One of the things about following the connected home (or any market for that matter) for a long time is you sometimes see old concepts made new again. And sometimes, just sometimes, it kinda works.
This appears to be the case with Loop, a new connected home display. The device, announced today by startup California Labs, is an in-home display device that reminds me of some of the early digital photo frames that hit the market nearly a decade ago, but unlike those early products from companies like Kodak, the Loop is bigger, more connected and does a lot more.
And that's the thing. Often times new devices fail simply because they were too early and the technology available isn't enough at the right price point to make for compelling consumer products. The road to the online video market is scattered with carcasses of good ideas that were just too soon and not interesting enough (Media Center Extenders anyone?). But Loop looks like it was born in the right era and can do enough interesting things to possibly find a market.
What makes the Loop different? First off, it's got both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and it uses those connections to access popular repositories for your photos like
But what is most interesting about Loop is what's to come. The device has an embedded camera in it, and it also has power to display video as well. So not only will you eventually be able to play a curated YouTube channel or your GoPro vids, with the on-board mic (which they aren't playing up at this point) the Loop could become a low-cost video conferencing station with apps like Skype at some point. Add in the Loop's embedded gesture recognition technology, and the device starts to look like an intelligent device that could become not only an intelligent screen to browse your cloud content in a curated way, but it could - and this is where I put my speculative hat on - act as a connected home interface.
The device itself looks old-school, a nod to the age of analog and radio with its thick base and giant rotary analog knob. If you don't want to just use the big rotary knob (what's wrong with you by the way?), you can use the app to control the Loop and also have some interaction through a touch interface on the top of the device. Adding to the throwback feeling of the Loop is a big leather strap on the back that allows you to pick up the device and carry it around the home.
I asked California Labs CEO Brian Gannon about the old-timey design and he said this was a conscious choice. They felt that in an age of ice-cold iPad-like sameness for most displays, a thicker, warmer, and decidedly more analog looking device would help them stand out. That's not a bad idea, mostly because I think the biggest competition for devices like this are tablets themselves. Many iPads double as digital photo albums, and convincing a person to spend $200 on a dedicated device could be a tough sell, especially when you can pick up Amazon Fire Tablets on, well, a fire sale at similar or even lower price points than the Loop ($199 presale, $299 standard).
On the high end, the Loop also faces competition from connected TVs, most of which incorporate Wi-Fi and USB ports for accessing photos and videos. But unlike that 50" monster you picked up last Black Friday. the Loop is lower cost and portable, not to mention something that can fit on nearly any surface.
Gannon and his coworkers are hoping that in today's connected home consumers want a dedicated, shared display that doesn't double as a personal gaming device or e-reader. He may be right. The biggest challenge I think they'll have is convincing folks to spend $199 and, eventually, $299 on a limited function device. My feeling is they'll need to come down and try to hit the $99 price point as fast as possible.
Either way, we'll see soon enough, as the device ships next summer and is available for preorder today.
Michael Wolf is a connected home analyst for NextMarket. Read his weekly newsletter here.
