The Best Smart Home Gadgets From CES 2021
Behold the top intelligent technology that CES had to offer.
By John Elliot
Sun, Jan 24, 2021 1:03am
3 min
3 min
Not even a pandemic could stop the world’s premier technology trade event, the Consumer Electronics Show, now officially known as CES, but this year, in accordance with social distancing and safety protocols, the event went all online.
Despite the novel format, CES was still packed with all the cutting-edge tech for which it’s become known. Below are some of the best devices you may be welcoming into your smart home soon.
LG Transparent OLED Smart Bed TV
Two years ago, all of CES was a clamour about LG’s OLED TV R, a 4K, organic LED smart screen that unfurled out of and re-rolled into a Dolby speaker base. This year, they’ve upped the innovation—by making it transparent and installable at the foot of your bed. The LG Transparent OLED Smart Bed TV, as debuted by LG Display, the company’s sci-fi-like screen division, is a 55-inch, 40% transparent screen which ascends and descends from a sleek and slender (and portable!) containment unit which is placed at the base of the bed. The screen, which users can see through when it is on or off, features speakers built into the display, and the container base provides an all-black secondary screen that can rise behind the transparent one for users to enjoy the full richness and colour of whatever they are watching. In addition to allowing users to consume televised entertainment, the Transparent OLED Smart Bed TV will allow them to mirror their devices on screen, and LG anticipates a suite of smart features for the device, from notifications and weather alerts to activity prompts and music streaming.
Like so many of CES’ most eye-grabbing gadgets, price and release date have not been named for the LG Transparent OLED Smart Bed TV.
NordicTrack Vault
Gym enthusiasts, acutely aware of what the pandemic has taken from them, will be overjoyed to learn of the NordicTrack Vault. Like the Mirror by Lululemon, the Vault is a full-length reflective surface/HD touchscreen that allows users to perfect their form as they take a wide variety of classes (yoga, lifting, high-intensity interval training and much more) from NordicTrack’s suite of iFit trainers. Unlike the Mirror, which is a freestanding or wall-hanging device, the Vault’s screen doubles as a door to a workout equipment storage system, complete with dumbbells, kettlebells, yoga, pilates, and strength-training accessories, giving Vault owners and even wider range of exercise options at their disposal.
Open to pre-order now, the Vault is available for around $3775 (exercise equipment included) or approx. $2500 (standalone), with each option including one year of iFit Family Membership.
Kohler Stillness Bath
Looking for a smart (and luxurious) soaking experience? Kohler, a leading name in high-tech bathroom fixtures, has heard your pleas. Modeled after a Japanese spa-style soaking tub, the $20,000 Kohler Stillness Bath is an infinity-edge bathtub that users can fill via voice command (even specifying precise temperature) and features a mood-lighting system ringing the entire basin. Users can even upgrade their Stillness Bath to include an “Experience Tower,” which will add aromatherapy and mist to their bathing experience—both also controllable by voice command.
The Kohler Stillness Bath will be available for $7800 to $20,000, depending on features, with the various models rolling out from May to October 2021.
MyQ Pet Portal
Here’s one for the dogs (and cats). The Pet Portal from MyQ looks to liberate indoor-outdoor pet owners from the constant need to give their four-legged friends entry to and exit from the home. Outfitted with a live-video streaming camera and two-way audio via the MyQ app, Pet Portal owners can open the pet door for their cats and dogs remotely from their phones or tablets—or they can cede the decision entirely to their furry companions. With an accompanying Bluetooth-enabled collar, pets can activate the Pet Portal via (very) close encounter, and once the device, which opens in two panels like elevator doors, grants entry or exit, it quickly closes and locks to prevent any other unwelcome visitors.
The Pet Portal, which requires professional installation and replaces an existing exterior door, is available for $2,999.
Samsung Bot Handy
The smart home owner who wants the full “Jetsons” experience will be eagerly anticipating the release of the Samsung Bot Handy. Intended to serve as an extra hand wherever you need it around the house, the Bot Handy is a slender, mobile pillar with a rolling base and digital face—complete with expressions—and a fully articulating arm with clamp hand, that can pour you a drink, pick up laundry or even place dishes in the dishwasher. A forward-facing camera and pretty clever A.I. allow the Bot Handy to determine the material components of what it is seeing and handle it accordingly.
There is no release date or price yet for the helpful robotic companion, which Samsung lists as “in development.”
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Kit Braden, an executive at French beauty empire L’Occitane, has spent every winter for the past 13 years at the stone vacation home.
By CHAVA GOURARIE
Mon, May 11, 2026 2 min
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A historic Barbados estate with a 300-year-old villa and 11 acres overlooking the Caribbean Sea is now for sale with a guide price of $22.5 million.
The seller is Kit Braden, chairman of the U.K. branch of French beauty empire L’Occitane Group, whose family has spent every winter for the last 13 years at the island property, known as Fustic Estate.
“It’s very much a family house,” Braden said. “We love having a lot of people there. It’s a collection point to keep everyone together.”
The main villa dates to 1712, though it’s been reimagined and expanded substantially over the years.
It spans 13,000 square feet and features seven en suite bedrooms across three wings, as well as expansive verandas, stone courtyards and rows of louvered doors in gay Caribbean pastels.
In the 1970s, when the home was owned by Charles Graves—brother of British poet Robert Graves—it was reimagined by stage designer Oliver Messel, one of the foremost theater designers of the last century. Messel expanded the home, added a lagoon pool with a natural waterfall and other theatrical features, according to Braden.
“The whole place is a little bit magical,” he said.
The home sits about 350 feet above the water, and surrounded by lush gardens that slope towards the water.
“We look down through our garden—which is about 12 acres of tropical gardens and palm trees and wonderful old mahogany trees—onto the Caribbean,” Braden said.
He and his wife first saw the property on New Year’s Eve 2013, during a quick trip from where they were staying in Grenada.
The couple spent an hour walking the perimeter, some of it still untouched jungle, in the pouring rain.
“By the time we got back, I had fallen in love with it,” Braden said.
His wife, however, wasn’t so sure. But in Braden’s telling, a second visit in sunnier weather with two of their children brought her around.
“She had to be talked into that it was a jolly good idea; now she absolutely loves it,” he said.
When they bought the property, the edge that runs along the waterfront was a jungle, so they cleared the ridge and transformed it into gardens.
They also bought an additional sea-level parcel with two beach cottages, giving the property direct access to the water and the town below via a five-minute walk.
The property also has a 15-person staff, a reflecting pond, an outdoor pavilion suitable for yoga and a commercial grade kitchen that can serve more than 100 guests, according to a brochure from Knight Frank, which posted the listing in March. They did not provide further comment.
For Braden, the property is special because of its natural beauty, its proximity to the town of Saint Lucy and its history—which dates way way back to when the island of Barbados was first formed via tectonic activity.
“It was basically tectonic plates that collided about a million years ago so the seabed is the top of the hill,” Braden said. “We’re on coral rock.”
As a result, Fustic Estate includes an extensive network of caves that were likely used by the Arawaks, a Venezuelan fishing tribe that followed the fish to these islands about a thousand years ago.
“If the fish were good they’d camp here,” Braden said. “There’s evidence that they stayed there in those caves, they lived there in good winters.”
Now it’s someone else’s turn to live on the land shared by Arawaks, the plantation owners of 1712, Charles Graves and the Braden brood.
