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Do you need a smart home hub?
When life gets chaotic, it can be convenient to have all your smart home devices operating on the same wavelength. Achieving this sort of harmony sometimes requires a hub to consolidate the myriad gadgets in your house. But not everyone needs a dedicated smart hub to make their setup run smoothly. A smart speaker like the Amazon Echo or the Google Home can serve a similar purpose, with each device's respective apps acting as central command. Manufacturers have even begun bundling hubs into other devices like security systems and mesh WiFi routers, making home automation simpler for beginners.
Wink pairs with Sonos to auto-tune your smart home
Sonos announced it was opening up its ecosystem a couple months back and, sure enough, controls for Tidal and Pandora followed, with Airplay 2 support also inbound. Unsurprisingly, its upcoming Alexa integration hogged the limelight, but the smart speaker-maker also promised smart home partnerships with the likes of Wink and Alarm.com, among others. Fast forward more than two months, and the Wink team-up is now a reality, courtesy of the Wink Hub 2's compatibility with all Sonos products.
Wink's new smart home hub is slimmer and more powerful
Every person who's tried to smarten up their home knows the woes of dealing with multiple hubs -- one for each brand's products. Wink tried to solve that problem two years ago with its original Hub, and is now launching a successor that not only looks sleeker and is 25 percent slimmer, but also offers a simplified setup and pairing process, thanks to a new app. The Wink Hub 2, basically a control panel for all your connected devices, will be available for $99 in late October at Amazon, The Home Depot and Walmart.
