The Best Smart Home Devices: Quick List
- Best smart speaker: Amazon Echo (4th Gen) – Control your smart home, get information, and make calls using just your voice with the best-sounding version of the Echo yet. A built-in Matter smart home hub and temperature sensors add even more layers of home automation functionality to this powerful mid-range smart speaker.
- Best smart thermostat: Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium – Ecobee’s flagship not only has Alexa built-in, but you can also connect it directly to Siri, so you can use its microphone and speaker directly with Apple’s assistant. It has a built-in air quality monitor and comes with remote sensors with excellent range and battery life.
- Best security camera: Nest Cam (battery) – Cut the cord on your home security system with this high-resolution security camera. If you have a Google smart home this offers loads of value including subject detection (person, animal, or vehicle) in addition to three hours of video storage for free.
- Best smart lock: August Smart Lock Pro – This easy-to-install smart lock converts the inner half of your existing deadbolt. It has a wide variety of auto-lock and unlock features plus alerts you if your door is left ajar. The extensive platform support spans HomeKit, Alexa, Google Assistant, Z-Wave, Nest, IFTTT, and more.
- Best video doorbell: Ring Battery Doorbell Plus – The most well-rounded of all the video doorbells we tested can be wired or work on battery power, has a great view of your front porch, package detection, and works with a wide range of smart home devices.
- Best smart home hub: Amazon Echo Hub – No other smart display makes it easier to control all of your connected smart home gadgets. The Echo Hub’s always-on screen shows individual device controls, live security camera feeds, and status of your home at all times so you can quickly manage your smart home from one place.
- Best smart lights: Philips Hue White Starter Kit – These smart light bulbs work across every major platform, have a wide range of automation, and can be dimmed down to your preferred brightness level on the fly. This high level of control comes at a small price—you’ll need to set up the included hub to manage and sync up the bulbs.
- Best smart plug: TP-Link Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Mini – The Kasa smart plug mini is small, simple to install, works with every major smart home platform, has a great app, and is affordable. What more could you want?
- Best smart smoke detector: Nest Protect – When it picks up on something in the air, it sounds an alarm and lets you know what room in your home triggered the alert. Plus an LED ring on the bottom of the alarm changes color in case of an emergency, giving you and the people you live with a visual cue.
- Best smart garage door opener: Chamberlain MyQ – It includes a sensor for your garage door as well as a hub that connects to your Wi-Fi network. When you send a command using your smartphone, it is relayed to the hub, which then goes to the sensor that activates your garage door.
The Best Smart Home Devices You Can Buy Today
Best Smart Speaker
1. Amazon Echo (4th Gen)
Best Overall
| Specifications | Details |
| Size | 5.7 x 5.7 x 5.2 inches |
| Speakers | One 3-inch woofer, two 0.8-inch tweeters |
| Wireless | 2.4/5 GHz, Bluetooth, Matter, Zigbee |
| Smart assistants | Alexa |
Reasons to buy
- 3.5-mm audio in/out port
- Multi-functional temperature sensor
- Sounds great for the affordable price
- eero built-in
Reasons to avoid
- Audio not as good as Sonos
The latest Echo smart speaker doubles as a Matter and Zigbee smart home hub. This seemingly simple addition allows it to discover and connect to local devices to reduce the number of hubs plugged into your outlets. That’s an excellent complement to the Echo’s rich, room-filling sound. Its 3-inch woofer and pair of 0.8-inch speakers create a rumbly bass and wide soundstage that punches well above its sub-$100 price tag.
You get both an excellent media device and an even better smart home companion. That’s thanks to built-in motion and temperature sensors that can tell you the exact conditions of the room it’s in and kick-off Alexa routines to control your climate. One of our editors showed how this added functionality helps them keep their garage cool during the summer.
That’s not the only trick up its sleeve. Amazon included a mesh node under the hood that helps extend any Eero router’s network further. Truly the only con is that it doesn’t have helpful LEDs to display text like the time and song names that the Amazon Echo Dot with Clock (5th Gen) can. Otherwise, this is the all-in-one smart home gadget that any house should have.
Best Smart Thermostat
2. Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium
Best Climate Control
| Specifications | Details |
| Size | 4.3 x 4.3 x 1 inch |
| Wireless | 802.11 Wi-Fi (2.4 and 5GHz), Bluetooth |
| Works with | Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant, Samsung SmartThings, IFTTT |
Reasons to buy
- Improved remote sensors from previous model
- Full Alexa support
- Much improved and larger display
Reasons to avoid
- Larger than Nest Learning Thermostat
With its zinc case and much larger touchscreen, the Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium looks much better than previous generations — on a par with the Nest Learning Thermostat — and is even smarter on the inside. Now, it has an air quality sensor built in, so you can see if you need to open a window or turn on a fan. The huge display also lets you look at the weather forecast for the week.
As before, the best part of the Ecobee is its remote sensors, which make it easier for you to manage the temperature in your entire home. The Ecobee also has Alexa built in and, if you have a HomePod or HomePod mini, can also talk to Siri through the thermostat. The built-in speaker is still not great for listening to music, but it’s a way to get a smart speaker in a room where you don’t want to place an Echo Dot.
Consider a smart air quality sensor if you want to take things beyond climate control. We were impressed by the affordable $70 Amazon Smart Air Quality Monitor. It’s one of the best Alexa-compatible devices because it can control other connected gadgets. So if your air quality score drops your air purifier or dehumidifier can kick on instantly.
Best Home Security Camera
3. Nest Cam (battery)
Best Security Camera
| Specifications | Details |
| Size | 3.3 x 3.3 inches |
| Resolution | 1080p/30 fps |
| Field of View | 130 degrees |
| Works with | Google Assistant, Alexa |
| Cloud storage | Starting at $6/month |
Reasons to buy
- Great design
- Very sharp video quality
- Free person, animal, vehicle detection
- 3 hours of video storage free
Reasons to avoid
- Few accessories
The well-designed Nest Cam (battery) has a simple shape and is one of the easiest home security cameras to install, thanks to its magnetic base. Its 1080p camera captures sharp images day and night, and its microphone and speaker made conversations a breeze. That’s the main reason we consider it the top choice among all the best home security cameras we’ve tested.
The Nest Cam (battery) also offers three hours of rolling video storage for free, as well as person, vehicle, and animal detection. If you sign up for a Nest Aware subscription (starting at $6/month), you also get familiar face detection as well as the ability to store up to a month’s worth of video.
For those concerned about privacy, the Nest Cam offers encrypted video storage and two-factor authentication to keep your footage secure. The camera’s weatherproof design makes it suitable for both indoor and outdoor use, giving you flexibility in placement around your home.
Best Smart Lock
4. August Wi-Fi Smart Lock
Best Door Security
| Specifications | Details |
| Lock type | Deadbolt |
| Size | 3 inches x 1.7 inches |
| Works with | HomeKit, Alexa, Google Assistant, Z-Wave, Nest, IFTTT |
| Wireless | 2.4GHz Wi-Fi |
Reasons to buy
- Smaller size
- Wi-Fi built in
- Easy to use
- Works with lots of smart home devices
Reasons to avoid
- Keypad sold separately
We were already pretty high on August’s first-generation Smart Lock Pro — it was our top pick among the best smart locks — but the company went and made it even better, by shrinking its size and making it work even better with your other smart home devices.
The August Wi-Fi Smart Lock is 45 percent smaller than the original, and it also has Wi-Fi built into it, so you don’t need an extra accessory to connect it to your home Wi-Fi network.
As with the original, we found the August Wi-Fi Smart Lock just as easy to install — it took mere minutes — and it has just as many helpful features, such as DoorSense, which alerts you if you leave your door open. The August Wi-Fi Smart Lock also works with most smart home systems, including Alexa, Google Assistant, HomeKit, and Xfinity. And, while you can open the lock with your keys or your smart phone, August also sells a wireless keypad as an additional means of entry.
Best Video Doorbell
5. Ring Battery Doorbell Plus
Best Doorbell Camera
| Specifications | Details |
| Video Resolution | 1536 x 1536 |
| Field of View | 180 degrees (diagonal) |
| Works with | Alexa |
| Size | 5.1 x 2.4 x 1.1 inches |
| Wired/Battery | yes/yes |
| Cloud storage | Starting at $4/month |
Reasons to buy
- Expansive vertical view
- 1536p HD video
- Easy to install and use
Reasons to avoid
- Spotty package detection
- No local storage
The Ring Battery Doorbell Plus gets almost everything right, and that’s why it’s not just one of the best smart home devices but the best video doorbell we’ve reviewed. The video doorbell’s 4:4 aspect ratio means you can see more of your front door; it can work either wired or on battery power alone, and it has a lot of great features, such as the ability to recognize packages, and it’s compatible with a large number of smart home devices.
However, in order to save video or get package detection, you’ll need to sign up for a Ring subscription, which starts at $4 per month. Other options on our best video doorbells page give you some of those features for free, but Ring’s device is the most well-rounded of the bunch.
The Ring app makes it easy to view live footage, receive notifications, and communicate with visitors through the doorbell’s two-way talk feature. You can also create custom motion zones to reduce false alerts and set up quick replies for times when you can’t answer the door.
Best Smart Home Hub
6. Amazon Echo Hub
Best Control Center
Reasons to buy
- Clear, customizable interface
- Great for Ring customers
- Intuitive controls
- Built-in smart home hub
Reasons to avoid
- Mediocre speakers
- Chunky body
Amazon’s always-on 8-inch smart display can be mounted to your wall or placed on a surface to serve as your home’s dashboard. Each of your smart home devices gets its own live widget so its current status and controls are accessible from this main screen. This makes it easy to quickly adjust your smart thermostat on the fly, look at up to 6 security camera feeds simultaneously, or slide down your smart light brightness without hopping through menus.
The Echo Hub’s sleek interface is completely customizable so you can add widgets like a To-Do list or your calendar to it or rearrange the layout, unlike any other smart display we’ve tested. Each element on the screen has plenty of room to breathe and sorts all of your smart home devices by type, room placement, and order of importance. We also appreciated its simplified interface as it’s free from the ad bloat that plagues Fire TVs and Echo Shows.
You can still use the Echo Hub to play music throughout your whole-home smart speaker audio setup, watch your favorite TV shows, and pin reminders to its screen such as a family chore list. It also makes for a great intercom panel to drop in on your home’s other Echo devices but keep in mind that it lacks a camera for making video calls.
Best Smart Light Bulbs
7. Philips Hue White Starter Kit
Best Lighting System
| Specifications | Details |
| Bulb type | A19 |
| Wireless | Zigbee |
| Works with | Alexa, Apple HomeKit, IFTTT, SmartThings, Google Home, Nest |
Reasons to buy
- Comprehensive app
- Works with a ton of smart-home systems
- Dimmable
Reasons to avoid
- Requires hub
- Light color not tunable
Philips Hue White starter kit includes two bulbs and a hub to connect them to other smart home devices. While you can’t change these bulbs’ colors, you can adjust their brightness (up to 800 lumens), and add up to 50 to a single hub. Philips’ bulbs also work with a wide range of smart home systems, including Alexa, Apple HomeKit, IFTTT, Google Home, and Nest.
Philips Hue lights also have an app, Philips Hue Sync, which lets users synchronize their smart bulbs with multimedia content on their Mac or Windows PC. For example, you can set your lights to flash and change color in time with music, video and movies being played on your computer. Users can also modify the color schemes and themes to suit their tastes.
The Philips Hue ecosystem has expanded significantly, with options for indoor and outdoor lighting, light strips, and even entertainment-focused lighting. While the initial investment in the hub and bulbs is higher than some competitors, the reliability and extensive integration options make it worth considering for a comprehensive smart lighting solution.
Best Smart Plug
8. TP-Link Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Mini
Best Smart Plug
| Specifications | Details |
| Size | 2.36 x 2.03 x 1.5 inches |
| Works With | Alexa, Google Assistant, HomeKit, IFTTT |
| Electrical rating | 120V/15A/1200W |
Reasons to buy
- Improved footprint
- Physical control button
- Works with Alexa, Google Home and HomeKit
Reasons to avoid
- Not compatible with 5Ghz Wi-Fi
The Kasa WiFi Smart Plug is one of the best smart home devices and our top choice among the best smart plugs. It’s just as compact as competing options out there, and while it doesn’t have energy monitoring like some other smart plugs, it works with all the major smart assistants.
This smart plug has a physical switch, so if you don’t want to use your voice or an app to turn your appliance on or off, you can click the switch on the plug itself. It also has a clever Away mode, which can make it seem like you’re home even when you’re not by turning a lamp on intermittently.
Setting up the Kasa smart plug is straightforward through the Kasa app, which also allows you to create schedules, timers, and scenes. The compact design ensures it won’t block adjacent outlets, making it perfect for power strips or tight spaces. For the price and reliability, it’s hard to find a better option for adding smart functionality to non-smart devices.
Best Smart Smoke Detector
9. Nest Protect
Best Safety Device
| Specifications | Details |
| Size | 5.3 x 5.3 x 1.5 inches |
| Detects | Smoke, carbon monoxide |
| Works with | Nest, Google Home, Philips Hue, IFTTT, Alexa, Wink, Lutron |
| Hardwired/battery | Yes/Yes |
Reasons to buy
- Detects smoke, carbon monoxide
- Spoken alerts
- Links to other smart-home devices
Reasons to avoid
- Expensive
The Nest Protect is the top choice among the best smart smoke detectors. When it picks up on something in the air, it sounds an alarm and lets you know what room in your home triggered the alert. Plus an LED ring on the bottom of the alarm changes color in case of an emergency, giving you and the people you live with a visual cue.
What we like most about the Nest Protect is how well it integrates with some of the best smart home devices. When you use smart home routines, your smart smoke alarm can automatically turn on your lights, making it easier for you to get out of your house. However, these routines only work for those who have converted their Nest account to a Google Assistant account. It also does not natively work with Alexa.
The Nest Protect performs regular self-tests to ensure it’s working properly, and you’ll receive notifications if the battery is running low or if there’s any other issue with the device. The Split-Spectrum Sensor is designed to detect both fast and slow-burning fires, providing comprehensive protection for your home.
Best Smart Garage Door Opener
10. Chamberlain MyQ
Best Garage Control
| Specifications | Details |
| Works With | Xfinity Home, Resideo, Ring, Alarm.com, IFTTT |
| Wireless | 802.11 Wi-Fi |
Reasons to buy
- Simple physical setup requirements
- Simple app interface
- Works with Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit
Reasons to avoid
- Doesn’t work with Alexa
- Requires subscription to use Google Assistant
If you’re looking for the best smart garage door opener, look no further than the Chamberlain MyQ. It includes a sensor for your garage door as well as a hub that connects to your Wi-Fi network. When you send a command using your smartphone, it is relayed to the hub, which then goes to the sensor that activates your garage door. The MyQ app, available for Android and iOS devices, lets you check to see if your door is open, and then close — or open — it remotely.
MyQ will work with most brands of garage door openers made after 1993 that have standard safety sensors, according to Chamberlain. Currently, MyQ works with Nest, SmartThings and Xfinity Home smart home systems. However, it doesn’t work with Alexa or Google Assistant, not to mention HomeKit or SmartThings.
The MyQ system also allows you to give access to family members or trusted friends through the app, making it convenient for when you’re away and someone needs to access your garage. The installation process is straightforward and doesn’t require any special tools or expertise, making it accessible for most homeowners.
How to Choose the Best Smart Home Devices for You
Choosing the best smart home devices is different for every shopper. Most of the decision comes down to which smart home platform you prefer – you’ll want to buy devices that are compatible with your voice assistant so you can create routines or control your gadgets hands-free.
You have three main choices: Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomeKit. Alexa generally comes out on top, as it works with the most smart home devices, and has the most third-party skills. However, Google Assistant can do some things that Alexa can’t—such as control Chromecast TVs—and it’s rapidly being built into a number of third-party devices in conjunction with its Works With Nest program. HomeKit’s availability is also growing and could be the right platform for you if you use Siri often on your iPhone or iPad.
The introduction of Matter, a new smart home connectivity standard, is making cross-platform compatibility easier. Many newer devices support Matter, allowing them to work with multiple smart home ecosystems simultaneously. When shopping, look for the Matter logo if you want the most flexible integration options.
Consider your specific needs as well. If security is your primary concern, focus on cameras, video doorbells, and smart locks. For energy efficiency, smart thermostats and lighting systems offer the best value. For convenience and entertainment, smart speakers and displays serve as excellent starting points for your smart home journey.
How We Test Smart Home Devices
All of the best smart home devices above are top picks within respective categories. We compare and contrast each gadget to similar options, taking variables like price, ease-of-setup, voice assistant compatibility and appearance into account. For example, the third-generation Amazon Echo is our favorite smart speaker overall because it has the best sound for the value, and represents its category on this list. The same goes for the Nest Cam and Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium.
Our testing process involves using each device in real-world conditions over several weeks. We evaluate factors such as installation difficulty, app usability, response time, reliability of connections, and overall performance. For security devices, we assess video quality in different lighting conditions and the effectiveness of motion detection features.
We also consider long-term value, looking at subscription costs, warranty coverage, and the manufacturer’s track record for software updates and support. This comprehensive approach ensures our recommendations are based on thorough, hands-on experience with each product.
Final Thoughts on Smart Home Devices
The best smart home devices offer more than just novelty—they provide genuine improvements to daily life through enhanced convenience, security, and energy efficiency. As the technology continues to mature, we’re seeing more reliable performance, better interoperability between ecosystems, and more intuitive user experiences.
Starting with a smart speaker or display as your hub and gradually adding compatible devices is the most practical approach for most homeowners. Focus on addressing specific needs in your home rather than acquiring technology for its own sake. Whether it’s the peace of mind from a comprehensive security system, the convenience of voice-controlled lighting, or the energy savings from a smart thermostat, the right smart home devices can truly transform your living space.
As Matter adoption grows and more devices become cross-compatible, building a cohesive smart home will become even easier. The devices we’ve highlighted represent the best options available today, balancing functionality, reliability, and value to help you create a truly intelligent home.
