One of the biggest detractors to living in an apartment over your own home is a lack of freedom when it comes to upgrading your apartment’s technology, specifically when it requires changes that are forbidden by the landlord. We’ve compiled a list of 10 tech upgrades that will make your life easier while still keeping your property manager happy.

Concerned about your safety and belongings in your apartment?

Interested in home security, but you aren’t allowed to run wires through the walls in your apartment? Check out Canary, a wireless home security alarm solution. The device is placed at a central location in your apartment and connects to your home’s Wi-Fi network. Using a learning algorithm, the device learns when you are typically home versus when you are not. If the Canary senses motion at an abnormal time, the owner receives a smartphone notification and recorded HD video of the event.

The owner can also tune in live at any time, sound a siren or contact the authorities if there’s any trouble. On top of that, it keeps records of when people come and go to the home as well as use cloud storage to save video / audio over the last 90 days. As an added bonus, the device also tracks air quality, temperature and humidity in the home for health benefits.

Pricing: The Canary is a relatively new product that hasn’t seen much of a price reduction yet. The retail cost is $249 and the device is available at Amazon, Best Buy, Home Depot and Verizon stores. If you purchase it directly from the company, it comes with a 60-day money back guarantee if you decide it’s not the right gadget for you.

Are bulky chargers making your furniture stick out?

Want all the benefits of USB charging without swapping out outlet hardware or setting up a USB charging station? Take a look at the SnapPower USB Charger, a simple outlet covering that adds a single USB charging station with just a turn of a screwdriver. The unique design of the outlet plate draws power from the screws on the side of the existing outlet. It’s also completely flat to the fall, ideal for small apartments that have limited space for furniture.

The SnapPower USB Charger comes in two designs and three colors, based off the type of outlets in your apartment. To install, you basically just remove the existing outlet cover and screw on the new cover. When you are ready to move to a new apartment or home, it’s easy to retrieve the hardware and replace it with the old plates. This will keep your landlord happy and give you USB charging without the bulky charger.

Pricing:  At the moment, you can only purchase the SnapPower outlet cover from the company that’s making it: LINK. Preorder pricing is based on the volume of your order. Purchasing a single cover will cost $20 while purchasing 5 covers brings the cost down to $16 each. The outlet covers are expected to ship during September 2015.

Does your apartment lack outlets?

Obviously, it’s easy to expand the number those outlets you have by purchasing a power strip. However, it’s not easy to hide a large power strip in an apartment or fit multiple, bulky chargers on a single strip. Enter the Pivot Power strip, a flexible strip that can be transformed into a variety of shapes.

For instance, you could wrap the power strip around a leg of an end table, effectively hiding the strip from guests. The strip also offers surge protection as well as four feet of cord to reach your nearest outlet.

Pricing:  The Pivot Power retails for $20, however you should be able to find it on sale consistently between $13 and $15 at Amazon. It comes in a variety of colors as well, ideal for anyone that’s decorated their apartment recently.

Love cooking, but hate your apartment’s unreliable appliances?

Arriving in Fall 2015, the Meld Knob is a high-tech automated cooking solution that replaces an existing burner knob on your stove. The knob automatically turns the burner to lower and raise temperature based off temperature readings being received from the Meld Clip. The clip attaches to existing cookware that you already own and measures temperature within 1 degree of the food’s actual temperature.

Utilizing the included mobile app, the user can browse through existing recipes as well as upload their own recipes. Communicating with the mobile device, the knob knows exactly how long to cook your meal as well as the appropriate time to stop cooking completely.

Pricing: The knob was fully funded on Kickstarter this year at a $99 preorder price and is expected to retail for $149 later this year, likely available on Amazon and other Web retailers.

Looking to add an extra A/C window unit in your apartment?

As summer temps are climbing, the need to reliable air conditioning is a must. Take a look at Quirky’s Aros, a smart window air conditioner that was developed in partnership with GE. Learning from your living habits similar to the Nest thermostat, the Aros uses your smartphone’s GPS to determine the best time to fire up before you arrive home.

It also uses a predictive algorithm to determine the temperatures you will like at different times of day. Using a mobile application, an Aros user can track an estimate of how much you have spent on cooling each day and compare that against the national average.

Pricing: The device currently retails for $249.99 and is found at Amazon and Walmart. While sales will be scarce during the summer months, look for the best price at the end of summer. Last September, the price on the Aros dipped down as low as $180 as summer came to a close and inventory was still high.

Do you have horrible central air / heat in your apartment?

Some apartments are notorious for having terrible air flow in different rooms, either the room is too hot or it’s too cold. Ideal for apartment roommates that can’t agree on the temperature, the Keen Smart Vent is a replacement vent for existing air flow vents in most apartments. Powered by four AA batteries, the vent connects to the home’s Wi-Fi network and automatically opens or closes the vent based off the existing temperature in the room.

Similar to other learning devices, the vent will tech itself the best pattern for the person using the room. It can also be controlled manually from a mobile device, but it’s specifically designed to work autonomously.

Pricing: The vents are expected to start shipping in Summer 2015 and can be preordered for a price of $145 for two vents (MSRP: $180). Similar to the SnapPower outlet cover, the price per vent will fall based on the volume of your order.

Do you have a windowless bedroom in your apartment?

Are you subleasing a “bedroom” (probably a closet) in an expensive city like New York or Los Angeles? Does your bedroom simply lack a window? You need the Philips Wake-up Light, an alarm clock that simulates sunlight pouring into your room at the start of each morning. It can also be used as a bedside lamp at night at a variety of different intensities.

Ideally, you should place the clock a couple feet from your head on a bedside table and allow it to slowly wake you up with light. Of course, the alarm clock also includes a standard alarm, FM radio as well as simulated birds chirping to go along with the light.

Pricing: Philips sells multiple models of this design for prices between $69.99 and $99.99. Look for discounts up to 25 to 30 percent off the original MSRP frequently at retailers like Amazon and Walgreens. The device can also be purchased from Philips directly.

Hate fumbling for your keys at your apartment’s front door?

Assuming you have a landlord that’s willing to let you swap out your front door deadbolt, check out the Kwikset Kevo. While there are multiple types of smart locks that interact with your smartphone, this is one of the only models that provides a physical key for the landlord to carry as well as look similar to existing hardware in an apartment complex.

Using Bluetooth connectivity with your mobile device, all you have to do is tap the lock when you arrive home and it will unlock due to the proximity of your smartphone. You can also provide access to guests by supplying a guest eKey that expires after 24 hours. Basically, you can let someone into your apartment without having to be physically at the location. Of course, if your smartphone dies, you always have a physical key as a backup to unlock the door.

Pricing: Retailing for $219 at stores such as Amazon, Home Depot, Lowes, Best Buy and Newegg, you can often find the Kevo on sale at the $199 price point. Amazon occasionally drops the price to $180, but the lowest recorded price to date was $150 at Sears during April.

Want whole-home audio without running wires through walls?

Easily one of the most popular wireless solutions for whole-home audio, the Sonos Play:1 speakers are a compact audio solution that lets you stream music simultaneously to all Wi-Fi connected Sonos speakers. The music you are listening to in your kitchen can carry over to the living room, bedroom and any other room in your apartment.

There are also more robust speakers in the Sonos line, if you need a more expansive sound across a larger space. Music can be controlled from a Wi-Fi connected mobile device, either playing from a personal collection or all the streaming music services available today.

Pricing: The bad news is that wireless comes at a price. A single Sonos Play:1 speaker runs $199 and the more robust speakers run between $299 and $399. However, you can find deals on a set of two Sonos Play:1 speakers at a $349 price point at retailers such as Amazon, Crutchfield, Best Buy and World Wide Stereo. During Christmas sales, you will also find discounts on a single Sonos Play:1 speaker as low as $160.

Hate setting off your apartment’s obnoxious smoke detectors?

Many apartments have smoke detectors placed near the kitchen with a sensitivity that alerts the entire apartment to some slightly burnt toast. Enter the Nest Protect, a combination smoke and carbon monoxide detector that allows you to simply wave off the alarm rather than seek out your step stool to reach the ceiling.

Connecting to your mobile devices over Wi-Fi, the advanced hardware sends messages when the batteries are running low as well as constantly runs a test nightly to make sure everything is working. It also uses a human voice alert to specifically identify the problem as well as the area of the home that set off the alarm.

Pricing: At a $99 MSRP, you can find the 2nd generation Nest Protect coming soon to retailers such as Best Buy, Home Depot, Amazon and the company site. Sales on the device are extremely infrequent, rarely dropping below $90. However, the device originally debuted at a $129 price point, thus the reduced MSRP could be considered a deal for people that aren’t early adopters.

10 Awesome Tech Upgrades for Apartment Dwellers

Announced earlier today in a press release, Amazon has added multi-room audio playback to all Echo hardware. This means you can synchronize music across multiple Amazon Echo devices in your home. The song you are playing in your kitchen can also be played on the other side of the house in your bedroom.

This functionality is ideal for parties or generally anyone moving all over the house all the time. In addition, Amazon will let you group specific sets of Echos for music playback. If you only wanted to play the speakers downstairs, you would setup an Echo group with all the devices on the first floor.

All of this is integrated into Alexa voice control as well. For instance, you would be able to say something like “Alexa, play Taylor Swift upstairs,” and all the Echo devices upstairs will play all the music Swifties can handle.

At launch, Amazon is currently supporting Amazon Music, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and Pandora. Support for Spotify and SiriusXM is in the works and coming soon. Amazon is also working with speaker manufacturers to integrate Alexa into speakers directly to support multi-room audio.

Amazon is the new Budget Multi-Room Audio Leader

With a software update, Amazon just moved into 1st place when it comes to cost. If you don’t have any speakers yet, purchasing a Dot + a speaker is significantly cheaper than going the Sonos route. Here’s an example:

An Echo Dot + a VAUX Cordless Home Speaker (designed for the Echo to drop into) will run you about $90 most of the time. Let’s say you purchase five of these for different rooms in your home. That will run you about $450.

Conversely, if you go with the base model Sonos speaker, the Play:1, that’s going to cost you $199 a speaker. Five speakers will run you roughly $1000, more than twice the price of the Amazon alternative!

However, the true value of the Echo is that it doesn’t force you into a specific, expensive speaker ecosystem. An Echo Dot can be attached to any speaker system in your home to tie it into a whole home, multi-room audio system.

If you have speakers already (which most people do), you don’t actually have to buy anything beyond an Echo Dot. The Dot occasionally goes on sale for $35, an ideal time to stock up if you are going the multi-room audio route.

Any Downsides?

Yes, Amazon’s multi-room audio system doesn’t appear to be tied into Apple Music. While you can connect directly from a smartphone to an Echo device to play music within Apple Music’s app, Alexa functionality currently isn’t available. That functionality that requires a Sonos for multi-room (for now).

However, you can upload your iTunes music into the Amazon cloud in order to take advantage of Alexa. Another option would be to setup a media server in your home, like Plex, in order to have a central location for all your music.

Goodbye Sonos? Echo devices just got multi-room audio for free

Launching on Kickstarter first, the HUB by ekko is a Wi-Fi enabled system for managing wireless audio. Available in two or four puck configurations, HUB users just plug a set of headphones into one of the pucks.

Ideal for anyone living in an apartment with thin walls, multiple people can listen to the same audio source over headphones without disturbing anyone.

Of course, you could also plug a set of speakers into each puck and create a situation where you can distribute audio over Wi-Fi into mulitple rooms of your home. The volume and equalizer levels of each puck can be controlled using a smartphone app, ideal for creating a balance throughout a home or simply for increasing volume on headphones or speakers for anyone that’s hard of hearing.

Each puck has a 4.5 hour battery life and roughly a 50 foot range from the audio source. Interestingly, you can purchase mulitple HUBs and connect up to 10 people to the same audio source. It’s able to broadcast 96 kHz / 24-bit audio, basically studio quality sound to either headphones or speakers. Ideal for parents, the parental control options on the smartphone app include safe volume settings as well as real-time usage monitoring.

Besides hard-wiring the main HUB station to an audio source like a home theater receiver, users can also stream music over AirPlay or DLNA. That includes support for services such as Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer, Amaozn Music and Google Play. Besides mobile devices, music can be streamed from Windows or Mac devices on the same Wi-Fi network.

Be aware that since this is a Kickstarter project, delivery of the HUB isn’t happening any time soon. The creators of the device are promising a July 2017 delivery date for the first round of HUB devices. These are being funded at $169 for the HUB Mini (2 pucks) and $249 for the HUB (4 pucks). There are mulitple funding levels for early backers as well.

You can check out a video about the HUB streaming device below as well as additional pictures of the HUB in action.

Check out HUB by ekko on Kickstarter

Shut Up and Take My Money: HUB Wi-Fi audio pucks for headphones

Looking to help someone upgrade their personal home theater this year? One of the nice things about having a personal home theater is getting the surround sound benefits of a real theater without having to put up with the annoying sounds of people talking on their cell phones, babies and young children making noise or chatterboxes commenting about everything that’s happening on the screen. Check out our picks from some of the best home theater tech that would make great gifts this year.

Buy This Gift for Someone Who Wants Streaming 4K Video

Definitely a solid upgrade for anyone with an older streaming set-top box like the early Roku boxes or an Apple TV, the Roku 4 (reviewed here) is one of the top set-top boxes to access applications like Netflix, Hulu Plus, VUDU and Amazon Instant Video. Able to stream 4K Ultra HD video at 60 frames per second, other features of the Roku 4 include a remote control finder, universal search across all apps and 802.11ac MIMO Wi-Fi connectivity. (The new 4K Amazon Fire TV at $99 is also available, but we DO NOT recommend it.)

MSRP: $129 | Lowest Price on Ben’s: n/a

Check Amazon for Roku 4

Buy This Gift for Someone Who Wants Dolby Atmos / DTS:X Audio

Ideal for someone with speaker already, the Onkyo TX-NR646 7.2-Channel Network A/V Receiver will bump up a home theater into the 4K world. Including decoding for the newest audio formats like Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, this receiver supports both the HDCP 2.2 and HDMI 2.0, both requirements for HDMI transfers from modern Ultra HD televisions. It also includes built-in Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Airplay for streaming music from services like Pandora and Spotify.

MSRP: $699 | Lowest Price on Ben’s: n/a

Check Price on Amazon

Buy This Gift for Someone Who Hates Their Cable Box

While cable companies are catching up slowly, TiVo is still a superior company when it comes to user interface and the quality of the software on DVR boxes. Enter the TiVo Bolt, a killer DVR box that offers 4K Ultra HD recording and a commercial break skip option that will zip you through your favorite show. The base model of the Bolt can record 4 shows at once with a 500 GB recording capacity.

MSRP: $299 | Lowest Price on Ben’s: n/a

Check Price on Amazon

Buy This Gift for Someone Who Needs to Protect their Home Theater

It’s surprising how often people purchase expensive televisions and home theater systems, but neglect to protect their investment with a powerful surge protector. While Monster has actually produced a decent line of these devices, we are partial to the Tripp Lite HT10DBS surge protector. This hardcore surge protector provides 3840 joules of total protection and includes connections for coaxial cable, the home phone line and the high speed Internet line.

MSRP: $139 | Lowest Price on Ben’s: $48

Check Amazon for Tripp Lite surge protector

Buy This Gift to Upgrade Audio in a Bedroom / Office / Apartment

Using a full home theater setup with a large 12-inch subwoofer is not ideal for small rooms or apartments. It’s tough to fit tons of large speakers into a small area and can rattle your neighbors if living in a multi-unit apartment. That’s where the Yamaha ATS-1030 soundbar comes in. This 35-inch soundbar provides a much higher quality of audio than speakers built into a television while keeping the volume tolerable for small or shared spaces.

MSRP: $249 | Lowest Price on Ben’s: $150

Check Price on Amazon

Buy This Gift for Someone Who Isn’t Happy with a “Small” 60-inch HDTV

Definitely a great gift for someone with a room in their home dedicated to a home theater, the Optoma HD28DSE projector offers 1080p playback as well as 3D playback for those who like to wear the glasses. Providing 3,000 lumens of total brightness, you can easily project a 107-inch image from 12 feet away. The lamp life is rated up to around 4,000 hours depending on brightness levels, and the projector includes two HDMI inputs if connecting a secondary video source like a gaming console.

MSRP: $799 | Lowest Price on Ben’s: n/a

Check Price on Amazon

Buy This Gift for Someone Who Already Has an A/V Receiver

Ideal for someone setting up their first 7.1 system, the Onkyo SKS-HT540 7.1 Channel speaker system is an extremely well-reviewed speaker package that includes a solid 130-watt rating per speaker and a powerful 230-watt, 10-inch subwoofer. The speakers have a fairly small footprint compared to large, floorstanding models and are ideal for content with significant directional audio effects such as action movies or video games.

MSRP: $349 | Lowest Price on Ben’s: $150

Check Price on Amazon

Buy This Gift for Someone Who Hates Having Seven Remote Controls

While the Harmony Elite is getting great reviews, we actually recommend going with a previous generation model due to the high $300+ price tags of the new Harmony models. Check out the Harmony Touch Universal Remote (with color touchscreen) at a $100 sale price ($200 MSRP) or the Logitech Harmony Home at a $75 sale price ($150 MSRP). Both will give you significant control over the remotes currently lost in your couch cushions.

MSRP: $199 | Lowest Price on Ben’s: $100

Search Ben’s for Harmony Remotes

Upgrade That Home Theater: Eight Great Gift Ideas for 2015