With the advancements in technology, there has been no better time to create your very own smart home. There are devices that turn on your lights, clean your house, control your thermostat and a whole lot more. Let’s check out the best smart gadgets and devices for home.
We have tested in several categories such as features, availability, performance, design and overall value being the most important factors.
Table of Contents
Smart Home Assistant
If you’re planning out to buy your smart home assistant, take a look at the best speakers for Amazon Alexa and Google assistant.
The best smart speaker for use with Alexa is the Amazon echo. It integrates with your Amazon account to easily control your devices. It has a stylish look with five colors to choose from and surprisingly the sound quality is really good, especially when compared to the echo dot.
If you’re just getting started with Alexa, the Amazon echo is our recommendation as the first speaker. It’s affordable with the list price of $99.99 and you can often find it on sale for much less.
If you prefer Google assistant, we would recommend you the Google Home. As the first voice-activated speaker, you should consider for controlling your smart home devices.
Even though it looks like an air freshener, it has a stylish design that looks better in our home than expected for its size.
It has good sound quality with excellent voice recognition capabilities.. Multiple accounts can be linked using the Google Home app for personalized responses. It retails for $129 and it’s occasionally on sale for less than a $100.
Smart Plug
A great starter for any smart home is a smart plug. Wemo mini smart plug is simple and easy to use. It gives you voice control of your lights or any other appliance that you plug into it.
It works with both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant unlike some of the other smart plugs available. It won’t block adjacent outlets.
The Wemo mini smart plug list price is $34.99.
Smart Light
Our pick for the best smart lighting is the philips hue family of products. All of these products are compatible with Alexa and Google assistant.
Even though they’re not the least expensive and require the Philips smart hub to operate, we chose them due to the large number of products they offer for lighting your home.
Making an existing lighting system easier, we would recommend getting one of their starter kits with the smart hub included. The white 4-pack starter kit lists for around $100. It goes on sale quite often.
Smart Switch
As well as, for controlling these dumb lights you may need a tp-link WiFi light switch. In addition to controlling those lights through the switch with Google Assistant and Alexa, it also acts as a physical switch to turn your lights on or off.
The tp-link WiFi light switch is affordable with a list price of $39.99.
Smart Thermostat
The absolute best smart thermostat is the eco. before this newer version includes a built-in Amazon Alexa speaker and can also be controlled with any device that supports the Google assistant with superior room sensors than its competitors.
It helps to reduce cold or hot spots in your home. There’s no need to call an electrician to install it. Installation in our home took me about 20 minutes a room sensor is included with the eco before with a list price of $249.
Even though Nest loses the battle with eco, Beat thermostats – their second generation nest protect does lead the pack as the best smoke and carbon monoxide detector. It is not only a great looking device, when there’s danger, it alerts you by talking you through your situation instead of using that annoying beep sound.
The other products mentioned with speaker control most functions of the nest protect are handled through the nest app on Android or iOS. The retail price is $119.
