gets a head-to-toe view
• iOS 18 lets you control Matter devices without a smart home hub
• The Thread 1.4 spec is here, but it will be a while until we see any benefit
• Google TV gets a big upgrade
• Google is set to supercharge Google Home with Gemini intelligence

And on wireless earbuds:

• The best wireless earbuds to buy right now
• Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 Pro are its best earbuds yet
• Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 review: big upgrade, much smaller earbuds
• Bose’s new QuietComfort Earbuds offer top-tier ANC for under $200
• Apple AirPods 4 review: defying expectations
• Nothing’s first open-ear headphones keep you aware of your surroundings