With the best smart home gadgets, you can turn your boring home into a place where you can talk to people. You might want it to be easier to get to because you’re hurt or because it’s more convenient. You might want to save power. Or maybe you like technology as much as we do and like to turn your living room blue while watching the new Avatar movie.

You’ll need a smart hub to get started, and many people use the best smart displays and smart speakers to control all the other gadgets around the house. Most of these devices have voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, or Google’s Google Assistant. These assistants talk to you when you tell them to change a setting or give you the weather report.

Then, if you use one of these hubs, you can set your smart lights to turn off automatically at certain times of the day (or turn blue for mood) to save energy. With the best home security cameras or smart locks, you can make your home safer. And if you use the best smart plugs and switches, you can turn some of your not-so-smart devices into smart ones.

Since we’re always trying and reviewing smart home devices, we keep a close eye on the best ones on the market. We look at their prices, features, and specs to help you find the right ones for your space.

The best smart home gadgets for 2023

1. Amazon Echo Studio

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 loudspeaker with a lot of smart house 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 full 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.

2. Philips Hue

The fastest 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 lanterns, 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 choices. For example, we could set outdoor lights to turn on at sunset and turn off at 2 am 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 connection with Alexa and Google Assistant. They are also the most expensive smart bulbs on the market, but we think they are worth every penny.

3. Arlo Pro 4

It’s easy to see why people who care about home protection like Arlo so much. Even though the Arlo Pro 4 doesn’t have a 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 straight 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 HomeKit.

During tests, it took clear, detailed, color videos 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 action is not only found but also followed.

4. Eve Energy

A smart plug is an easy way to control your home, and every smart home needs one. But the Eve Energy smart plug does more than just let you control things that are hooked into it. It also lets you keep track of how much energy you use and guess 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 HomePod 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 gadgets from not working when they should. But the smart plug only works with Apple’s HomeKit. 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 routines, so we chose it as the best smart plug on the market.

5. 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 contract 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 links to your router. You can just throw it anywhere outside, and it will work for up to six months.

6. Google Nest Hub Max

The Google Nest Hub Max is a smart speaker with a screen that is bigger than the Google Nest Hub, which was first called the Google Home Hub. It also has a front-facing camera and can be used as a smart home camera by connecting to Google’s Nest app. From what we’ve seen, this part of the Google Nest Hub Max needs some work.

You can also use the Google Nest Hub Max to manage and control hundreds of smart home devices from different makers, like smart lights, thermostats, and smart plugs, so you don’t have to use a bunch of different apps.

It sounds good enough to be a small Hi-Fi, Google Assistant works well, and the big screen lets you watch YouTube while you cook.

Conclusion

The best smart home gadgets for 20231 include the Amazon Echo Studio, Philips Hue smart light bulbs, Arlo Pro 4 camera, Eve Energy smart plug, Eufy Video Doorbell 2K, Google Nest Hub Max, and Eufy Video Doorbell 2K. The Amazon Echo Studio is the best smart speaker with advanced features like smart house and assistant tech, 3D audio effects, and the ability to connect to over a thousand smart home devices. The Philips Hue bulbs are easy to set up and come in various colors and effects.