Athom has unveiled the Homey Portal, a compact, wall- or table-mounted control device designed to streamline room-specific smart home management and shared household tasks, signalling a shift towards dedicated physical interfaces over apps or voice assistants.
Athom has launched a compact controller called Homey Portal, betting that the next step in the smart home is not another app or speaker, but a shared control point that anyone in the room can use. Unveiled at IFA in Berlin, the device combines a 2.8-inch circular touchscreen with a stainless-steel rotary ring and is now open for pre-order at an introductory £249, €249 or $249, before rising to £299, €299 or $299. Reports from T3, Android Authority and Tweakers say shipments are expected before the end of 2026.
The product is aimed at a familiar weakness in connected homes: many systems are technically integrated, but in practice still depend on one person’s phone. Homey Portal is designed to sit on a table or fix to a wall, with each unit tied to a specific Homey zone such as a kitchen or living room. That means one screen can be dedicated to the devices in that space, rather than acting as a general-purpose tablet for the whole house. Matterhome notes that the screen can surface devices from that zone and its nested sub-zones, while shortcuts can still reach elsewhere in the home.
In daily use, the Portal is built around short physical actions rather than menus. Android Authority says a tap can switch lights or launch saved Homey Flows, while twisting the ring changes settings that naturally suit a dial, such as brightness, speaker volume or a thermostat target. T3 and Tweakers both report support for audio systems including Sonos and Denon HEOS, with album art and track details shown on screen. For heating and cooling, reports name Nest, Tado and Honeywell thermostats. Matterhome adds that users can pin devices, Moods and Flows to several shortcut pages, and even assign a double tap to a single quick action.
The screen is also intended to handle prompts and shared household tasks that are awkward on a personal handset. According to T3 and Matterhome, the Portal can show live camera feeds, present yes-or-no questions from Homey Flow, and offer a fast route to actions such as unlocking a smart door after a video doorbell alert. That shared-screen approach also shapes Athom’s pitch for offices, holiday lets and other communal spaces. Launch coverage says access can be limited so visitors get control over essentials such as lighting or climate without being exposed to private cameras or deeper automations.
Notebookcheck’s report suggests Athom has put more computing into the device than its small size implies. It lists a proximity sensor, a built-in speaker, an ARM Cortex-A55 quad-core processor and USB-C power, while Matterhome says the box includes a 1.5-metre cable and power adapter alongside both the desk stand and wall mount. Notebookcheck also reports that the home screen can be personalised, and that the assigned room’s devices appear automatically once the Portal has been configured in the Homey app. It adds that small apps for timers, weather forecasts and energy use are part of the package.
That ecosystem dependence is central to understanding the launch. Homey Portal is not a new smart-home hub in its own right, and Matterhome is explicit that it is not a standalone Matter controller. Instead, it is an interface layer for an existing Homey setup. Reports say it works with Homey Cloud, Homey Pro, Homey Pro mini and Homey Self-Hosted Server, with Matterhome specifying compatibility with Homey Pro models from 2023 to 2026 and noting that the mobile app is required for setup. Hackster adds that Homey Cloud has a free tier for up to five devices, while Homey Self-Hosted Server is priced at $4.99 a month or $149 for a lifetime licence.
Athom is presenting the device as a design statement as well as a control surface. Hackster quotes chief executive Stefan Witkamp saying: “We’ve always wanted a smart home to feel as simple as flipping a light switch,” and describing the Portal as “our first built specifically around a screen, giving people a direct, physical way to control their home instead of doing everything through an app.” That point matters because the Portal is not trying to replace a voice assistant, tablet or hub on specification alone. Its real test will be whether households see value in placing several dedicated controllers around the home. What Athom has clearly delivered, however, is a more focused answer to smart-home sprawl: one that treats room-by-room access, physical control and shared use as the product, rather than as afterthoughts.
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