The best smart home products of 2025-26

How is it possible that we’re already looking at the end of 2025? The smart home market continued to expand and become ever more mainstream this year, as manufacturers introduced new products that are easier to set up and use daily.

The year’s biggest innovations revolve around AI, followed by the Matter standard that continues to break down the walls between brands, although there is still no standard for important product categories, including security cameras.

In any event, this is the time when we celebrate the best smart home products you can buy in 2025. As is our practice, this list is not limited to products introduced in 2025, but they are all available for purchase today. And since this year is not quite over, and there are a handful of new products we’re still waiting to review, we might circle back to this and make an addition or two. Watch this space.

Best smart lighting ecosystem: Philips Hue

Philips Hue has long been our lighting ecosystem of choice, offering a peerless section of smart bulbs, lamps, light strips, outdoor lights, and now security cameras as well as video doorbells. But this year, Philips Hue is taking things up a notch with a new Hue Bridge Pro that can handle more than 200 Hue devices (150 lights plus 50-ish accessories) while also turning your Hue lights into motion sensors. With the Bridge Pro’s added capacity plus its ability to turn every room into a motion zone, the Philips Hue lighting ecosystem is looking stronger than ever. 

Best lighting control system: Lutron Caséta 

If you’re intent on installing smart light switches to control your existing home lights, look no further than the Lutron Caséta smart home ecosystem. With its proprietary Clear Connect technology, Lutron switches like the Diva Smart Dimmer are tops at controlling home lighting, and the system is compatible with Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, and even Sonos speakers. Beyond smart lights, the Lutron Caséta ecosystem also comprises smart shades and blinds, motion sensors, ceiling-fan controllers, keypads, and remotes. 

Best smart lock: Level Lock Pro

It may look like an ordinary deadbolt (that’s a good thing, by the way), but the Level Lock Pro is a state-of-the-art smart lock that can be unlocked with an NFC-enabled key fob, a smart phone, a smart watch, or a PIN (when used with its optional keypad). The lock also supports geofencing, meaning it can lock or unlock your door as you leave or approach your home. Because it supports Matter, the Level Lock Pro will work with the Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings ecosystems, and it can be bridged into your Wi-Fi network via an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot Max, an Apple HomePod or HomePod mini, a Google Nest Hub Max or 2^nd-gen Hub, or any other smart speaker or display that offers Thread border router functionality.

Best video doorbell for Alexa users

Yes, Amazon just shipped several new Ring video doorbells, but we’ve not had the opportunity to review any of them. But the Tapo D225 Video Doorbell doesn’t win its spot on this list by default. Despite its low street price of just $90, this porch sentinel boasts 2K video resolution, a head-to-toe view of your visitor, and it comes with a plug-in chime so you’ll never miss someone who rings the bell. You won’t need to worry about the ongoing cost of a subscription for cloud storage, as there’s an onboard microSD card slow, and you can operate it on its internal battery or hardwire it to low-voltage power. Take the latter route and you’ll even be able to set up 24/7 recording. As our reviewer summed it up: “[the Tapo D225 Video Doorbell Camera might not be much to look at, but it delivers a lot of features and it gets the job done.”

Best video doorbell for Apple Home users

The headline of our Aqara Doorbell Camera Hub G410 review reads, simply, “Yeah, it does that, too.” That’s because there are so few things it’s not capable of. What’s more, it can also function as a complete Matter-compatible smart home hub, thanks to its Thread and Zigbee radios (although support for the latter is limited to Aqara’s own Zigbee devices). You don’t need to be an Apple Home aficionado to appreciate this doorbell–it’s also compatible with the Amazon Alexa and Google Home ecosystems–but Apple users will welcome it as one of the few video doorbells to support Apple’s HomeKit and HomeKit Secure.

Best video doorbell for Google Home users

We said Google’s Gemini was a game-changer in our review of the Nest Doorbell (wired, 3rd gen) largely because of that AI’s ability to describe and summarize what security cameras like this have seen. Gemini also empowers you to search all of the camera’s high-resolution recordings with natural-language queries–that sure beats scrubbing along a timeline looking for a specific event. Google doesn’t offer the same features in a battery-powered model, yet, so you’ll need to have a low-voltage transformer to install this. But it will look attractive next to your door while delivering a head-to-toe view of your visitors.

Best indoor security camera for Amazon Alexa users

Don’t let this indoor camera’s low price tag fool you. This home security device is packed with more features than you might expect for the money, including 2K video resolution and a pan/tilt motor that can spin its lens 360 degrees and tilt it over a 180-degree arc. The small camera runs on Arlo Intelligence to produce AI-powered alerts for people, vehicles, animals, and packages. Be aware that this is an AC-powered camera–there is not battery option–and you’ll need to pay for a subscription to unlock all of its features.

Best indoor security camera for Google Home users

No, we haven’t published our complete hands-on review of the Nest Cam Indoor (wired, 3rd gen), but we have enough experience with it to know that it’s the best choice for smart home dwellers in the Google Home ecosystem. Like Google’s latest Nest Doorbell and Nest Cam Outdoor, this indoor model delivers 2K video resolution, but the real benefit to be had is Google’s Gemini AI–and you’ll want to pay for a Google Home Premium subscription to get the full benefit of it (as with all of Google’s Nest cameras, you do get a rolling three hours of event-based video recordings without a sub). None of Google’s new and most powerful cameras have battery options, you’ll need to plug each of them into a nearby AC outlet, but you won’t find a better home security camera if your life revolves around Google Home.

Best outdoor security camera for Apple Home users

Best outdoor security camera for Google Home users

The Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro is the rare smart home device that’s not just an outdoor Wi-fi home security, but it’s also a Matter-certified outdoor smart home hub complete with Thread and Zigbee radios. Now before you get too excited, know that its Zigbee radio can only control Aqara’s own Zigbee smart home devices, but that offering is pretty solid. As for the camera element of this device, its 4-megapixel image sensor captures video in resolution of 2688×1520 pixels, and it’s fully compatible with Apple Home, including HomeKit Secure Video. If you’re concerned about finding an outdoor outlet to plug it in, consider its PoE cousin and run an ethernet cable from your compatible router for both data and power.

We haven’t yet published our review of the Nest Cam Outdoor (wired, 2nd gen), either, but we installed it at the same time we conducted our Nest Doorbell (wired, 3rd gen) review and have been using it continually since then. The highlight is, of course, the integration with Google’s Gemini AI, and its ability to summarize the events that happened within its field of view. Unlike most cameras, you’ll get need at least some free recordings in the cloud, but you’ll need to sign up for a subscription to get enough to be truly useful, and that’s also the only way to unlock Gemini.

Best floodlight camera: Eufy Floodlight Camera E340 

Our favorite floodlight camera isn’t just a floodlight and security cam in one–it’s actually a floodlight plus two cameras, including one with a 3K wide-angle lens and a second with a 2K telephoto lens. Equipped with a pan/tilt motor, the Eufy Floodlight Camera E340’s dual cameras can pan 360 degrees over a 120-degree arc, perfect for covering large swathes of your property, while its twin LED panels can illuminate the area with up to 2,000 lumens of brightness. The E340 also offers up to 128GB of local storage on a (user-supplied) microSD card, meaning no need for cloud storage, or you can go big with up to 16TB of hard drive storage when using the Eufy HomeBase S380.