Featured: Top 10 Home Automation Products – Jan. 2016

Home Automation and smart home products have started to become pretty popular as the Internet of Things begins to take over. There are already plenty of home automation products available from companies like Belkin, Nest, Philips, Ring and many others. Some are great, some are not so great. We’ve listed ten of the best that are currently available down below. Let’s check them out.

Nest Learning Thermostat (2nd Gen.)

The Nest Learning Thermostat is a pretty neat thermostat here. It allows you to set the temperature using your smartphone, even when you aren’t home. But more importantly, it learns from your habits and will work to keep your home nice and warm or cool – depending on the season – but also save you money on energy costs.

Philips Hue Starter Kit (2nd Gen.)

Philips has been a pretty big name in the Internet of Things along with their Hue brand. Their lights are pretty amazing, as you are able to adjust them from your tablet or smartphone. But on top of that, they are LED lights which make for a brighter lightbulb and can also change colors.

Philips Hue Lightstrip Plus

Another great product from Philips Hue line up is the Lightstrip Plus. You can put this strip around your home entertainment system, under your counter top, and add some great lighting affects to your home. And it works with the existing Hue app that’s available for both Android and iOS.

Nest Cam

Thanks to Nest acquiring Dropcam, they also now have their own security camera. This is great for keeping an eye on your house while you’re home and not home. It can connect to your smartphone and let you know when it detects movement. Always something to be aware of these days.

Arlo Smart Security Camera

Here’s another great smart Security Camera here, it’s under the brand Arlo which is owned by Netgear. It’s one of our favorites because it can work over WiFi and doesn’t require a lot of cabling to be added to put these around your home, and outside your home. They come in a pack of three or you can buy them individually.

Ring WiFi-Enabled Doorbell

Ring is a pretty interesting doorbell. It has a camera built-in so you can see who is at your door without them knowing your home. This works even when you’re not home, and you can tell FedEx or UPS to leave the package at the door. You’ll also get notifications on your smartphone when there is movement on your porch.

August Smart Lock

While this one doesn’t have a camera built in, The August Smart Lock does have a few tricks up its sleeve. It can connect to your smartphone to be locked or unlocked. This means that you don’t need your key to unlock the house. You can allow access for other users to unlock the lock for a limited time as well.

Amazon Echo

While most may think the Echo is a Bluetooth Speaker, it’s actually much more than that. The Amazon Echo can connect with many of the products on this list here. For example it can turn on/off your Hue lights on your command. It can also tell you the score of last nights game, and so much more.

SONOS PLAY:1

The SONOS PLAY:1 is a pretty great speaker to get started with from SONOS. The company is pretty famously known for their speakers which actually use WiFi to play music instead of Bluetooth. It can also seamlessly switch to another room (provided you have a SONOS speaker in that other room) and continue playing your music.

Roku 4

The Roku 4 is a great streaming media player. While the Roku platform has always been pretty great, now the Roku 4 does 4K video. So you can watch Netflix and other streaming services in 4K. It’s perhaps the cheapest set-top box that can do 4K right now.