How To Set Up A Smart Home

Smart homes are designed to make your life simpler by giving you voice or app control over a range of devices to set up routines, automate tasks and simplify how you use products.

Devices range from thermostats and light bulbs to dishwashers and doorbells. Smart speakers are the most popular place to start setting up your smart home since they often use voice control and act as a smart hub giving you control over other smart devices in your home. 

Head to our speaker reviews to see which came top rated in our lab tests.

What are smart home products?

Smart home products, such as smart doorbells and thermostats, are connected to the internet, giving them greater functionality than their traditional counterparts. It also means they can be linked together so you can control them from a central hub device – often a voice-controlled smart speaker or an app on your phone. You can control smart products from your home or when you’re out, even automating tasks to save you time.

How much do smart home products cost?

Dedicated hub devices such as smart speakers and smart displays typically cost £100-£200. Apps are typically free, but some additional features, particularly on smart doorbells, require a subscription.

Smart home products can look affordable individually, but those serious about setting up a smart home will find the costs quickly ramp up if you’re not careful.

• Smart light bulbs tend to cost significantly more than usual bulbs. Popular smart light bulbs can cost around £10 each, whereas standard light bulbs cost around £5.
• Smart doorbells from established brands such as Ring and Nest are priced around £180-£330, but some cheaper ones come in at under £100.
• Smart thermostats and wireless security cameras often cost £100-£200, but cheaper models are available.

Be wary of cheaper smart devices, particularly from brands you’ve never heard of since they can have weaker security and won’t be updated for long.

Smart speakers

Smart speakers are like traditional speakers but have voice assistants built-in. The Amazon Echo and Google Home are two of the biggest smart speaker brands, but there are plenty of others to choose from. These include models from top brands such as Apple, Bose, Sonos, LG, JBL and Sony.

If you’re looking to make a smart speaker the hub device for your smart home, most will also want it to be a great-sounding speaker for playing music and radio.

In the table below, our experts have selected three of the very best smart speakers from our rigorous tests that would excel as the hub at the heart of your smart home.

If you’re looking to add voice control to multiple rooms in your home, you may also want to consider small hub devices like the Amazon Echo Dot. These won’t be able to fill a room with full-bodied sound, but are useful if there are parts of your home out of earshot of your smart speaker.

There are plenty more excellent smart speakers to choose from – see our full list of tested Bluetooth, smart and wireless speaker reviews.

Smart displays

Smart displays are like smart speakers but also have a touchscreen, offering additional functionality and making it easier to track all the different elements of your smart home. The Google Nest Hub and Amazon Echo Show are two of the most popular models. They differ from tablets in having a better-angled screen for use when standing and usually have more powerful speakers.

Head to our smart display reviews to see how they performed in our lab tests.

What smart products are available?

One of the most popular smart home products is smart lighting, which you can turn on with voice commands or from an app on your phone. Smart thermostats are also popular. They allow you to remotely control your home’s temperature from the app on your phone even when you’re out of the house. Smart plugs allow you to turn on and off any device via your smartphone or voice commands.

Smart lights can be controlled through an app on your smartphone or through voice commands. Some, such as Hive, Osram and Philips Hue light bulbs are operated via a separate control unit, bridge or smart hub, while others, such as TP-Link Smart wi-fi LED bulbs, can be operated directly from your smartphone or smart speaker, without the need for a smart hub.

Smart thermostats offer more sophisticated control of your heating than traditional thermostats. They allow you to control the temperature of your home remotely, so you can turn up the heating using the smartphone app when you’re on your way home.  Some even support motion sensors or GPS tracking to adjust the temperature automatically when you enter and leave home, so you don’t need to do anything.

Popular brands include Nest, Netatmo, Honeywell and the British Gas smart thermostat Hive.

See our reviews of the best smart thermostats.

• Smart doorbells and smart locks

Smart doorbells include a camera so you can see who’s at the door without the risk of opening it to unwanted strangers. You can even get notified of visitors and speak to them when you’re not at home via your smartphone, particularly useful if you’ve missed a delivery.

Leading brands include Ring and Nest, which are compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant voice control, respectively. Since you don’t have to open the door, they add an extra level of security to your home. Some are also compatible with smart door locks like those from Yale, so you can even let in a family member when you’re away from the property, without having to lend them your key.

For more on smart doorbells, the top brands and what you need to know, see our best smart doorbells.

• Smart home security systems, burglar alarms and wireless security cameras

Smart doorbells aren’t the only way smart home products can improve the security of your home. Smart home security systems, which combine a burglar alarm with motion sensors and a wireless security camera, can send you alerts to your smartphone when an intruder is detected, and you can even view the footage in real time to see if it’s a concern or just the neighbour’s cat. This means you no longer have to rely on the kindness of your neighbours if your alarm goes off, and gives you the power to respond to issues straight away.

You can either buy the products in a package with a smart home security system kit, or buy the hub, sensors and wireless security camera separately. Find out more about the options available in our comprehensive guide to the best smart home security systems. Popular brands for sensor kits include Yale, Samsung, Honeywell and Panasonic, and for wireless security cameras brands include Nest, Arlo, Hive, Netatmo and Logitech.

Other popular smart home products

Many other popular products are increasingly getting smart functionality, allowing you to connect them to your smart home hub device for centralised control, and so you can automate routines to activate multiple devices at once. The following products also have smart functionality:

There are so many smart home devices these days there’s too many to include here. To find other smart devices across Which?, go to our smart homes, safety and security page.

Fitting your new smart home product

Most smart home products are designed so you can fit them yourself. However, it’s important to check what the smart home product claims to support before you buy – for example, whether the smart lock is compatible with your style of door.

Even so, in practice you may run into trouble getting some smart home products to fit or work correctly. They all rely on a strong connection to your home wi-fi, so if the wi-fi signal is weak where you want the device, you may wish to buy a wi-fi extender or mesh system.

It’s worth contacting the product’s manufacturer in the first instance if you’re having problems. If you feel a product hasn’t met your expectations, our consumer rights website has lots of advice on what you can do.

There will be instances where one of our Which? Trusted Traders, who have been fully assessed by our qualified trading standards professionals, will be able to do the job for you if you’re unable or not feeling confident.

To do this head over to the Which? Trusted Traders and search for ‘smart home’ in your area to find an engineer near you who specialises in installing smart home products.

Trusted Traders can typically help with:

• Smart lighting and heating
• Smart speakers and other hub control devices
• Smart home security systems, including smart doorbells  and wireless security cameras
• Many are willing to help with all smart home products.

Privacy and security with smart home products

All smart home products are connected to the internet and often run off your home wi-fi network. This brings many benefits, but risks as well. One smart home product with weak security can act as a way in for hackers to access your home network. And since smart home products collect your personal data, whether that be your energy use or security camera footage, you need to be confident that data is secure.

We extensively test smart home products to ensure their security is up to scratch. For example, all smart speaker and smart display hub devices we’ve tested from August 2019 onwards have undergone extensive penetration testing at our expert lab, to ensure they’re not vulnerable to hacking and that your personal data is secure.