CES 2026: GE's $300 Matter Smart Shades Work With Apple Home

[gsmornot]

I would like something like this. I just opened my spreadsheet I made in 2011 when we bought this house that has all of the window sizes. According to my sheet, I paid $580 to install 2" blinds for the entire house. 14 windows and 2 doors. I see here one shade is now $300. Wow. I thought it was a lot back then, guess not really.

 

[name99]

Save yourself a lot of pain:
The ONLY question you need to ask before buying these (and any smart HW) is - how does it behave when something unexpected happens? Is the company solution to everything to "reset it", with the side effects of nuking all your scenes and automations?

THIS is going to the only thing that matters going forward. Smart HW is useful, generally works well, and the prices are becoming reasonable.
BUT every company is way too cavalier about not giving a fsck about user time. They just don't care if it takes you an hour or more to recover any time anything goes wrong. This is not acceptable, and companies need to start being made aware of this fact.

 

[name99]

Genuine question for Americans, as we don’t tend to use them as much in the UK:

Why do you use shades or blinds, instead of curtains?

Also good lord these are expensive

1. I use smart blinds because they are very useful. They can dramatically reduce your heating/cooling costs if properly automated, as well as just making the home more pleasant by making it more magical -- it just "does things" correctly to maintain homeostasis regardless of rain or sun, hot or cold.

I think Americans, generically, use blinds along with curtains as just one more option. There are dozens of styles of blinds (most of which suck!) for people who want any particular sort of look; there's only one style of curtain.
So people who care about looks more than functionality gravitate towards blinds. People like me who care about functionality also gravitate towards them, but to the very specific subset of blinds that are not garbage.
Smart blinds predominate because it's not too difficult build a roller design (like these, or the Ikea smart blinds) with a small motor and battery. You can also try to motorize tilt blinds, but that's generally been less successful - there are all those strings and inevitably after many years something goes wrong, the tension becomes uneven, etc.

I would not say this is yet a solved space. If you live in the south, so sun is your primary concern, smart roller blinds do exactly what you want. If you live in the north and temperature is more of a concern, you may want a blind that consists more of air cells, to provide some additional insulation, and I haven't yet seen a smart version of those.

2. I don't want to be a dick, but these are just not very expensive by American standards. They are more expensive than the old Ikea smart blinds, but not insanely more so, and they are nicer looking and probably more robust. (I live without kids, but I could imagine that kids occasionally yanking on the Ikea blinds could be an issue).

Let's not get political, but it's the difference in what counts as moderate income by national standards that's the discrepancy here. As to the reason for that discrepancy, well thats a subject for the political threads.

 

[name99]

I would like something like this. I just opened my spreadsheet I made in 2011 when we bought this house that has all of the window sizes. According to my sheet, I paid $580 to install 2" blinds for the entire house. 14 windows and 2 doors. I see here one shade is now $300. Wow. I thought it was a lot back then, guess not really.

You can still buy crazy cheap blinds. But they are NASTY.

Here's a scale:
- things like venetian or roman blinds (anything that involves strings). Total PITA. Always breaking, always takes minutes to get them the way you want them. Horrible to install, horrible to clean.

- manual roller blinds, or equivalent like Ikea Hoppvals or Trippvals. Clean, easy to operate and install, very little that can go wrong. If you want cheap in your house, these are what I'd recommend.

- motorized roller blinds. Convenient if you want to control them from bed or your office desk. But IMHO not worth the cost compared to

- smart roller blinds. All the convenience of motorization, but now you can set them up to do things like
+ keep out the sun when it's blinding hot (ie the state of Los Angeles 6 months a year)
+ keep in the warm when it's could outside (LA 3 months a year)
+ move up or down to prevent sun directly in your eyes an hour or two before sunrise/sunset
You can do all this by automating based on temperature outside, weather (ie rain), and position of the sun.
I have three main sets of routines, one set that move the blinds up or down in the morning then again an hour after sunset, based on temperature, a second set that overide these based on rain/cloud cover, and a third set that move shades up or down based on sun position (so eg all west-facing blinds go down two hours before sunset).

 

[d.pedro]

These are made in USA, a pleasant surprise.

Try Eve: made in Germany and bulletproof when it comes to HomeKit integration. So much better than Ring, Logitech, Aqara, or anyone else out there selling domotics. And a lot cheaper than this.

 

[name99]

Try Eve: made in Germany and bulletproof when it comes to HomeKit integration. So much better than Ring, Logitech, Aqara, or anyone else out there selling domotics. And a lot cheaper than this.

Eve is (mostly) good stuff. But they're not "a lot cheaper".

Their blinds are custom (in the sense that you measure your windows, along with choosing the fabric you want) and send the details to them. Some people may like that, but it adds to expense and hassle. My experience with this sort of custom is that it is more nerve-wracking than standard sizes, like Ikea or GE are offering. Standard sizes realize they will not fill the window space exactly, and have mounting that's flexible in that respect; custom sizes seem to build their mounting assuming flush fits, and you're in trouble if you're just a few mm off in your measurements.

Obviously if you want the features of custom (eg you're obsessive about "blackout") Eve is a better choice -- but you will pay for it.

For people now interested, some reviews have complained that the Eve motors are noisy. I suspect this is a tempest in a teacup; reviewers seem to feel they *have* to find something to complain about, and really quiet motors are expensive. I certainly hear my Ikea motors and I wouldn't program them to move while I was asleep. But they're quite bearable. much less than eg a vacuum cleaner.
Even so, before you spend $5000 on your new blinds collection, you might want to test that out...

Eve Blinds Collection | evehome.com

Made-to-Measure Smart Blinds. Delight in the convenience of smart shading with customized smart blinds that perfectly fit your window size and enhance your interior aesthetic.

www.evehome.com

 

[geoRG77]

Thanks @d.pedro for mentioning Eve, I like the GE SmartShades but not sure when/if they will start shipping them internationally. Unfortunately, Eve also sends their smart blinds currently only to DE and US. I contacted them regarding shipping to CZ (neighboring country to DE) but they won't send them here. Instead, they referenced Swedish OmniaBlinds which offers world-wide shipping, so I decided to order free fabric samples from them.

Since I was confused if it's the same technology, I went down the rabbit hole to find out how it works. I believe the MotionBlinds motors are manufactured by Coulisse (Netherlands), German Eve Systems developed the Bluetooth/Thread technology, and that is supplied to a number of companies including OmniaBlinds.