I’ve always been a gadget girl and love trying out the latest smart home products. Jeff and I have tried all sorts of smart home devices ranging from outdoor cameras to smart lighting, thermostats, leak detectors, and more. Today I’m sharing what I think are the best smart home products – my six favorites that I wouldn’t want to be without! (post includes affiliate links – full disclosure statement available {here})
1. Amazon Echo Dot
Echo Dots are some of the best smart home products to start with! They’re not very expensive (you can find the latest Echo Dot {here}), they’re easy to set up and use, and they integrate with a ton of other smart home products. We have one in the hall leading into our kitchen, one upstairs, and a third in our family room:

The Echo Dots can sit on any surface with the cord connected to an outlet or you can use an outlet like {this one} that I have that plugs directly into the outlet to minimize clutter. I could write a whole post on all of the things that an Echo Dot can do through voice command but these are the things I ask or tell my Dot to do most often:
1. Alexa, what’s the weather for today?
2. Alexa, set a timer for 30 minutes (perfect for laundry!)
3. Alexa, what are the top news stories?
4. Alexa, turn on xx lights (more on this later!)
5. Alexa, create a grocery list (or “add xx to my grocery list”)
6. Alexa, how may tablespoons are in ¾ cup? (because I can never seem to remember my cooking conversions…)
7. Alexa, play my xx playlist on Spotify (or you can just ask her to play rock music, country music, etc.)
8. Alexa, remind me to call xx at xx 0’clock
And if you just want to have a little fun, you can ask Alexa to tell you a joke, play a trivia game, tell you a random fact, or even ask her if she knows how to rap! If you’re worried about set-up, it’s very simple – you just add an app to your phone and it walks you through the set-up process.
2. Google Nest Video Doorbell
Our Google Nest Video Doorbell is one of my favorite purchases ever! My favorite things about it are that (1) you always know who’s on the other side of the door before opening it,


(2) you can talk to whoever’s at your door through the app even if you’re away, (3) you get alerted when there’s motion detected by your front door so you know when any packages arrive (so great for when you’re on vacation!),

and (4) you can keep track of the comings and goings of your kids or anyone else with access to your home. I LOVE having it and have sung it’s praises to lots of friends and family members who have also bought it – every single one loves it too! You can find the wired version of the Google Nest Video Doorbells {here} and the battery operated version {here}.
Also, if you want a separate camera for your driveway or any other area outside of your home check out Google Nest Video Cameras which function very similarly and show up on my Nest app too! I have {this one} and it works super well for us.
Check out my full post on our Nest Hello video doorbell for more details on everything I love about it along with two small things I don’t.
3. Google Nest Learning Thermostat
Our Google Nest Learning Thermostat was our very first smart home purchase and still rates as one of the best smart home products we’ve tried. Our sky high heating bill in our Connecticut home was our incentive to buy it (we had oil heat and it got super expensive to heat our home in the coldest part of winter!). Smart thermostats learn your habits based on when you tend to turn the thermostat up or down and via motion detection it can automatically turn itself down when you’re away to avoid cooling or heating an empty home. Installing the Nest Thermostat definitely did reduce our winter heating bill so we made our money back on it and then some.
But what I REALLY love about it is the ability to control the temperature in our home by my phone. So if I’m lying in bed or on the cough at night and am too cold or hot but also too cozy to get up and mess with the thermostat, I can just pick up my phone and adjust it through the same Nest app as my video doorbell and outdoor camera:

It’s an awesome feature to have when we’re gone on vacation because the day we’re coming home I can readjust the temperature in our house several hours ahead of time so it’s not super cold or hot like we set it when we’re gone. Also, since I can see the temperature in our home from my app, if our furnace was to break while we were gone on a winter vacation, I would see the drop in temperature and know that there was a problem before it got to the point of pipes freezing and bursting (I have several friends who have gone through this!). You can snag a Google Nest Learning Thermostat {here}.
4. Lutron Caséta Wireless Smart Lighting
After installing several Nest smart home products, we moved on to smart home lighting and now that we have it I can’t imagine ever being without it! We chose the Lutron Caséta Wireless Smart Lighting system starting with {this starter kit} that includes a dimmer switch, Pico remote, and Smart Bridge. The Smart Bridge is what makes the magic happen and connects everything – you only need a single Smart Bridge so once you’ve gotten your starter kit that comes with one, you can just add on individual components from there.
So far we have hooked up our family room lights, kitchen lights, outdoor lights, and several plug-in lamp dimmers. For installation, you swap out your regular switches for the Lutron Caseta dimmer switches – they include great instructions and we were able to do it ourselves but if you’re not comfortable with swapping out a switch, it’s a quick and easy electrician job. There are lots of things to love about our smart lighting system but these are three of my favorites:
1. We Can Control Any of Our Connected Lights with the Lutron App from Anywhere
Whether we are laying in bed and realized we forgot to turn off the kitchen lights or are about to watch a movie and too cozy to get up off the couch to dim the lights, we can use either the Lutron Pico remote, the Lutron app on our phones, or voice control with our Amazon Echo Dot to dim or turn on or off the lights.
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It’s also so nice to have when I come home at night and realize I forgot to leave any lights on – instead of walking into a dark house, I can now just turn the lights on with my phone.
2. There is a “Smart Away” Feature That Randomly Turns Lights On and Off When You’re Away
I love this feature for every day but especially while we’re away on vacation. It totally takes the place of having to put your lights on timers to give your home a lived in appearance.
3. Our Outdoor Lights Are Programmed to Automatically Go On and Off at Night
The Lutron app allows you to set “Schedules” for any of your lights so they go on and off at scheduled times. We have our exterior lights scheduled to go on at Sunset and go off at Sunrise. You can group multiple lights together on a schedule so even if you have outdoor lights on three different switches, once those lights are on Lutron Caséta dimmers, you can set the same schedule for the whole group.

Once you’re set with the starter kit, you can also turn any outlet into a smart outlet by adding one of {these lamp dimmers} – they were awesome this past Christmas for plugging in my Christmas lights so I could control them by phone rather than having to crawl under the tree to turn them on and off! And I love that the Caséta by Lutron system requires no special lightbulbs which is different from other smart lighting choices. Definitely one of the best smart home products out there!
5. Leak Alert Smart Water Detector
Laundry room floods can cause a LOT of damage, especially when they’re not detected quickly. I have one of {{these Zircon Leak Alert Smart Water Detectors} by the washer in our laundry room. They’d also be smart to place at other common sources of leakage in your home (by water tank, etc.). {This 3-pack of water sensors} is a similar well reviewed option.
Setting mine up was kind of clunky but it’s otherwise been great! The water detector in our laundry room actually notified me of water being detected several months back when our old washing machine developed a slow leak and I was SO thankful I had put a leak detector there.

During set-up you enter one or more email addresses for notification when water is detected but I used a little online hack so that it sends me a text message too (it’s different for different cell phone providers, but for Verizon you just add your 10 digit number to @vtext.com [so if your phone is 123-456-7899 it would be 1234567899@vtext.com] and then you enter that as one of the email addresses). As with all of the other Smart Home devices, I love this for the peace of mind it gives when we’re away for home!
6. Serena Smart Shades
I had to update my blog post to add a sixth favorite because I LOVE my Serena Smart Shades by Lutron. Their battery operated smart roller shades have been the perfect solution for adding privacy to our glass front doors when we need it and allowing tons of light in when we don’t:

We also added the blackout version of these shades to my girls’ room and love them there too:

I can open and close them with a smart remote, via the Lutron app on my phone, or by voice command using Alexa. I’ve also put them all on an automatic schedule where they go down at sunset. Get more details on Serena Shades in {this post}.
So there you go – those are what I think are the best smart home products to try in your home! They all make my daily routine just a little bit easier and that’s what it’s all about, right?! Which do you think you’d like to try? Enjoy the rest of your weekend friends!
