Smart Home Gear Worth Buying (After Five Years of Mistakes)

I've bought, installed, and uninstalled 40+ smart home devices over five years. Here are the eight I'd keep if I started over — and what to skip.

Smart home gear has gotten significantly better since 2020 (Matter helped), but the failure modes are still real. I've ripped out as many devices as I've kept. Here's the curated list of what's earned its place.

The eight I'd keep

1. Smart thermostat (Nest or Ecobee). Real energy savings, easy install, reliable. The category is mature; both major brands work well.

2. Smart smoke/CO detector (Nest Protect). Self-tests, sends alerts to phone. Worth every penny the time it caught a slow CO leak in my basement.

3. A single smart lock (August or Schlage Encode). Visitor codes, lock status from anywhere, no more lost keys. Get one — the front door. Skip locks on other doors.

4. Hue or LIFX bulbs in 4-5 rooms. Not every room. The rooms with overhead lights where you actually adjust the lighting. Scheduling alone justifies the upgrade.

5. A robot vacuum. A Roomba j7 or equivalent. The newer models work. The mid-range models are good enough. Don't overpay for $1,200+ ones.

6. A smart speaker per major room (Sonos for music, Echo Dot for utility). Sonos sounds genuinely better. Echo Dot is cheap and handles routines. Different jobs.

7. A smart plug or two for lamps you'd want to schedule. $15. Solves the "turn the lamp on when I get home" problem cheaply.

8. A doorbell camera (Ring or Nest Doorbell). Useful for package theft, visitor verification. Subscription needed for cloud recording.

What I'd skip

Smart blinds beyond the rooms with bedroom blackouts. Cool feature; rarely worth $250+/window.

Smart appliances (fridges, washers). Most "smart" features are gimmicks that stop working when the manufacturer drops support.

Smart switches throughout the house. Pick the rooms that matter; skip the rest.

Whole-house water-leak monitoring kits. Useful in theory; rarely justify the cost for most homes.

Smart garage door openers if your existing remote works. The integration is rarely worth the install hassle.

The hub question

Apple Home, Google Home, or Amazon Alexa as your default. Pick one. Don't try to run all three. The interop is real with Matter; one ecosystem owns the routines.

The infrastructure that ties it together

A real Wi-Fi mesh system. Most smart home failures trace back to Wi-Fi dead zones. A Stanley tumbler for the install days (they run longer than you think). mechanical keyboard for the inevitable troubleshooting sessions at your computer.

The honest answer

The right smart home is 5-10 devices that solve specific problems. Not 40 devices that automate things you didn't need automated. Start with the thermostat and one room of lighting. Add others only when you can name the specific problem they solve. Atomic Habits applies to home setup too — the system you use is better than the system you've over-built.