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106

The best smart home devices you can buy right now (Spring 2020)
From voice-controlled assistant speakers to robot vacuums, and everything in between

Scott Scrivens

Millions of homes now contain a smart assistant speaker of some variety and sales of IoT products continue to grow as the market matures and prices come down across the sector. With so many options available, it's hard to know what to buy, and that's where we come in — this is a selection of our favorite smart home gadgets. Whether you want to just dip your toes in the water with a cheap Google Nest Mini or dive into the deep end with smart lights, cameras, thermostats, doorbells, and so on — we’ve got you covered.

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26

How to turn your old Android phone or tablet into a remote control for your smart home
For these times when using your voice isn't an option

Hagop Kavafian

Smart devices add a great level of convenience to your household, including the ability to control them remotely and using your voice. However, there are times when it's much easier to operate them the old fashioned way with the push of a button rather than with your voice. Sadly, not many come with physical controls, and even if they did, that would mean you'd have a bunch of remotes lying around.

To solve this issue, we've looked at how you can turn a phone or a tablet into a remote control for all of your smart home devices, without having to switch from one app to another.

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57

Nest outages prove that the smart home needs a local fallback
Relying solely on remote servers is not wise, especially for security

Rita El Khoury

Google's Nest service has been down once, twice, thrice, four times, no, scratch that, at least five times in five months, four of which were in the last few weeks. A similar thing happened toward the end of 2018. After each failure, a fix, an apology, more disgruntled users, and hours lost without any security recording for owners of the brand's cameras. Seeing the same headline with the same story every day proves that we can't solely rely on remote servers for the smart home, and local fallbacks need to be the first feature baked in, not an afterthought or a bonus.

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23

Pre-orders are now open for Wyze Band and Scale (Updated)
They'll be your best companions to keep track of your activity and weight

Hagop Kavafian

Wyze, the company known for making affordable smart home products, was rumored to be working on a fitness tracking band and a smart scale. The company confirmed this information and released further details on their availability last month, hinting these devices were almost ready to hit the market. We now know they will be available for early access buyers on Tuesday.

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0

Get four Philips Hue color bulbs and a hub for $120 today only
"OK Google, let there be light"

Corbin Davenport

Looking to deck your home out in smart lights? Or perhaps you just want to make your new home office a bit more colorful? Whatever your reason might be for wanting some smart lights, a 4-pack of Philips Hue (plus the required hub) is just $119.99 right now on Amazon-owned Woot.

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14

The best smart light bulbs to brighten up your home
OK Google, let there be light

Corbin Davenport

The market for smart light bulbs has exploded over the past decade. Dozens of tech companies and furniture makers have launched smart lighting products, which means it can be difficult to know which options are best. Store shelves are literally stocked to the brim with smart lights from varying brands, all compatible with different ecosystems and different smart speakers.

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15

Grab a refurbished JBL Link View smart display for just $69
Nice.

Corbin Davenport

JBL was one of the first companies to release a third-party Google Assistant smart display. While the JBL Link View certainly produces richer sound than any other Assistant display, the original $250 price tag was hard to justify. Now you can grab a refurbished unit for the low price of $69 from the company's eBay store. Nice.

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8

Some Google Nest cameras are still having issues following last night's outage
The company is aware of the problems and working on a fix

Ryne Hager

Starting last evening, Google's Nest cameras started suffering widespread issues with both live feeds and recorded video history. Although the issue resolved for many overnight, some are experiencing problems accessing video recordings and, in some cases, live feeds as well. Google currently claims a "small portion of cameras" are still having trouble, and it's working on a fix.

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1

Netatmo refreshes its ugly and stale Security app, adds video quality selector
It's whiter though, with no dark mode

Rita El Khoury

Netatmo may not be the first brand that comes to your mind when you think about smart home security, but the French company does a lot of things right. Its cameras come with no hidden fees, but offer local storage, backups to Dropbox and an FTP server, face recognition (though not super reliable), alarm detection, Google Assistant integration — perks that usually cost a lot with competitor products. However, in my review of the Welcome camera, one of the aspects I lamented most was the sluggish Android app. Two years later, it's finally received a big refresh.

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1

Keep an eye on your house and yard for $276 with this eufyCam 2 two-camera bundle ($74 off)
They're wireless and weatherproof, so you can put them wherever you want

Hagop Kavafian

If you're on the market for a wireless security camera system to keep an eye on your home and your yard without breaking the bank, the Anker eufyCam 2 is an excellent option. With this deal, you can snatch a two-camera bundle for $276, which is $76 off the regular price.

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