Mui's new smart display is a touch-sensitive plank of wood

As excited as we are by continued growth of the smart home market, it'd be a waste if we didn't see design smarts to match the technology on offer. Enter Mui, a Japanese manufacturer now showcasing its first wooden smart display at CES 2019.

Shaped like a simple wooden plan, the Mui smart display houses a touch-sensitive interface in the surface of the wood.

This allows it to display visual data outputs and touch-control functions like a thermostat, clock, weather information, dimmer controls for your lights, text-based messages or slogans, and even a way to access your voicemail.

The Mui display comes with Google Assistant, though you can choose to have the AI's responses displayed via text instead of audio.

You may have to wait a while to see this come to market – it's shipping in September, but only to backers of its closed Kickstarter campaign to start – but if there's more from Mui to come, the future of smart home looks slick.

CES 2019: check out everything we see at the Las Vegas expo

Back in style

As much as we're here to scout out the big hitters like Samsung and LG, some of the best highlights from CES each year are in the small but notable innovations across the home technology market.

Smart speakers like the Amazon Echo or Google Home have cottoned onto demand for more stylish devices, ones that are as much part of the decor as they are your smart home network. Amazon's iconic speaker has ditched its industrial tin design for a more attractive mesh fabric in recent years, while the flagship Google Home speaker is more in line with the shape of a candle holder or wine glass.