Room sensors enable you to monitor and control the temperature in specific areas, like a nursery or home office. As the name implies, you can control it by voice via the integrated Alexa speaker. The ultra-sleek Ecobee with Voice Control earned top marks in our testing when it came to versatility. Smart thermostats control your home's temperature automatically, reducing heating and cooling costs and helping achieve optimal climate conditions throughout the year. It won't be long before your lighting is easing you to sleep at night then gently waking you up in the morning. Our testers found the three-step setup to be simple to follow and scheduling routines to be straightforward. You can choose from an enormous menu of customized light settings with millions of color variations including 50,000 shades of white alone. The Philips Hue starter kit includes four A19 75W LED smart bulbs along with the Hue Bridge that allows you to control your home's lighting through the Hue app. That includes dimming the lights, changing colors and programming them to turn on and off while you're away from home. Smart bulbs are often called the gateway product to the smart home experience because they're so easy to install - as easy as screwing in a light bulb, in fact! From there, you can do all kinds of things through an app or via your voice-enabled smart speaker. Finally, many hubs double as a digital assistant, delivering all kinds of voice-controlled support, from checking the weather to calling a car service. Hubs also make it easy to find compatible devices through their "Works with." search feature. Whatever the brand, all hubs basically function as command central for your entire smart home ecosystem, allowing you to control all the devices from a single smartphone app. If you’re an Android user who has a soft spot for Google Assistant and its impressive ecosystem, we’re not here to change your mind. Early Alexa adopters who live for Prime deliveries will be best served by Amazon. For now, it makes sense to stick with what you know, so if you’ve been a Siri loyalist from the beginning, go with Apple's hub. Though there's new hope with the launch of Matter, an interoperational standard and common language for smart home devices that aims to bring more harmony among smart home ecosystems, this standard is still rolling out and being adopted by major brands. That's where smart home "hubs" come in, and all the major players have their own version - Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung and more. Case in point: You could add a suite of smart devices only to discover that they don't work well together. While it's easier than ever to set up a smart home, the process isn't foolproof. Our evaluations are based on a combination of usability and performance criteria: How easy is the device to set up? Can it talk to other smart home equipment in the home? Is the app intuitive? What's the feature set? We crunch all that data into one bottom-line assessment: Does this product solve real problems and provide real benefits? Our top picks:īelow are the best smart home devices you can buy in 2023, including top performers from Lab tests, home tests and consumer tests. Home appliances like smart air conditioners, robot vacuums and even smart toilets can improve the way you live your daily life. We've tested hundreds of smart home gadgets, including home essentials like smart light bulbs and smart light switches, smart locks and smart security systems. Why wouldn't you want a smart thermostat that slashes energy costs while keeping your home comfy and cozy? Or a smart video doorbell that lets you see who's at the door from anywhere?Įxamples like these are the promise of today's smart home, and it's one the Lab experts at the Good Housekeeping Institute stand firmly behind. These days, the better question is, "Why not?" Think about it. It wasn't that long ago that smart home technology had a bad case of the meh's, with many consumers taking a "Why bother?" stance. We added the latest picks from LG, Roku and Instant Pot t o our original list of top-tested products. We updated this guide in January 2023 to add more information about each featured product.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |