The burgeoning smart home market needs to make room for another budget player: Konka is expanding from inexpensive 4K smart TVs to a relatively full line of smart home products.
The company hasn’t announced any prices yet, but we’re guessing its video doorbell, security camera, and smart lighting products will come in at the lower end of the spectrum. “Our [price strategy] will be the same as our televisions,” Konka North America senior vice president of marketing Scott Ramirez told TechHive. “We’re in that middle range.”
We were relatively impressed with the price-to-performance ratio of Konka’s U5-series smart TV, so we’re cautiously optimistic about its new product line. The smart home devices Konka announced at CES connect over Wi-Fi and support both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa support. The company is also courting smart home enthusiasts by building in compatibility with IFTTT. Buyers will use the same Konka SmartApp that works with its Android TV products.
Konka
Konka announced two smart home security cameras ahead of CES, one with a built-in floodlight.
Smart cameras
Konka will release four smart cameras this spring, all with 1080p video and night vision, two-way audio, noise cancellation, and 128-bit encryption. The flagship wired Video Doorbell sports a 140-degree field-of-view, along with camera-based motion and human detection. The battery-powered Anywhere Video Doorbell will have 130-degree motion detection, with passive infrared motion detection with adjustable sensitivity. The AnywhereCam sports the same functionality as the Anywhere Video Doorbell, but will include a wall-mounting bracket. The Floodlight Cam adds dual-LED floodlights and a 90dB siren.
Customers with Konka TVs will be able to view their smart camera feeds directly from their sets, while IFTTT can be used to connect to other services, according to Ramirez. Each of the cameras is outfitted with an SD card slot for local storage, with a subscription-based cloud storage service available as an option. Here again, pricing for that service has not yet been announced.
Smart lighting
Konka’s smart lighting effort will be limited to A19 and BR30 smart bulbs, plus a 5-meter LED light strip at launch. These will be both tunable white (2800 to 6500K) and color, with the A19 producing 750 lumens of brightness (60-watt equivalent), the BR30 producing 1,300 lumens (90-watt equivalent), and the LED light strip producing 700 lumens.
Three smart plugs are also in the officing, including single- and dual-outlet models and a power strip. These will all model include built-in surge protection, and the multi-outlet models will have individual outlet control.
Availability
Konka expects to have its products in consumer’s hands by March or April, although the smart plugs will release later in the spring. There will also be additional devices to come, Ramirez said, which the company hopes to release throughout the year.