The Smart Home Hub That Doesn't Phone Home ↗

Anker showed off the MindBase at IFA, and it’s the first smart home hub in years that doesn’t read like a hostage negotiation.

The pitch: an on-device language model on a removable AI Core card (26 TOPS), so your camera analysis and automation logic never leave the house. 64GB internal plus up to 48TB of your own drives — it’s effectively a NAS for your footage. No monthly subscription. And instead of demanding you buy into Anker’s ecosystem, it works as a Matter 1.5 hub and talks to Apple Home, Alexa, Google Home, and Home Assistant.

That last part is the tell. Every smart home product is secretly a land grab for your data and your wallet. The subscription is the giveaway — $10 a month forever for the privilege of your own doorbell footage. MindBase is betting that local-first is the feature, not the compromise.

The catch: no pricing or release date yet, and pricing is the entire ballgame. A $400 local hub is a statement. A $900 local hub is a hobby.

Still, this is the direction the category has to go. The cloud subscription model was always a tax on convenience, and the privacy cost was worse than the money. If MindBase ships at a sane price, it’s the first hub I’d recommend to someone starting fresh.