Smart Home Reviews

The Nest Hub Max is meant to be the centerpiece of your home, a singular device that covers security, entertainment, home automation, and virtual assistance. Don’t be fooled if it looks like other smart displays, however. There’s more to Google's latest device than meets the eye.

Swann's six-camera smart home security system impresses with sleek lines, a sturdy build, and a swath of advanced features, including 4K UHD video, color night vision, integrated heat and motion detection, spotlights, sirens and more. The mobile app leaves a lot to be desired, however.

Keep a digital eye on the homestead with this security kit that connects entirely via Wi-Fi.

Hawking's HomeRemote Pro starter kit offers an easy foray into controlling your home over the Web.

The INSTEON LED bulb is energy efficient and can be controlled solely from your iPhone or Android devices. We go hands-on with this latest tech to show you if it's too good to be true.

To help you choose the right bulb for your space, we recently took Tabu's Lumen Smart LED bulb for a spin to see how it compared to the competition. Hit the jump to see what we thought

Rarely can one say of a consumer electronics product, especially one as pedestrian and notoriously convoluted as a programmable thermostat, that its installation procedure is a thing of beauty. But that is exactly what Nest has accomplished.

The SmartCam HD Pro is Samsung’s answer to the popular Dropcam home monitoring system. It’s easy to use and easy to set up, and it delivers nice-looking Full HD video quality. Its design is questionable, but it delivers on its main function.

We review Yale’s Real Living YRD240 Touchscreen Deadbolt, which offers both traditional touchscreen operation and Z-Wave compatibility, allowing it to interact with other smart-home devices.

Rachio's sprinkler system definitely impressed us with its uber-simple smartphone interface and intelligent scheduling features, but the IRO's lack of physical controls and support for 3rd party rain sensors left us wanting more.

The inexpensive Wink Hub hides anywhere in your home and shows great promise – but lack of compatibility holds it back.

After waiting patiently for nearly two years, we finally got a chance to take Ubi’s voice-activated computer for a spin. Maybe we should have waited even longer.

The Nyrius Smart Outlet is dead simple to use and can turn any dumb appliance or device smart, but because it runs on Bluetooth, it can’t tie together your entire home.

Forget about the weather and just watch the grass grow. The Blossom Smart Watering Controller crunches tons of data to precisely hydrate your yard.

If you just want to turn on and off devices with your phone while at home, the iDevices products won’t disappoint – just don’t expect to be controlling those items when you’re on vacation.

How inefficient is your fridge? What’s the biggest energy suck in your home? The Sense Home Energy Monitor can tell you all in an easy-to-use app -- and hopefully help you lower your electric bill.

This Oral-B Genius 8000 Bluetooth Toothbrush review looks at what it’s like to brush your teeth while an app tracks your progress.

We turned up and dimmed down the Wiz Smart Connected Lights to see if this upstart brand could outshine the competition. Check out our review to see what happened.

Aura’s innovative take on motion detection may be technically impressive, but fails to justify a $200 price tag. Find out in our Aura Starter Kit Review.

Guardzilla’s innovative smart home camera breaks new ground, but lacks the quality to beat competing systems. Find out more in our Guardzilla 360 review.

Tired of having to buy a bunch of separate devices to monitor your home? Track movement, smoke, and water leaks in your home with the all-in-one Notion Sensor Starter Kit.

Nest has finally released standalone sensors that remotely report temperatures home, allowing the Nest Learning Thermostat to effectively eradicate cold and hot spots around the home. Are they are worthy upgrade to your home thermostat, or are they dumb devices tacked onto a smart system?

The Neeo smart remote is meant to take control of your smart home off your phone and put it in a universal device that works with TVs, speakers, thermostats, lightbulbs, and more. It has promise, but a lot of headaches, and understanding its many functions requires homework that most users won't be willing to do.

Now you can ask Alexa to play music, on your wall switch. The Ecobee Switch+ controls not just your lights, but also your home, packing everything into a single device.

The Amazon Echo Look is a combination of a virtual assistant and a style assistant. It gives you style advice, organizes your closet, shows you how you look from all angles, and provides feedback on what types of clothes fit your style. We got a chance to test out the device to see if it really helped our fashion game.

Installing outdoor LED lighting has been too difficult for too long. Philips Hue has made it easy by making outdoor lighting that’s gorgeous and exciting to use. A combination of style, sophistication and, best of all, simplicity makes Philips Hue Calla an easy pick. Here’s how testing went.

While cheaper smart lighting options abound, few competitors can match Philips Hue’s blend of style, sophistication and simplicity that makes it easy to create the perfect ambience for your home. The White and Color Ambience Kit isn’t new, but with other lighting kits flooding the market, we figured it was a good idea to take a fresh look to see if it still holds up.

Amazon’s Echo Plus was announced in Sept 2017 and we quickly got our hands on one, eager to test the embedded smart home hub. A year later, we’re taking a fresh look at the device to see which new Alexa capabilities have been added and to revisit the speaker’s sound quality.

The Amazon Echo Dot still holds up as a great introduction to smartifying your home. And at $30, it's more affordable than ever. Read more in our review.

If you want to use more of your senses with your smart speaker – say, sight and touch – the JBL Link View with Google Assistant is pretty handy. The screen gives you access to some information more quickly, while still relying on convenient voice commands for most of its interactions.

Amazon introduced the Echo Sub for Echo speaker owners who wanted to inject some room-moving bass into their smart speaker experience. We took the new Alexa-friendly sub for a spin and quickly learned that it’s a niche product, but one that does its odd job extremely well.

Philips Hue fans can at last enjoy the brilliance of this weatherproof light strip, which offers simple, versatile positioning, a rich selection of 16 million color options, and bright, vibrant illumination. Deck life and holiday home decorating just got a whole lot better.

Our Amazon Echo review reveals a shorter, cuter, speaker with several different color and fabric choices, and a firmware upgrade means improved sound. We took the device for another spin in November 2018 to see whether the speaker still measures up to the competition.

GLAS is the prettiest smart thermostat we’ve reviewed in some time, but a high price and flawed Cortana implementation means that it’s well short of the best. Read more about it in our full review.