According to PCWorld, IAI Smart is unveiling a new line of Emerson Smart appliances at CES that feature built-in, offline voice control. The products, which include tower fans priced from $89.99 to $119.99, space heaters from $129.99 to $169.99, and air fryers at $129.99 and $169.99, use proprietary SmartVoice technology. This tech embeds natural-language processing directly into each device, allowing them to respond to wake words like “Hey Fan” without any smart speaker, app, or broadband connection. All voice processing and data stay local, meaning your commands and usage data never leave your home. The lineup also includes SmartVoice Electrical Plugs starting at $24.99 to control other devices. This approach is being pitched as a solution for privacy-conscious users or those with poor internet connectivity.
The offline smart home pitch
Here’s the thing: this is a genuinely clever solution to some very real smart home headaches. We’ve all had that moment where the Wi-Fi drops and suddenly your lights are dumb again. Or you wonder just what Amazon or Google is doing with all those voice snippets. Emerson Smart is basically cutting out the middleman—and the cloud—entirely. Your fan hears “Hey Fan, turn on,” processes that command on a chip inside it, and spins up. That’s it. No round-trip to a server farm. For privacy and reliability, that’s a compelling argument. And for a company looking to stand out in a crowded market, it’s a sharp angle.
Ambitions and limitations
But let’s be real about the limitations. This is “smart” in a very narrow, pre-programmed sense. The air fryer supports over 1,000 commands, which sounds impressive, but it’s still a closed system. You can’t ask it, “Hey Air Fryer, how do I cook a perfect steak?” like you might ask Google. You’re stuck with its preset library. It’s voice-activated automation, not artificial intelligence. And that’s fine! For turning a fan on or setting a heater timer, it’s probably all you need. The question is whether people will see enough value in this specific, offline convenience to choose it over the broader, connected ecosystem of Alexa or Google Home, where one speaker can control everything. I think the market might be niche, but passionate.
The bigger picture and history
Now, it’s worth noting this isn’t a brand-new idea. As PCWorld points out, Simple Human had a voice-activated trash can back in 2020. That product, like these, processed commands locally. So the underlying tech has been around. What’s different here is the scale—applying it across a whole suite of common household appliances. Emerson Smart is starting with the basics: fans, heaters, plugs. It’s a smart way to test the waters. If these sell, you can bet we’ll see it in bigger, more complex appliances. But there‘s a risk. Building this proprietary voice tech into every single device probably isn’t cheap. It could limit their ability to compete on price against dumber appliances or even against internet-connected ones that leverage the cheaper, centralized processing of an existing smart speaker.
Who is this for, really?
So who’s the buyer? It’s not the tech enthusiast who’s already all-in on Apple Home or Amazon’s ecosystem. It’s someone who wants a dash of convenience but is deeply skeptical of connected devices. Think about older homes with spotty Wi-Fi, or people in rural areas with data caps. Or just anyone who’s read one too many stories about IoT security flaws. For them, a heater that just works when you talk to it—no setup, no passwords, no updates—could be a minor revelation. It’s a different vision for the smart home: not a unified, learning brain, but a bunch of independent, single-purpose helpers. Whether that vision has mass appeal is the big gamble Emerson Smart is taking at CES this year.
