5 Costco Smart Home Electronics You Didn't Realize Existed

One reason people might want to get a Costco membership is because the warehouse store simply has everything, and in hefty quantities at that. Yes, you can get all of your staples like groceries, paper products, and medicine, but Costco also has sprawling selections in a variety of other departments, including fashion, gardening, and of course, technology.

Whether in its brick-and-mortar locations or online, you can buy new TVs from Costco along with all kinds of tech and electronics from appliances to smart home products. If you're looking to upgrade your home's tech setup, you can find a host of useful systems like security cameras and smart thermostats. In typical Costco fashion, though, that's only scratching the surface of what's available. Browsing the entire online catalog of smart tech products, there is all sorts of neat stuff you might not know even existed, and these are five of the most interesting.

We're fortunate to live in a time when air conditioning is widely available, especially on hot summer days. Even so, not everyone has access to central air or even a smart window-mounted AC unit, and sometimes an oscillating fan simply won't cut it when it's 93 degrees out. If you need a cooling solution you can take around the house with you, you can get Black+Decker's Smart Portable Air Conditioner at Costco.

This little stool-sized cooler on wheels is easy to cart around the house and ready to provide a pleasant, cooling breeze. Its primary function is as an air conditioner, though it also operates as an ordinary fan if you don't need cooling, as well as a dehumidifier. It comes with a remote for the basic functions, but if you want a more tailored cooling experience, you can sync the unit up to your smart home system via the Black+Decker app on iOS or Android. With full Amazon Alexa and Google Home support, you can set temperature controls, cooling schedules, and timers from your phone, as well as issue voice commands.

A ceiling fan generally has two purposes: To circulate air in a room and to look pretty while doing it. Most basic ceiling fans can do the latter well enough, but they often only have a couple of pre-set settings for rotation and, when applicable, lighting. Ideally, a ceiling fan is fully customizable to your needs, like with the Atomi Smart Indoor Ceiling Fan at Costco.

This sleek and stylish fan has full Alexa and Google Assistant support, allowing you to connect it to your existing smart home framework and control it via the Atomi app on your phone. Functions include the brightness, warmth, and color of its light and the speed of its rotation. With the Atomi app, you can customize the fan to spin in either direction at six different speeds, and set it for particular times of day. The DC motor is designed to be quiet, so you don't have to worry about it waking you up in the middle of the night. The fan comes in four different finishes to help it best match your décor: Slate Grey, Silver Grey, Brown Wood, and Pearl Black.

Setting up your home sprinkler system on a timer is nothing new, but in today's resource-conscious world, it's not particularly efficient to just blast your entire lawn with water every morning and forget about it. Instead, for a more carefully-tailored lawn care experience, you could pick up the Rachio 3 Smart Sprinkler Controller at Costco.

This smart controller is designed to easily patch into your home sprinkler system and replace the existing controller. Through the Rachio app, which is fully compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant, you can start, stop, and pause watering, as well as set timers and schedules. In addition to that, you can create an virtual map of your yard, supplemented with data about sun exposure and plant types. With this data, you can create a segmented watering schedule to provide more water for particularly thirsty plants while dialing it back elsewhere, as needed. The Rachio controller also pulls live data from nearby weather stations and can automatically pause watering if a rainstorm is on the way.

Managing a litter box is perhaps one of the least pleasant aspects of having a pet cat. It smells, the litter gets everywhere, and you have to put your hands closer to waste than you'd probably like to clean it all up. If ever there were a task made for robots, this would undoubtedly be one of them, and as it happens, you can facilitate that with a visit to Costco. Just look for the Whisker Litter-Robot 4 Smart Pet Litter Box.

While it's called a litter box," it might be more accurate to call this device a litter chute. After your cat finishes their business, the device begins its self-routine, which involves automatically sifting the litter and dumping the waste into a sealed, odor-locking waste drawer. It also has a built-in hopper you can feed fresh litter into, for automatic refilling. In addition, this smart litter box can be synced up with the Whisker app on your phone. This provides some helpful health info about your cat, such as how often they use the litter box and their current weight. You can also track litter and waste drawer levels so you know when it's time to empty things out.

Lighting is a key sector of the smart tech scene, with light bulbs that are controlled via smartphone becoming more common both inside and outside the home. However, not all of them are designed to be left outside long-term, as they may not be properly sealed against the elements or might need to be recharged. Of all the many different smart lights on the market, the true "set and forget" Enbrighten Permanent Outdoor Wi-Fi Eternity Lights from Costco are some of the most useful.

As the name implies, this ribbon of lights is designed to be installed outside: On your home's eaves, on the deck, or anywhere else you can think of, and stay there indefinitely. These Enbrighten lights are weather rated and can endure temperatures from -4 to 131 degrees Fahrenheit. You can connect multiple strands together, or even cut them without impacting functionality. Once the lights are set up, you can control them from the Enbrighten app, which can also sync up with Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant for voice commands. There's a multitude of colors, modes, and dimming available, as well as cool effects like strobing and fading, which is helpful for setting up holiday spectacles.