LG-owned Homey unveils Portal, a touchscreen smart home controller
Dutch smart home company Homey, owned by LG, has launched the Portal, a touchscreen and dial-based controller for smart home devices. Preorders start today at $249, with shipping beginning in December.
Homey, the Netherlands-based smart home platform owned by LG, has introduced the Homey Portal, a new touchscreen device designed to simplify control of smart home gadgets without relying solely on smartphone apps.
The Portal features a 2.8-inch round touchscreen with a stainless steel dial and can be placed on a desk or mounted on a wall. It's powered via USB-C. Users tap on-screen icons to control lights, speakers, thermostats, and shades, while the dial allows adjustments to brightness, volume, or temperature.
The company says the Portal supports more than 70,000 devices from over 2,000 brands and works with Matter, Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Thread. Its interface changes depending on the selected action — for instance, tapping a lighting icon brings up on/off and color controls. The screen also displays a weather forecast and includes a timer, and users can customize which controls appear.
The device integrates with Homey's Flow automation system, enabling scenes such as displaying a doorbell camera livestream on the screen along with an option to unlock a smart lock. The Portal has no microphone, so it doesn't support direct voice control, though it does integrate with Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Siri Shortcuts.
The Portal itself is not a hub — it requires a connection to one of Homey's platform options: a cloud subscription starting at $3.99 a month, the Homey Pro Mini hub at $249, the more powerful Homey Pro hub at $449, or a self-hosted server.
Preorders open today at an introductory price of $249, rising later to $299, with units expected to ship in December. Homey suggests placing one Portal per zone in a home, meaning outfitting multiple rooms along with a hub could cost several hundred dollars in total.
Founded in 2014, Homey is often compared to the open-source Home Assistant platform, though Homey itself remains closed-source. The Portal will be shown publicly for the first time at the IFA tech show in Berlin.
