The Best Smart Home Products and Their Latest Updates

Amazon Echo Dot with Clock(5th Gen)

The name of this device tells it all: It’s an Echo Dot with a smart LED clock integrated into its face. The Echo Dot gains a tonne of capabilities from this ostensibly straightforward upgrade, making it an even greater smart home ally. We wish other manufacturers of smart home appliances would follow Amazon’s lead and improve on existing top-notch products in little but impactful ways. Nevertheless, the Echo Dot with Clock’s display is capable of showing you more than simply the time, including the temperature, music names, and solutions to math problems. Moreover, it serves as a timer. It contains an ambient sensor that automatically modifies the display’s brightness following the lighting of the surroundings. 

ADVANCED HOME SECURITY CAMERA

A Nest Cam (battery)

Thanks to its magnetic base, the well-designed Nest Cam (battery) is one of the simplest home security cameras to install. Its microphone and speaker made discussions simple, and its 1080p camera captured clear photos both day and night. Because of this, we believe it to be the greatest security camera out of all those we’ve evaluated. Together with free rolling video storage for three hours, the Nest Cam (battery) also has human, vehicle, and animal identification. You can receive familiar face identification and the capacity to save up to a month’s worth of video if you subscribe to Nest Aware (beginning at $6/month).

Smart Thermostat

The Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium looks far nicer than previous generations, comparable to the Nest Learning Thermostat, and is even smarter on the inside thanks to its zinc casing and much larger display. It now includes an air quality sensor built in, allowing you to determine whether opening a window or turning on a fan is necessary. You may also view the week’s weather prediction on the enormous display. The Ecobee’s remote sensors, which make it simpler for you to control the temperature throughout your entire home, remain its best feature. Also, the Ecobee includes Alexa and, if you own a HomePod or HomePod mini, Siri can be accessed through the device.

Philips Hue White A19 Starter Kit

Two lights and a hub for connecting them to other smart home devices are included in the Philips Hue White beginning package. Although you can’t modify the colors of these bulbs, you can connect up to 50 of them to a single hub and change their brightness (up to 800 lumens). Moreover, Philips light bulbs are compatible with many other smart home platforms, such as Alexa, Apple HomeKit, IFTTT, Google Home, and Nest. Check out these 9 things you didn’t know you could do with smart lights to see all the different things you can do with Philips Hue bulbs. The Philips Hue Sync software allows users to synchronize their smart bulbs with multimedia content on their mobile devices.

Wi-Fi Smart Lock 

In our Smart Lock Pro review from August, there wasn’t much that could be improved, but the manufacturer nevertheless made changes to the original to make it more compact and user-friendly. The August Wi-Fi Smart Lock, our top selection among the finest smart locks, is 45 percent more compact than its predecessor, so it will be less noticeable on your door. You can avoid using the August Connect bridge to connect your lock to your home network because it also contains built-in Wi-Fi. Everything we liked about the August Pro is still present: Easy installation, features like DoorSense (which notifies you if your door has been left open), and compatibility with all the tops.

 Doorbell

The Nest Doorbell (battery) almost always does things right, making it the greatest video doorbell we’ve examined as well as one of the top smart home products. The video doorbell’s 3:4 vertical aspect ratio allows you to see more of your front door. It can operate wirelessly or on battery power alone and has a tonne of useful capabilities, like the ability to recognize vehicles, known people, parcels, and animals. Even better, the camera provides three hours of rolling video storage in addition to some of those functions, which previously required a membership. You can still sign up for Nest Aware, which costs $5 if you want longer storage.

Best Smart Smoke Detector

The Nest Protect is the greatest smart smoke detector. It detects anything in the air and sounds an alarm, letting you know which room in your house was the source of the alert. Also, the alarm’s LED ring on the bottom changes color in an emergency to provide you and the people you live with a visual cue.

The Nest Protect’s seamless integration with some of the top smart home gadgets is what we enjoy best about it. Your smart smoke alarm can automatically switch on your lights when you set up smart home routines, making it simpler for you to leave the house. Yet, these practices only