The Amazon Echo, Dot and other Alexa-enabled devices don't often play well together in the same house – particularly if they're within earshot of each other. That wasn't a problem because most of us had only one smart speaker – if we had any at all. Amazon says the number of households with more than one smart assistant-enabled device doubled last year. That lends credence to an independent survey taken late last year declaring that nearly 1 in 4 US households had a voice-enabled device inside – and about 40 percent of those have more than one. Which can only mean that more of us are experiencing the headaches of these early days in the Alexa multi-device experience.

File this one under "Why has no one thought of its before?" And it packs a pretty good audio punch, based on the demo we got last week, thanks in part to a collaboration between Netgear and home audio powerhouse Harman Kardon. Mesh networks like Netgear's Orbi series are popular because they can blanket a home with strong Wi-Fi and eliminate dead zones. They consist of a router that you connect to your broadband gateway, and one or more satellite access points that you position around the house. Data hops from one satellite to the other and back to the router, with client devices automatically connecting to whichever access points can deliver the strongest signal.