Whether you’re just dipping your toes into the smart home space or adding new devices to your growing setup, there have never been more IoT gadgets for you to choose from. But before you dive in, we have some advice. For one, don’t try to outfit your entire smart home in one go – that goes for both newbies and those familiar with smart home gadgets. Not only can this be quite expensive, we think it’s generally best to buy just one or two items first to see if you like them, or to see how they pair with the rest of your home’s ecosystem. And if you haven’t already, you should decide which voice assistant you prefer. We offer some advice on how to pick the right one below, along with our suggestions for the best of each smart device category, with alternate suggestions where appropriate.
Before you start, pick a voice assistant
While plenty of the best smart home devices are platform agnostic, there are some — smart speakers and smart displays in particular — that require you to choose your voice assistant. Currently, that means deciding if you’ll use the Google Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa on a regular basis (I’ll address Siri in a moment.) They’re both compatible with various smart home products from light bulbs to robot vacuums, but there are certain devices that work best with either Google or Amazon. Nest products, for example, are more compatible and have more functionality with Google-powered speakers and displays. They can still work with Amazon devices, but certain features might be disabled. The same holds true with Amazon products: They work better if they’re in the same ecosystem.
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