Forbes Vetted Names Expert Panel for 2026 Smart Home Awards

Forbes Vetted has published a feature introducing the outside experts who will help judge its 2026 Smart Home Awards, the outlet's annual roundup of connected-home products. The "Meet the Experts" piece is the panel-introduction stage of that program, arriving ahead of the full awards list.

Who Is on Forbes Vetted's 2026 Smart Home Awards Panel?

Forbes Vetted's own report is the only available account of the panel's makeup, and the summary provided to this desk did not include the specific names, titles, or affiliations of the experts involved. Readers looking for that roster should consult the Forbes Vetted piece directly, since republishing names or credentials without confirming them against the original would risk misattributing expertise that Forbes has not yet detailed in the material available here.

What Is Forbes Vetted's Smart Home Awards Program?

Forbes Vetted runs its Smart Home Awards as part of a broader lineup of category-specific product awards the outlet produces across consumer verticals. The 2026 edition follows the same basic structure signaled by the headline: an editorial team pairs its own testing with outside specialists before finalizing winners. Beyond that framing, the source material available does not specify judging categories, submission criteria, or a publication date for the full winners list, so this account stops short of describing those details.

Why Does Expert Vetting Matter for Smart Home Devices Now?

Third-party vetting has become more relevant to smart home shoppers as the underlying technology keeps shifting. A recent connectivity standard update covered by Smart Home Central illustrates the point: the update to Matter, the cross-brand smart home protocol, is aimed at simplifying how devices from different manufacturers connect to one another, according to Smart Home Central's report on the Matter update. Changes like that affect which products actually work together in a household, which is precisely the kind of interoperability question an awards panel of outside experts would be positioned to evaluate.

What Other Smart Home Standards Are Changing in 2026?

Interoperability at the protocol level is not the only place where the smart home category has been evolving. On the usability side, Smart Home Central has also reported on best practices for naming devices so that automation scenes stay readable for the people actually using them, rather than only for the person who set the system up, according to Smart Home Central's guidance on naming smart home devices. Taken together, the connectivity and naming coverage points to two separate pressure points — whether devices can talk to each other, and whether the resulting setup is usable day to day — that any credible smart home awards program would need experts to weigh in on.

Where Can Readers Find the Full List of Judges?

The definitive source for the panel's composition remains Forbes Vetted's own "Meet the Experts" article. Readers who want the complete list of judges, their backgrounds, and any stated criteria for the 2026 Smart Home Awards should go directly to that piece rather than to secondary coverage, since Forbes controls the primary record of who is on the panel and what standards the awards will apply this cycle.

Forbes has not indicated, based on the material available, when the full winners list will publish. Coverage of the connectivity and usability trends shaping this year's field — including the Matter protocol update and device-naming conventions — will continue to inform how outside observers judge whether Forbes Vetted's eventual picks reflect the state of the smart home market heading into the rest of 2026.

What Should Shoppers Do Before the Winners List Publishes?

Until Forbes Vetted releases its full 2026 Smart Home Awards list, shoppers weighing new purchases have limited options for anticipating which products will earn recognition. The safest approach is to track the underlying trends the panel will likely weigh rather than guess at specific winners. That means watching how the Matter update affects cross-brand compatibility in practice, since interoperability failures are the kind of flaw an expert panel would be expected to penalize, per Smart Home Central's report on the Matter update. It also means paying attention to setup usability, including naming conventions covered in Smart Home Central's guidance on naming smart home devices, since a device that works well only for its original installer is unlikely to score well with outside reviewers.