{"id":2129146,"date":"2026-09-04T12:30:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T09:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2129146"},"modified":"2026-09-04T12:30:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T09:30:27","slug":"would-you-buy-an-ai-smart-home-hub-for-20000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2129146","title":{"rendered":"Would You Buy an AI Smart Home Hub for $20,000?"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Ugreen-HomeAgent-HA100-main-1200×675.jpg”]<\/p>\n

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At IFA 2026, I stumbled on a booth where Ugreen, a company I\u2019ve mostly known for its charging and USB-C hubs but that also makes NAS servers, has announced a new smart hub line that supports Matter, has a built-in AI assistant, and supports standard hard drives for NAS-style storage.<\/p>\n

If that all sounds familiar to you, it\u2019s because I could just as easily be describing the MindBase that Anker announced yesterday. The HomeAgent will come in three flavors: the $1,800 HomeAgent HA100, the $6,000 HomeAgent HA100 Pro, and the $20,000 MasterAgent MA100. Ouch. (Anker, for what it\u2019s worth, didn\u2019t announce pricing for the MindBase.)<\/p>\n

\"Ugreen
\u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All three of these are Matter-compatible, although the reps at the booth insisted when asked about it that Ugreen would really prefer people use its own smart home products. (It also announced three new smart home cameras yesterday.) There\u2019s a built-in AI assistant called \u201cUliya\u201d that you can talk with to control those devices. As the representatives tried to demo the unit, it often just didn\u2019t respond to its wake phrase, although in Ugreen\u2019s defense, it was noisy in the area.<\/p>\n

\"Ugreen
\u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I actually had better luck getting it to respond. I got it to open some shades, for instance, although when I asked it to turn some smart lights pink, it played music on a nearby, also-newly-announced Ugreen smart speaker instead. Similar to other generative AI-based smart home assistants, it\u2019s slow. When you say \u201cHi Uliya\u201d (which might be one of the most awkward wake phrases I\u2019ve ever used) followed by your request, it processes for a few seconds before acknowledging and carrying it out.<\/p>\n

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\"Ugreen<\/div>
\t\t\t\t\u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo \t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\"Ugreen<\/div>
\t\t\t\t\u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo \t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\"Ugreen<\/div>
\t\t\t\t\u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo \t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

You can also ask the assistant to do things like play music you\u2019ve stored locally on the device. It wasn\u2019t clear if streaming services are supported yet. Much like Anker\u2019s MindBase, part of the pitch is that you can invoke Uliya to ask about events that occurred within sight of your cameras or search photos you\u2019ve backed up to the HomeAgent\u2019s internal storage.<\/p>\n

The differences appear to come down to technical prowess. The HA100 has the lowest-performing CPU, only 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and 64GB of built-in flash storage, for instance, while the highest-end $20,000 MA100 is equipped with an Nvidia Jetson Thor T5000\u2014good for \u201cup to 2,070 TFLOPS\u201d\u2014128GB of RAM, and a 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD. I\u2019m sure that makes for one of the best AI computers you can own, but sheesh, that price.<\/p>\n

Gizmodo is on the ground in Berlin all week bringing you everything you need to know about the tech unveiled at IFA 2026. You can follow our IFA 2026 live blog here and find all our coverage here.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n
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At IFA 2026, I stumbled on a booth where Ugreen, a company I\u2019ve mostly known for its charging and USB-C hubs but that also makes NAS servers, has announced a new smart hub line that supports Matter, has a built-in AI assistant, and supports standard hard drives for NAS-style storage.<\/p>\n

If that all sounds familiar to you, it\u2019s because I could just as easily be describing the MindBase that Anker announced yesterday. The HomeAgent will come in three flavors: the $1,800 HomeAgent HA100, the $6,000 HomeAgent HA100 Pro, and the $20,000 MasterAgent MA100. Ouch. (Anker, for what it\u2019s worth, didn\u2019t announce pricing for the MindBase.)<\/p>\n

\"Ugreen
\u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All three of these are Matter-compatible, although the reps at the booth insisted when asked about it that Ugreen would really prefer people use its own smart home products. (It also announced three new smart home cameras yesterday.) There\u2019s a built-in AI assistant called \u201cUliya\u201d that you can talk with to control those devices. As the representatives tried to demo the unit, it often just didn\u2019t respond to its wake phrase, although in Ugreen\u2019s defense, it was noisy in the area.<\/p>\n

\"Ugreen
\u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I actually had better luck getting it to respond. I got it to open some shades, for instance, although when I asked it to turn some smart lights pink, it played music on a nearby, also-newly-announced Ugreen smart speaker instead. Similar to other generative AI-based smart home assistants, it\u2019s slow. When you say \u201cHi Uliya\u201d (which might be one of the most awkward wake phrases I\u2019ve ever used) followed by your request, it processes for a few seconds before acknowledging and carrying it out.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Ugreen<\/div>
\t\t\t\t\u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo \t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n
\"Ugreen<\/div>
\t\t\t\t\u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo \t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n
\"Ugreen<\/div>
\t\t\t\t\u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo \t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

You can also ask the assistant to do things like play music you\u2019ve stored locally on the device. It wasn\u2019t clear if streaming services are supported yet. Much like Anker\u2019s MindBase, part of the pitch is that you can invoke Uliya to ask about events that occurred within sight of your cameras or search photos you\u2019ve backed up to the HomeAgent\u2019s internal storage.<\/p>\n

The differences appear to come down to technical prowess. The HA100 has the lowest-performing CPU, only 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and 64GB of built-in flash storage, for instance, while the highest-end $20,000 MA100 is equipped with an Nvidia Jetson Thor T5000\u2014good for \u201cup to 2,070 TFLOPS\u201d\u2014128GB of RAM, and a 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD. I\u2019m sure that makes for one of the best AI computers you can own, but sheesh, that price.<\/p>\n

Gizmodo is on the ground in Berlin all week bringing you everything you need to know about the tech unveiled at IFA 2026. You can follow our IFA 2026 live blog here and find all our coverage here.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/ugreen-masteragent-ma100-ai-smart-home-hub-2000807338″]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/app\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Ugreen-HomeAgent-HA100-main-1200×675.jpg”] At IFA 2026, I stumbled on a booth where Ugreen, a company I\u2019ve mostly known for its charging and USB-C hubs but that also makes NAS servers, has announced a new smart hub line that supports Matter, has a built-in AI assistant, and supports standard hard drives for NAS-style storage. If that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2129146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2129146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2129146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2129146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2129146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}