The PITAKA MagHive Is a Beautiful Wall-Mounted Smart Dashboard

Everyone is trying to get into the smart home game right now—at CES, it seemed like about half of all the products on display were some sort smart home thing. Smart refrigerators, smart washing machines, smart coffee makers—the list goes on and on. And, with Amazon, Google, and Apple all throwing their considerable resources into the ring, you have to wonder why anyone would try to introduce a new central hub.

Then you see how pretty the PITAKA MagHive is, and you kind of get it. Right off the bat, the nicely finished wood hexagons that make up the structure of MagHive make it stand out. Each of those hexagons is a module, and multiple modules can be snapped together to form your ideal dashboard.

The centerpiece module contains a 5" screen, and displays all of the usual smart assistant sorts of information. It can give you reminders, show you your texts, warn you about bad weather, and so on. Other modules include a Qi wireless charger and an NFC reader, both of which are magnetic so they can hold your phone or keys.

Interestingly, PITAKA even has a magnetic charging base for the Google Home and Amazon Alexa. That means they’re both aware that you likely already own one of those, and that they think the two systems will work well together. That’s actually good news, because it means that the MagHive is intended more as an add-on accessory than as a replacement.