If Black Friday and Cyber Monday play are any indicators for market demands, than devices for smart homes are about to dominate the Christmas season.
Not so long ago, if you wanted to have a connected house (or smart home), you had to pay quite a sum. These days, it’s easy to setup your own smart home at almost any budget.
Thanks to products such as Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Apple’s Homekit, it’s now easier than ever to connect different smart products and control them from a single device. This means you don’t have to re-wire your house and buy a complicated and expensive system to run your smart home on, but just integrate different products and create your own home automation.
If you’ve missed the opportunity to buy your favorite devices at a discount price on Black Friday – Christmas is your next best chance.
While not everyone agrees that smart devices are a good holiday gift, we think it’s a great idea!
So what products should you add to your Santa’s wishlist this year? Here’s our suggestions.
Amazon Echo / Amazon dot
Before I even go and discuss different smart functionalities you could add to your home, I’ll start with the main hub.
Amazon Echo (or its little brother Dot) are the heart of your smart house.
Activated by voice, Amazon Alexa allows you to control different devices in your smart home but also has it’s own Skill set and 3rd party skills you can enable.
From getting the latest news on your favorite sports team, listening to and controlling your favorite music to getting weather updates – Alexa has many different daily uses to make your life more productive and comfortable.
Price: $139.99
You can buy it here
Not sure? Read the reviews
Alternative: Google Home
Elgato’s HomeKit motion sensor
Eve Motion connects between your Apple HomeKit-enabled accessories, allowing a motion based smart home automation. You can set up different workflows and tasks simply by triggering Eve with motion.
With Eve, you can create different scenarios based on motion, time or climate change.
Here are a few examples of popular uses of Eve:
- Turn on the lights and A/C when you walk into a room
- Turn off your alarm as you enter your driveway
- Activate a fan when you enter your living room, but only if your climate sensor has registered a certain temperature.
Once you connect Eve to your HomeKit and set your workflows, you can trigger it just by motion. No need to click, tap or swipe your phone. Just walk in the room.
What makes Eve unique in the smart home scenery is that it is powered by a standard pair of AA batteries and communicates using Bluetooth.
Price: $49.95
You can buy it here
Not sure? Read the reviews
Eve Motion
Philips Hue
For me, getting into the spirit of Christmas means setting up the right mood at home and what sets the mood better than the right lighting?
Philips Hue is by far one of the most popular Smart Lightbulbs in the market.
Hue allows you to control your lights from your mobile device (or Amazon Alexa) to create the ambiance that compliments your daily events.
One of the cool things about Philip’s lightbulb, is that you can also choose a specific light color to fit your mood and not just the regular lights on – lights off function.
Also, you can select from various sets of connected lights (lightbulb, stripes) and controllers.
If you’re still not sure why you should to have a smart light at your house, watch this video:
Price: $14.99 – $69.99
You can buy it here
Not sure? Read the reviews
Sensibo
Think about those crazy hot days, when you just want to get to your cool cold house. Or if you’re just running away from the cold snow and want to be welcomed by a cozy warm living room.
What if you could just set your A/C from afar?
One of the biggest challenges with making your air conditioning smart, is that your home A/C is not something you replace very often (5-7 years average). And if you live in a rented apartment, it’s not worth replacing.
Sensibo is an add-on for your A/C. All you have to do is stick it on your A/C and that’s it. You can start controlling it from your phone. Moving out? Just take your Sensibo device with you.
Also, they had a hilarious video when they launched their product on Indiegogo – so it won’t just only keep you cool, but will also make you laugh.
Price: $99.99 – $249.99
You can buy it here
Not sure? Read the reviews (Straight out of Reddit!)
Kwikset Kevo Smart Door Lock
Your smart home starts at your front door with Kwikset Kevo.
There’s nothing more frustrating than getting to your front door only to start fumbling around your bag for your keys. Kevo solves that with a Smartphone and compatible watch app.
Kevo works using Bluetooth (so you’re not relying on your shaky Wi-fi for home security) and is a combination of a unique physical lock with an app on your phone or watch.
The cool factor in Kevo Smart Door Lock is that you can either use the app to unlock the door or simply tap the lock. The lock recognizes your phone is near and will unlock the door.
Other than its core functions, Kevo has additional cool features:
- Give your guest a 24-hour pass
- Family plan
- Notifications (for example, get notified when your kid comes home)
Smart homes are cool, but when it comes to your house lock – security is a big deal.
Kevo promises:
- Multi-Level Encryption
- Dual Authentication
- Auto lock
- Disable phone keys through a web interface if phone is lost. to-Lock
Learn more about their security features here
Price: $229
You can buy it here
Not sure? Read a review
iHome Control
Not all products come “smart-ready”, this is whyiHome invented “Smartplug”.
Smartplug is basically an add-on to your electric socket that communicates with an app on your phone.
Every appliance you have connected to the iHome Control, can be controlled by your smartphone.
Turn on the lights, turn off the heater when you leave home, turn off the TV through your phone from another room etc.
There aren’t a lot of surprises there, though it’s an easy way to make your home a little smarter at just 39.99$ per plug.
Also, it is smart enough that you can plug in different appliances to the same socket, and the accompanying app will recognize them as different devices and let you control them separately.
Another plus is that there’s no need for any electrical engineering, switching sockets or any dramatic change at your house. iHome Control just plugs into your existing sockets, and that’s it
Price: $39.99 – $49.99
You can buy it here
Not sure? Watch a review
Itbed
What’s a smart home without the most important furniture of the house – the bed.
This bed knows how to fit itself to your sleeping needs in real time. It analyzes your sleeping postures and makes the mattress harder or softer based on how you sleep.
It also tracks different metrics to give you a complete report on how you slept and how to improve your sleep with room temperature suggestions, when you should go to sleep and more.
The coolest feature, is that the bed can connect to all of your other smart devices and optimize them for your sleep.
For example:
- Know when is the ideal time to workout based on your sleep
- Change the room temperature to help you sleep better
While being super impressive, the IT Bed is quite expensive.
If you still want to monitor your sleep, you can slo try Beddit Smart 3.
It doesn’t go as extreme as the IT bed, but it’s much cheaper and doesn’t require you to buy a whole new bed – just to put a small gadget under your pillow.
Price: $1,099
You can buy it here
Not sure? Here’s a review
Now To You
What smart device are you looking for to getting for Christmas? Or better yet, which one are you planning to surprise your loved one with?