LG’s new smart home hub has a built-in voice assistant
The ThinQ On is LGs new smart home hub. A smart speaker, it uses generative AI for conversational commands and control of connected devices. | Image: LG LG has announced the ThinQ ON, the company’s first dedicated smart home...
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LG has announced the ThinQ ON, the company’s first dedicated smart home hub. The device, which was teased at CES earlier this year, will debut at the IFA 2024 tech show in Berlin, Germany, next week.
The ThinQ ON is an AI-powered hub that can connect and control LG appliances and other smart home devices via Thread, Matter, and Wi-Fi. It works on LG’s ThinQ smart home platform and uses LG’s Affectionate Intelligence to learn from your usage patterns, monitor your appliances, and allow for voice control of connected devices.
A small, circular white hub, the LG ThinQ ON is also a smart speaker with LG’s AI voice assistant onboard. The company says the assistant can understand natural language, interpret context, and learn user preferences. LG’s AI chipset powers the hub, and according to LG, it has been designed with future scalability in mind.
Image: LG
Like most smart home hubs, the ON will allow you to control and monitor the settings of connected devices and create routines to enable smart home automations through LG’s ThinQ app.
The ThinQ ON is Matter-certified, and LG says it will support various network connectivity options, “including Wi-Fi and Thread.” It’s also compatible with a wide range of LG devices and “a growing number of appliances and IoT devices from other manufacturers.”
What is Matter?
Matter is a new smart home interoperability standard designed to provide a common language for connected devices to communicate locally in your home without relying on a cloud connection. It is built to be secure and private, easy to set up, and widely compatible.
Developed by Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung (and others), Matter is an open-sourced, IP-based connectivity software layer for smart home devices. It works over Wi-Fi, ethernet, and the low-power mesh networking protocol Thread and currently supports over 30 device types. These include lighting, thermostats, locks, robot vacuums, refrigerators, dishwashers, dryers, ovens, smoke alarms, air quality monitors, EV chargers, and more.
A smart home gadget with the Matter logo can be set up and used with any Matter-compatible ecosystem via a Matter controller and controlled by more than one with a feature called Multi-Admin.
Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, and Apple Home are some major smart home platforms supporting Matter, along with hundreds of device manufacturers.
Some of this “growing number” will likely come from LG’s recent acquisition of Athom, maker of the Homey Pro hub, a smart home hub that supports hundreds of smart home device integrations. LG bought Athom in July of this year, so it seems unlikely that all of Homey’s integrations will be available on the ThinQ ON at launch.
LG’s approach to the smart home to date has largely been limited to controlling its own devices and appliances. This new hub is the first major move toward becoming a more robust smart home platform, similar to Samsung and its SmartThings smart home platform.
Earlier this year, LG also announced that some of its TVs will work as Matter-enabled Google Home Hubs, allowing you to set up and control any Matter-compatible smart home devices, along with LG, Google, and Google Home devices, through the ThinQ app.
We don’t yet know how much the ThinQ ON will cost or when it will be available. We’ve contacted LG for more details and will be at IFA next week to see the new device in person.
