TechRadar Smart Home Week
This article is part of TechRadar’s Smart Home Week 2025. From lighting and switches to robot vacuums and smart thermostats, we’re here to help you pick the right devices to make your life easier, and get the most out of them.
Smart Home Week is all about making the most of the new technology available to enhance your home life, be it home security cameras, robot vacuum cleaners, or smart lights that dim with a voice command. But what about technology to make you healthier – and, by extension, happier?
Health technology is no longer confined to a Peloton or one of the best treadmills gathering dust in the corner. Following an explosion in wellness trend content online, a new generation of IoT-connected devices are here to help you live your best life even if you don’t have access to a gym or health club.
The kicker is that most of these devices are quite expensive. There’s no getting around the fact that you don’t need three or four-figure-priced gadgets to nail down the basics of health: fitness is accessible to all, whether it’s a run in the sun, a walk with friends or strength exercises at home with resistance bands. It’s also easier than ever to learn to cook healthy food, now we have the internet (and the best air fryers) at our disposal.
However, for the performance-minded individual who wants to fully optimize their home environment or wants the benefit of health clubs in the comfort of home, these gadgets might be the solution.
We also haven’t included the best fitness trackers and best sleep trackers. Wearables can provide actionable information about your body, but these devices open up the possibilities for your home.
1. Ultrahuman Home
An unobtrusive chrome box that looks a little like a Mac mini, the Ultrahuman Home is filled with sensors designed to optimize a room in your home in terms of light, noise, temperature, and air quality, all dependent on the time of day.
Place it in a room and it’ll dictate whether it’s a healthy environment to live in by giving your room a score out of 100. An Air Quality Index, or AQI, can measure particulate matter (dust etc.) and CO2 levels in the room, temperature sensors can gauge whether it’s too hot or cold for optimum living or sleeping, and microphones assess the ambient noise. Furthermore, all processing is reportedly done on-device, so Ultrahuman doesn’t listen to your conversations. Additionally, humidity and light levels are taken into account.
The end result is determining whether your home environment is contributing to your tiredness, crankiness, and stress, and then modifying the sources to create a clean, relaxed, and peaceful space that helps you unwind and recover.
Of course, it’s a box full of sensors – the information provided might mean you need to invest in a dehumidifier, one of the best air purifiers, or perhaps it’s just a prompt to shut a couple of doors to block internal sound.
2. Bon Charge sauna blanket
I love the sauna as much as anyone, but my local gym doesn’t have one, and repeat visits are as expensive as they are inconvenient to schedule. The Bon Charge Sauna Blanket is one solution designed to mimic the sauna effect at home: it’s effectively a wipe-clean, infrared sleeping bag with timer and temperature settings, using FAR infrared heat to “support recovery, relaxation, sleep, and overall well-being”.
Infrared saunas are trending again, as is almost every wellness fad, thanks to TikTok, and the benefits are science-backed. One report suggests infrared saunas are no better for you than traditional heated saunas, but heat exposure via saunas in general reportedly packs a whole spa’s worth of benefits.
One 2021 report from the journal Experimental Gerontology says, “sauna bathing has emerged as a probable means to extend healthspan, based on compelling data from observational, interventional, and mechanistic studies”.
While not every gym has a sauna, and not every home has the means for a sauna, solutions like the Sauna Blanket can bring these benefits into the home.
- Bon Charge Sauna Blanket: $699.99 / £549.99 / AU$749.25, boncharge.com
3. Monk Smart Ice Bath
From hot to cold, this very expensive ice bath is the ultimate in smart-home wellness frippery. The practice of cold plunges and ice baths is incredibly popular – even I’m no stranger to a cold shower when the constant algorithmic “millionaire mindset” messaging on social media gets the best of me – with the internet awash with uncomfortably elaborate morning routine videos.
There’s method in the madness, though: a report by Stanford on the existing literature states “emerging studies now suggest that CWI can improve mood, decrease stress, and potentially slow the progression of neurodegenerative diseases”. It’s also about getting uncomfortable with being uncomfortable.
Enter Monk. A self-cleaning, temperature-controlled ice bath designed to fit through doors for easy installation, Monk calls itself “the world’s first smart ice bath,” boasting celebrity endorsements from the likes of Anthony Joshua. While you could simply get any old large plastic tub with a lid, Monk positions itself as a hygienic, sophisticated alternative to a jacuzzi for the Joe Rogan set. Of course, it’s very expensive.
