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Building a smart home is easy and affordable, thanks to the wide variety of gadgets out there. Whether you want to make your lights dimmable or save energy with a smart thermostat, consider us your smart home guides. We know a thing or two about smart doorbells, smart home hubs and other devices, and we've curated the best of the best for you here. Black Friday is here as well, so there are plenty of ways to buy.
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Picking the right devices can be difficult. You might just need one gadget to address a particular issue, like a smart plug to put a lamp on a schedule. Or you may be thinking about how to build on what you already own, like an Alexa- or Google Assistant-powered smart speaker, or even Siri and Apple's HomeKit smart home service. Voice assistants can be a great starting point for building a do-it-yourself smart home. They offer a convenient way for roommates or family members to interact with the various devices without having to manage basic access within each app. Many, but not all, of the products on our list of the best smart home devices will work with multiple voice assistants.
Don't miss out on our reviews of Apple's HomePod Mini, Google's Nest Audio and Nest Doorbell with battery, Amazon's fourth-gen Echo speaker and Echo Show 15, and we'll update this list as new products launch.
We curated this list to address the best option in a range of the most popular smart home categories. If you want to know the best smart thermostat or the best smart lighting kit, regardless of which voice platforms support them, we have you covered. This is a general list of the best overall smart home devices, not specifically geared towards specific smart home platforms. (You won't get far trying to pair an Amazon smart speaker with a Google smart display.) For that, please refer to our platform-based lists linked below:
In each subcategory section, we've also added a link to the best list for that particular product type. If you're looking for more options for lighting or locks, you'll find a list of our favorite products if you'd like to see a broader selection. We regularly update this list as we review new products. Without further ado, here are the best of the best smart home devices you can buy right now.
Amazon's fourth-gen Echo is still impressive well over a year after its initial launch -- and even if you pay its full $100 price (you can often find it on sale if you keep an eye out). Between its new sphere-like profile, powerful sound output and a few forward-looking features, the Echo is still king of the countertop.
Google's Nest Audio speaker, which also launched in 2020, is a solid competitor with the Echo. Apple's recent HomePod Mini plays well in the Apple sandbox, but Amazon wins out in two key categories: Its speaker is far more powerful and it features a built-in Zigbee receiver and Amazon Sidewalk Hub that make connecting devices like lightbulbs and locks much more seamless and reliable.
Meanwhile, Alexa and Google Assistant are pretty much at parity right now. While Amazon boasts about more skills and support for more third-party devices for its voice assistant, the numbers for Google Assistant also lands in the tens of thousands, meaning you really don't miss out on anything significant either way.
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Google Assistant does a better job at mimicking natural conversation flow, but the difference isn't really that noticeable in your day-to-day interaction with each speaker. Most of the time you'll ask a smart speaker for the weather, to set a timer and maybe have it play a song or two. Both devices are good at all of that.
Google has another card to play, which you can read below.
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Google's Nest Mini smart speaker isn't as powerful as the new Echo, but it's a great budget-friendly option for Google users.
The audio quality in the Nest Mini is respectable, given its price and profile. It also has a wall-mounting notch on the underside, if that's what you're into. An interesting presence detection method that uses the speaker and microphone to determine your proximity to the Nest Mini helps it trigger LED indicators that help you make better sense of the otherwise obscured physical volume controls.
That's all fine, but the thing that puts the Nest Mini over the top is the machine-learning chip embedded inside the tiny speaker. With that chip, Google says, the Nest Mini can learn what commands you give to it most often, and it will then begin to process those commands locally, rather than on Google's servers.
Anything that helps to keep control of your smart home inside your home is worthwhile. Letting you continue to issue certain voice commands even if the internet goes out, and improved response times are great too. The Nest Mini doesn't have the audio output jack that allows you to connect Echo Dots to better-quality speakers, it's still one of our favorite devices -- particularly for people who already use Google services such as Gmail and Calendar with any regularity.
Amazon may have introduced the smart display with the Echo Show, but Google refined the concept with the Nest Hub (formerly the Home Hub) both in terms of its design, and in the way it leverages its voice assistant. Now there's a second-gen model, released in 2021, with a lower price and more features.
You get the same Google Assistant features in the Nest Hub that you get with the Google Home speaker line, along with a screen interface that gives you just the right amount of visual feedback. It will show you your spoken commands so you know Google heard you correctly, it can deftly walk you through a recipe from popular cooking websites, and it works seamlessly with Google-supported smart home cameras and video doorbells to display their camera feeds onscreen. Google's Soli is also onboard for Sleep Sensing and Quick Gestures like pausing media with an air tap in front of the display.
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Google prudently opted out of including a video camera on the Hub itself, getting ahead of some privacy concerns, and likely prompting Amazon to include a manual video shutter on its new, smaller Echo Show 5 display. If you really want a Google-based smart display that allows for video chatting, a few third-party options can make that happen, as well as the larger and more expensive Nest Hub Max. Even without it, the Nest Hub is the best, most affordable marriage of a voice assistant and a display interface on the market.
Wi-Fi is everything -- particularly once you start spreading things like smart speakers, smart lights, smart plugs and smart all else from room to room. After all, those connected doodads won't do you much good if they can't, you know, connect.
That's why a mesh router that's built to spread a strong, speedy signal throughout your house might make for a particularly smart upgrade -- especially if you're living in a big home. Of the ones we've tested, we think the Nest Wifi is the smartest pick. At around $75, the two-piece starter kit was able to fill the 5,800-square-foot CNET Smart Home with decent signal strength, and it never once dropped our connection as we moved around conducting speed test after speed test. On top of that, the range extender doubles as a smart speaker, so as you spread a reliable connection from room to room, you'll be spreading Google Assistant's footprint in your home with it.
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The Nest Wifi doesn't support the newest, fastest version of Wi-Fi, called Wi-Fi 6, but you really won't notice the difference Wi-Fi 6 makes unless you're already paying for super-fast internet speeds of 500 Mbps or more. Our upgrade pick, the Eero Pro 6, is the best choice if you want to serve up that kind of speed. What you will notice with the Nest Wifi is the ease of installation, the simple network controls that sit right alongside your smart home controls in the Google Home app, and advanced Wi-Fi features like device prioritization, WPA3 security and 4x4 MU-MIMO support, which lets the Nest Wifi boost speeds to devices that use multiple Wi-Fi antennas, like the MacBook Pro.
The Nest Wifi is best for Google smart homes, so Alexa users will likely want to stick with the Eero or Netgear Orbi. If you just want solid Wi-Fi that you and your growing number of internet-connected gadgets can rely upon, put the Nest Wifi right at the top of your lis