(hip hop music)
- Forget OLED screens, forget E Ink.
The hottest new display in tech is wood.
This is Mui and it's basically
an internet connected
block of wood that acts
as a smart home hub.
So this is the Mui and this
is how you touch to wake.
And, as you can see, the
interface is pretty minimalistic
and there's five icons on
the screen that represent
it's different functionalities.
So this one controls or this
one shows you the weather.
And you can swipe across the screen
to go to the different menus.
This one shows what song
is playing on your Spotify.
Unfortunately, you can't really choose
from your playlist on
the screen like this.
It's more just an interface display
that you control through
the app on your phone.
Let's swipe again and you can see that
it connects to the smart home hub.
You can control your home temperature
if you have a smart thermostat like Nest.
Swipe one more time and
this one connects to
any smart lighting products you might have
like the Philips Hue.
You can control how bright you
want your light bulbs to be.
There's a slight lag.
And this button here is
for Google Assistant.
Unfortunately, you can't use a
wake word like "Okay Google".
You have to tap the button on the screen.
But you can say "What's
the weather in Las Vegas"?
And it'll display its
response on the screen.
A little bit slowly, so
let's give it some time.
So the designers intentionally left
pretty much half the block blank
and that was a purposeful decision for
the sake of minimalism
and it looks pretty good,
but sometimes it does cut
off the responses there.
So what I like about the Mui is that,
although it basically
does the same thing as
an Amazon Echo Show or a Google Home Hub
where it's basically a display
for your smart home hub.
This is a block of wood.
It's an internet connected block of wood
and its unique and, instead of just being
a device in your home, it's
actually a part of your home
as furniture and I can really see them
selling this at Ikea or a lot
of design home goods stores.
It's really just a
beautiful block of wood.
So the Mui just finished a
successful Kickstarter project
and it's launching next week on
Indiegogo InDemand for $549.
If you want more videos like this
check out the Verge.
