Smart‑home control has spread across apps, voices and buttons until a simple task, dim a light, lower the heat, can feel like a small project. Homey, the Dutch‑based smart home platform owned by LG, has tried a different tack with the Homey Portal, a small round controller meant to sit on a desk or mount to a wall.
Let's get physical
The hardware is deliberately physical: a 2.8‑inch round touchscreen with a stainless‑steel rotary dial, powered by USB‑C, that you tap for scenes and twist for quick adjustments. Twist the dial and the Portal will alter brightness, volume and temperature without opening an app adjust brightnessadjust temperature. Homey is asking an introductory $249/€249 for the first run; orders placed now are slated to ship in December $249/€249.
Where this matters is interoperability rather than novelty. Homey frames the Portal as a single, always‑available surface for a mixed smart‑device home, not a voice assistant or a general smart display, and it claims broad device support, more than 70,000 devices from over 2,000 brands and bridges for Matter, Zigbee, Z‑Wave and Thread.
This is the practical prerequisite for replacing multiple apps with one controller over 70,000 devicesMatter, Zigbee, Z‑Wave, and Thread.
Echo comparisons
The Portal "invites comparisons to an Echo Show or Google Nest Hub," the reviewer noted, but it is pitched as a narrower, tactile tool rather than a general smart display.
Preorders are open now and Homey plans to ship the first units in December preorders open today. For households that already mix brands and want a physical, glanceable control point, the Portal is a rare product that does a precisely defined job; for anyone without a multi‑brand ecosystem, it will feel like a specialised, and costly, convenience.
