August 2025 Round Up

Belkin Pulls The Plug

Belkin’s Wemo smart home brand has been a thing for a number of years in an on-again-off-again kind of way. There’s been a distinct lack of enthusiasm from the brand in terms of new product releases of revamps, and in my experience those products have always lacked a certain polish. From poor performance to reliability issues, I’ve always had to approach Wemo with some extra trepidation.

Seems Belkin has now finally decided the smart home isn’t for them. They’ve announced the shutdown of their cloud servers, and like most cloud-based smart home vendors, this will effectively brick any devices that rely on it. Basically, this applies to any Wi-Fi based smart devices.

Those devices with HomeKit compatibility will continue to work with Apple Home (because Apple enforces local control and doesn’t use Belkin’s cloud), and their Thread-based devices, since those too are using local control and not the cloud. Thread is a newer protocol, however, and only a few Wemo devices use it.

Belkin now joins a not-so-illustrious list of brands that have pulled the rug out from under their smart home customers and drives home the point that cloud-dependent smart homes suck.

Pros and Cons of the Cloud

Following on from Belkin’s Wemo massacre, we have Google bricking a bunch of Nest devices, along ending support for older Nest Thermostat models. While these devices will continue to function as basic thermostats, they will lose all connectivity to Google or third-party apps and services. But don’t worry, Google is happy to sell you a new one.

I’ve long been wary of cloud-based smart devices because of the inherent risk of companies killing them off. Maybe they just don’t want to support older models anymore (fair enough, they can’t forever), maybe they’ve decided to pivot another way, and smart homes are for them anymore, maybe they go bust, or maybe they want to gouge their customers for subscriptions and integration fees.

These issues alone are good reason to want a better way of doing things, and that’s before we get into the compatibility complications and very real security risks of the Internet of Things. So why are cloud controlled smart devices so common?

While I’ve written many times about the risks involved here, these and other corporate shenanigans have prompted me to go into depth on how we got here, the good and the bad of buying into these kinds of devices, and what we can do instead. Check out my concerns and alternatives for the future in this smart home guide.

Alexa goes AI

We all knew it was coming. Smart homes are moving inevitably to using generative AI for voice control. As a content producer I don’t believe generative AI is a good thing in general. These models provide a powerful tool for data analysis and genuine productivity improvements when it comes to performing arduous repeatable tasks, but replacing human creativity is just going to be bad for us all in the long run, and that’s not even factoring in the complete destruction of any kind of trust in what we see, hear, or read online.

I do feel, however, that generative AI can provide genuine utility and value in the smart home by creating a far more natural, reliable, dare I say ‘Star Trek’ experience when it comes to controlling out smart homes. Indeed, it offers a major step up in the smart potential by enabling much more nuanced interpretation of what we want at any given time.

Apple clearly has intentions in this area, but has unfortunately floundered with their initial implementations. I’m prepared to cut them slack here since they are trying to do it with a security and privacy focus, which we absolutely know no other AI company gives a crap about. Google is pushing Gemini on their smart home users, but in a ham-fisted way that reportedly has had nagative impact on smart home functionality, and now Amazon joins to party with Alexa+.

Alexa+ is supposed to provide all those good things that can benefit a smart home environment: intuitive understanding, natural conversation, handling complex requests without having to worry about specific phrasing, and even being able to interact with third party services without installing skills.

Early tests are showing this is going pretty well, although there are some entirely expected quirks such as stopping listening mid conversation, and not quite creating routines that work as intended when using voice only. The third-party integrations are also not ready for prime time just yet, but they may get there in time for the wider launch.

It’s not all rosy with Alexa+, however, as the training needs of this new approach have led Amazon to quietly drop the ability to tell Alexa not to keep recordings of your interactions, and Amazon is clearly trying to find a way to monetize what is going to be a much more expensive voice assistant to run by pushing users to Amazon services at every opportunity. Maybe Apple has the right idea after all.

Eufy C30 Doorbell Tested

The latest budget model smart doorbell from Eufy was on the test rig this month. The C30 offers a pure battery powered doorbell that delivers impressive video quality and motion detection performance. I couldn’t trip it up during a variety of weather conditions in day or night scenarios, and it was able to reliably detect people at long distances with minimal false positives in windy conditions.

People detection, custom motion zones, and robust privacy features make for effective control over what you record and get alerts about, and you can record it all for free using the included 32GB MicroSD card.

There’s no package detection features on this one, however, and the audio quality during two-way talk conversations could use some work, but it’s still usable. Overall, it’s a good performer for the price if you can’t wire your doorbell for power.

See all the test results for yourself in my comprehensive test report, and compare with other tested models with my comparison charts.