Elevate Your Living Space with Smart Home Appliances and Devices: Our Comprehensive Reviews on Top 2023 Picks in Over 20 Categories
My Home’s Smart Transformation: Embracing Smart Devices for Convenience
Over the past few years, my home has been steadily advancing towards a more intelligent future. This transition began out of necessity when I encountered the need for efficiency. While reaching beneath my bed to retrieve a fallen item, I was shocked to find a thick layer of dust lurking on the floor. My traditional corded upright vacuum couldn’t fit under the bed completely, prompting me to invest in a robot vacuum to handle the task effortlessly.
Subsequently, welcoming a furry friend into my home led me to acquire a smart air purifier, combatting allergies and asthma. The addition of a pet camera allowed me to monitor my beloved pet and my home remotely, 24/7, using my smartphone.
As a tech reviewer for ITC, my Florida beach bungalow has evolved into a testing ground for cutting-edge home technology, constantly becoming smarter. I can now enter my bedroom and command Google Assistant to turn on the lights. A simple request to Alexa ensures that protein powder and dog food are reordered, with delivery at my doorstep in just two days. I can adjust my thermostat comfortably from my bed using a smartphone app. My kitchen smart display keeps me updated with severe weather warnings and provides culinary inspiration, while even my air fryer sends notifications when it’s ready for action.
Today, it seems like there’s a smart version of virtually every household device. Typically, these products connect to the internet, allowing remote control via companion apps on your phone. Many are also compatible with voice control options.
The majority of smart home companion apps support scheduling, enabling you to program your devices to execute specific actions at designated times. For example, after experiencing a bike theft incident, our Editor-in-Chief, Wendy Sheehan Donnell, programmed her smart garage door to automatically close at a specific time each night.
Voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant offer the convenience of creating routines for your devices to work together, performing multiple actions simultaneously, such as adjusting lighting and temperature upon your return home. Apple HomeKit allows you to control your devices through Siri voice commands or an Apple Watch, along with creating scenes for synchronized device operations. IFTTT, a service supported by many top smart home brands, enables you to connect various internet-connected devices and set them to respond to real-world events, like automatically turning on your lights at sunset. The introduction of Matter, a new smart home interoperability standard, simplifies the setup and integration of connected gadgets.
In the following sections, we’ll provide a detailed breakdown of the top smart devices we’ve put to the test, tailored for every area of your home. While we’ve organized them by room to maintain order, most of these devices can be used in various locations throughout your home.
Be sure to check back regularly, as we continuously evaluate new products and add them to this guide
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