Budget smart home: The best gadgets for starting a smart home – swiftheadline
Building a budget smart home from scratch can be a daunting task with hundreds of products on the market. And while it’s tempting to pick the absolute cheapest options, you’ll have to be a bit more careful if you care about future-proofing. The smart home industry is currently filled with competing ecosystems, and you could easily end up with incompatible devices once you start expanding.
To that end, let’s take a look at some pragmatic smart home gear that should play nice with any future upgrades you may have in mind.
The best budget smart home products
Amazon Echo (4th generation)
A smart speaker might seem like an obvious first choice to anyone starting out on their smart home journey. However, the fourth-generation Amazon Echo has an additional ace up its sleeve — it comes with an integrated Zigbee radio. This eliminates the need to buy a standalone hub, like in the case of Philips Hue.
While compatibility is not universal, the Echo works with Zigbee 3.0 devices from brands like Sengled, ThirdReality, and Hue. Beyond this list, you can look for third-party or customer reviews to determine compatibility. In general, though, only a small number of proprietary implementations (like Aqara’s Zigbee sensors) should refuse to work with the Echo.
See also: The best Echo speakers
Compatibility aside, the only downside to using an Echo device as your main Zigbee hub is that you might miss out on extra features and functionality. For example, Philips’ app offers sophisticated scene controls and the Hue Labs feature, which you’ll lose without the official hub. If you only care about the basics like on-off and dimming, the Echo is still a fantastic value, considering you can always upgrade in the future. Just keep in mind that the cheaper Echo Dot doesn’t have any Zigbee capabilities whatsoever.
To that end, let’s take a look at some pragmatic smart home gear that should play nice with any future upgrades you may have in mind.
The best budget smart home products
Amazon Echo (4th generation)
A smart speaker might seem like an obvious first choice to anyone starting out on their smart home journey. However, the fourth-generation Amazon Echo has an additional ace up its sleeve — it comes with an integrated Zigbee radio. This eliminates the need to buy a standalone hub, like in the case of Philips Hue.
While compatibility is not universal, the Echo works with Zigbee 3.0 devices from brands like Sengled, ThirdReality, and Hue. Beyond this list, you can look for third-party or customer reviews to determine compatibility. In general, though, only a small number of proprietary implementations (like Aqara’s Zigbee sensors) should refuse to work with the Echo.
See also: The best Echo speakers
Compatibility aside, the only downside to using an Echo device as your main Zigbee hub is that you might miss out on extra features and functionality. For example, Philips’ app offers sophisticated scene controls and the Hue Labs feature, which you’ll lose without the official hub. If you only care about the basics like on-off and dimming, the Echo is still a fantastic value, considering you can always upgrade in the future. Just keep in mind that the cheaper Echo Dot doesn’t have any Zigbee capabilities whatsoever.
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