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This is the gear we point people to, grouped by the problem you are trying to solve. Each entry says what actually matters in that category before it sends you anywhere — because the specification worth comparing is usually not the one on the front of the box.
Why there are no prices here: smart home hardware is discounted constantly, and a page full of stale numbers is worse than no numbers at all. Every link opens the current listings on Amazon, where the price is whatever it is today.
Smart lighting
Smart bulbs
What matters: whether the bulb needs a bridge or talks straight to your phone, and whether it supports Matter — which decides how much of it keeps working when your internet does not. After that, check the white range: a bulb sold as "tunable white" changes colour temperature, a plain one does not, and the difference is more useful day to day than sixteen million colours. The full reasoning is in our guide to choosing a smart lighting system.
The mistake that costs people a bulb: putting one on a wall dimmer. A smart bulb dims itself and needs constant full mains voltage. Our guide to why Hue bulbs buzz explains what that combination does and how to hear it coming.
→ Matter-compatible smart bulbs · Hue starter kits with a bridge
Wall controls that work with smart bulbs
What matters: the control must leave the mains supply alone. That means either a module that fits behind the existing switch and keeps the bulb powered, or a wireless control that talks to the bulb directly and is not wired into the circuit at all. A traditional dimmer — including one sold as "LED compatible" — is the wrong tool: those are built for bulbs that dim by voltage.
→ In-wall modules for smart bulbs · Wireless dimmer controls
Smart switches for ordinary fixtures
What matters: whether your back box has a neutral wire. Most smart switches need one to power themselves, and older US homes often ran the switch loop without it. There are no-neutral models, but they are fussier about low-wattage loads. If two switches control the same light, you also need a model that explicitly supports 3-way wiring, and usually a matching companion switch.
→ Smart switches (neutral required) · No-neutral and 3-way models
Cameras and security
Indoor and outdoor cameras
What matters: where the footage goes. A camera that records to a microSD card keeps working without a subscription and barely touches your upload; one that records only to the cloud stops being useful the day you stop paying. Then decide between wired and battery: battery cameras are easy to place and wake on motion, wired ones can record continuously.
The figure nobody quotes: continuous cloud recording is a bandwidth decision, not an electricity one. We measured both in how much power and bandwidth a Nest camera actually uses — the power is a rounding error, the upload is not.
→ Cameras with local storage · Nest cameras
Video doorbells
What matters: whether it can run off your existing doorbell wiring. Wired models expect a transformer in roughly the 16–24 V AC range; plenty of older US installations are below that and need the transformer replaced, which is the part people discover after buying. Battery models sidestep it entirely but need charging. Separately, check whether the model keeps your mechanical chime ringing — some need an adapter to do it.
→ Wired video doorbells · Battery video doorbells
Smart locks
What matters: whether it replaces the whole deadbolt or only the thumbturn on the inside. A retrofit model leaves your existing key, cylinder and outside hardware alone, which matters if you rent or if the door is not standard. A full replacement gives you a keypad outside. Either way, check there is a physical key override and how the lock behaves when its batteries die.
→ Retrofit smart locks · Keypad deadbolts
Energy monitoring
Smart plugs that actually measure
What matters: most smart plugs switch but do not measure. If you want the number, the listing has to say energy monitoring explicitly — the word "smart" does not imply it. Check the current rating too: many are rated well below the 15 A a US outlet can deliver, which rules them out for heaters, kettles and anything with a motor.
This is the cheap way to settle an argument about what a device costs to run. It is how you would check the figures in our camera power breakdown on your own hardware.
→ Smart plugs with energy monitoring · Plug-in power meters
Whole-home monitors
What matters: these clamp around the incoming mains conductors inside your panel, so in most places fitting one is an electrician's job rather than a weekend project. What you get for that is every circuit at once instead of one appliance at a time — worth it if you are chasing a standing load you cannot find.
Hubs and bridges
What matters: a hub earns its place if it gives you local control when the internet is down, or if it bridges a radio your phone does not speak. And one point worth being clear about, because the marketing is not: Matter is a common language, not a radio. A Matter device still runs over Wi-Fi or Thread, and Thread devices need a border router somewhere in the house before they can reach anything — the distinction is set out in our smart lighting guide.
→ Hubs with a Thread border router · Zigbee bridges
Routers and networking
What matters: not the advertised device count. Whether it can broadcast a separate 2.4 GHz network, because most smart devices are 2.4 GHz only and band steering is the usual reason pairing fails; whether the guest network covers 2.4 GHz and offers client isolation, which is what actually keeps a compromised device away from your laptop; and whether it supports WPA3 while still allowing WPA2 AES for older hardware.
Both points are covered properly in what to look for in a router for a smart home and how to secure a smart home.
→ Routers with WPA3 and guest networks · Mesh systems
Voice and speakers
What matters: which assistant the rest of your house already speaks, and whether the speaker has a microphone switch that physically cuts the mic rather than asking the software to ignore it. Sound quality is the easiest thing to judge in a shop and the least important of the three.
One thing worth knowing before you build a routine around voice: Amazon closed the interface that let outside apps read and write Alexa's shopping list in July 2024, so a dedicated list app no longer syncs with it. We set out what still works, and what the phrasing has to be now, in the Alexa shopping list, and what changed.
→ Smart speakers · Smart displays
Living room
What matters: a TV browser is far easier to use with a pointer than with a remote, and most sets will pair an ordinary Bluetooth mouse without any extra hardware. It is the single change that makes the built-in browser tolerable — see the pairing path in our Samsung TV browser guide, which also covers locking the browser down if that is what you actually want.
What is not here
No robot vacuums, no thermostats, no speakers. We link to categories we have looked into properly, and the list grows as the site does. If a category is missing it is because we have nothing useful to say about it yet, which is a better reason than the alternative.