Whether your loved one is loyal to Apple, Google or Amazon, these smart home gifts will provide a fun surprise for your tech-savvy family and friends. You can find clever gadgets at a wide range of prices, including smart home security devices to keep your house secure and smart speakers and displays to keep the holiday music streaming. Here are all of our favorites for 2022.
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The newest Nest Hub, out this year, is a super smart device that brings convenience to nearly every dimension of the Google Assistant-powered smart home. Whether you’re streaming music, checking who’s ringing your video doorbell or playing YouTube videos, the Nest Hub’s got you covered.
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If your friend or family member prefers Alexa to Google Assistant, the Echo Show 5 — which got an update earlier this year — is a fantastic first smart display. It brings all the smarts of Amazon’s voice assistant, along with the ability to video chat, watch cooking videos and catch some cool kids programming with Amazon Kids Plus (especially if you get the kids edition). It’s also seeing some hefty discounts this holiday season, so check out those deals.
Apple
Apple hasn’t launched a smart display to compete with the Nest Hub or Echo Show devices, but it does have a great looking and sounding smart speaker for the Siri lover in your life. While the HomePod doesn’t have a screen, it does boast some solid sound design, and it works really well with other Apple devices, like iPhones, Apple TVs and Homekit-compatible smart home gadgets. What’s more, it comes in a handful of new colors.
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The Ring Alarm Pro is a DIY home security system, but you’ll get the most out of it if you’re looking to upgrade your whole home’s smarts. It comes with a built-in Eero router, so adding an extender can turn your network into a Wi-Fi 6 mesh system. Plus, it brings cellular-supported backup Wi-Fi, so if you lose power or network connection, your internet stays intact. Finally, you get local video processing and storage — and cool integrations with Alexa, if you have an Amazon Echo device.
In short, it will turn a regular old home into a surprisingly robust smart home in no time flat.
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If you’ve got a bad Wi-Fi connection — or a house with serious dead zones — a mesh system could help. Google’s Nest Wifi mesh system not only brings great performance, but also incorporates a Google Assistant speaker into the Wi-Fi points and can be managed from Google’s Home app.
Amazon
This is kind of an odd pick, but Amazon’s smart soap dispenser plays tunes for 20 seconds after you use it to encourage you to wash for as long as the CDC recommends. It works with Alexa, it delivers concise drops of soap, it feels sturdy, and it can survive two months on a single charge.
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Google’s latest thermostat is affordable, clever and surprisingly straightforward to use. It works with Google Assistant and Alexa, and it will help you keep the house at your desired temperature all through the colder months — and save you money along the way.