It's been more than a year since Ikea's smart hub got a Matter update, but up until now, the Dirigea hub could only act as a bridge between Ikea devices and existing Matter networks. That's about to change thanks to a just-released firmware update. Dirigea firmware update 2.805.6 gives the Dirigea hub Matter controller capabilities, meaning it can now discover and take charge of Matter devices, including those from third-party manufacturers. The firmware update was confirmed by an Ikea rep on Reddit. Previously, the Dirigera hub could only expose Ikea devices to other Matter controllers, such as the Apple HomePod mini, the Amazon Echo, and the Google Nest Hub.

The Aqara G5 Pro Wi-Fi delivers impressive security and connectivity features, making it ideal for tech-savvy users looking to seamlessly extend their smart-home ecosystem outdoors. The G5 Pro is Aqara's newest outdoor security camera, designed to protect your home while extending your smart-home network outdoors. It pulls double duty, providing real-time monitoring and connecting your Aqara and many third-party smart devices in one integrated hub. Sitting at the higher end of Aqara's camera lineup, the G5 Pro emphasizes ease of use, solid image quality, and smooth integration with popular smart-home ecosystems. We review the Aqara G5 Pro Wi-Fi here; a power-over-ethernet (PoE) version is also available for about 20 more.

There are a lot of fantastic smart home devices on the market now, but it's not always easy getting them to talk to one another and work in unison. That's where Matter comes in: It's a standardized set of rules for getting smart home kit gadgets to speak the same language. Every smart home device comes with its own apps--but what happens when you want to turn off your lights and heating with one voice command? Or want to use smart plugs from two different manufacturers? Matter aims to standardize all that.

The Echo Pop is like a sliced-in-half Echo Dot smart speaker. The setup for the Echo Pop is in the Alexa app, available for iOS and Android devices, and takes about five minutes to complete. The Echo Pop has a small light bar on the top of the speaker that illuminates when the speaker is activated (blue), muted (red), or there are notifications to review (yellow). The top of the speaker has press buttons to turn the volume up/down, and mute the mic. The Echo Pop is built with Amazon's AZ2 Neural Edge processor, allowing for more local processing of voice commands.