Almost every home device you can think of has a smart version these days. Most of these products connect to the internet, so you can use a companion app on your phone to control them. Most also work with different ways to control them with your voice. Most work with different ways to control them with your voice. Let’s learn about the best smart home devices that will make your life easier.
With Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, you can set up routines that tell your smart home devices to work together and do more than one thing at the same time. For example, when you get home, you can set the temperature and turn on the lights. With Apple Home Kit, you can control your devices by speaking to Siri or by using an Apple Watch. You can also set up “scenes” that turn on several devices at once.
With all these smart home devices in the market, here’s a list of the best smart home devices we’ve tried so you don’t have to search much.
VPN Like VeePN for Smart Home Devices
The Internet of Things (IoT) is now widely used in smart homes, and these gadgets have made our lives much easier. Smart homes have become popular because anything that uses electricity can be connected to the internet and controlled from afar.
But as the number of devices that can connect to the internet has grown, so has the number of possible targets for hackers. This has led to cyber security threats. With more than 13 billion IoT devices in use around the world, you can imagine how much information smart coffee makers, light bulbs, alarm clocks, and refrigerators collect. They attract cybercriminals like bees to honey, which is why you need a good VPN like VeePN.
VeePN is software that lets you connect to your smart home devices in a secure way. This software encrypts your online data by sending it through a VPN tunnel. This makes it impossible for people outside your network to find your data if they try to spy on you.
With a VPN like VeePN, hackers won’t be able to get into your information. VeePN is also the best search engine for privacy.
VeePN hides your real IP address and gives you a fake one so that no one can track your internet traffic. This makes you invisible online. You can look reviews for VeePN and check it out for yourself.
01. Echo Studio by Amazon
We didn’t pay much attention to the sound of smart speakers for a long time because we thought it was impossible for a speaker to be both smart and sound good. Before we found the Amazon Echo Studio, that was the case.
Amazon’s Echo Studio is its best smart speaker so far. It’s a loud speaker with a lot of smart home and assistant tech as well as smart audio features. At its best, its 3D audio effects give your favorite songs new life, and that’s not even mentioning how it can connect to your Amazon Fire TV devices to give you a more immersive sound experience.
The Echo Studio is also a ZigBee hub, which means it can connect to over a thousand smart home devices right out of the box. This makes it perfect for a smart home.
02. Philips Hue
The easiest way to start making your home smarter is with the best smart light bulbs, and the Philips Hue is the best one on the market. Easy to set up—just switch out your old bulbs for smart Hue bulbs. You can also choose from Hue’s wide range of LED table and floor lamps, wall lights for both indoor and outdoor use, ceiling pendants, light strips, and even light bars. They are easy to use and come in a wide range of colors and effects.
During our tests, we also found a number of different scheduling options. For example, we could set outdoor lights to turn on at sunset and turn off at 2am instead of waiting until sunrise.
You will need the Philips Bridge, which is like a hub for your lights. If you want to control them when you’re not at home, they have Bluetooth built in, so you can control them when you’re close by. But this also adds support for HomeKit to the integration with Alexa and Google Assistant. They are also the most expensive smart bulbs on the market, but we think they are worth every penny.
03. Arlo Pro 4
It’s easy to see why people who care about home security like Arlo so much. Even though the Arlo Pro 4 doesn’t have 4K resolution like the more expensive Arlo Ultra and Arlo Ultra 2, the quality is still pretty good at 2K, which most people will find to be clear enough.
The Arlo Pro camera can connect directly to your Wi-Fi, so it doesn’t come with a base station. This makes it cheaper. But even though it works with Alexa and Google Assistant, you need that base station if you want it to work with Home Kit.
During tests, it took clear, detailed, color footage both during the day and at night, thanks to the built-in spotlight. This feature, like the built-in alarm, also helps keep people out. There is also automatic zooming and motion tracking, so the source of any activity is not only found but also followed.
Unfortunately, if you want to use many of its smart features to cut down on unwanted alerts, you have to pay a monthly fee, but you do get a three-month trial.
04. Eve Energy
A smart plug is an easy way to automate your home, and every smart home needs one. But the Eve Energy smart plug does more than just let you control things that are plugged into it. It also lets you keep track of how much energy you use and estimate how much it will cost to power certain things in your home. This is great if you want to spend less money and use less energy.
The smart plug uses Bluetooth, but if you have a Home Pod Mini or an Apple TV, you can also use Thread, which is another wireless technology built into the plug. Thread is more stable than Wi-Fi and stops smart home devices from not working when they should. But the smart plug only works with Apple’s Home Kit. It won’t work with Google Assistant or Alexa.
It worked well in tests and had a lot of useful features, like being able to set schedules, so we chose it as the best smart plug on the market.
05. Eufy Video Doorbell 2K
If you’re looking for the best video doorbell, we recommend the Eufy Video Doorbell 2K because it has a good price, is reliable, and works well.
During tests, it took clear, detailed pictures both during the day and at night. It has a 4:3 aspect ratio, which lets you see almost the whole length of someone standing on your doorstep. What’s the best? It can be used without a subscription because it has 16GB of memory in the base station that comes with it. Eufy says this is enough for about two weeks.
The battery-powered doorbell is good if you rent and can’t get rid of the old one. It works wirelessly with the help of a hub that connects to your router. You can just throw it anywhere outside, and it will work for up to six months.
But the battery can’t be changed, so the doorbell won’t work when it needs to be charged, and it doesn’t work with Home Kit.
Final Thoughts
Smart home devices are a thing of the present and they are the future as well. All these and more smart home devices can make your life easier and with a VPN like VeePN you don’t have to worry about cyber threats when using them.
We hope you loved reading the best smart home devices. To operate these smart home devices, there are applications running them. So, here we share some energy management apps that are suitable for a smart home:
Furthermore, we have also shared some gadgets you need for smart home automation: