Imagine the power of controlling your whole house without leaving your comfy couch.
Picking the right smart hub will give you that power without having to get a computer science degree. Now there are a ton of options for smart hubs, so how do you choose? You may have seen ads for an Amazon Echo smart speaker or a Google Home hub. Let’s take it one step at a time and lay out the options and my recommendation. If you’re looking for a quick, get to the point, recommendation, you’re in the right place. If you want all the options laid out with technical details and features, this is probably not going to whet your appetite. Our goal is to get you into a smart home with minimal investment from your time and money so you can see the value without getting a PhD in smart homes.
Let’s start by choosing which smart hub technology to use. In general, the more customizable and powerful of a smart hub, the more sophisticated and steeper the learning curve. This guide is for someone like me and grammy, who loves the comfort, time-savings, and quality of life that comes from the latest technology without the hassle of learning advanced programming to set it up.
My goal is to get you living in a smart home without having to be a software developer, so I’ll lay out the most popular options below with the most important factors to consider: cost, ease of use, features, and compatibility with all the smart devices out there. TLDR: We use Amazon Alexa primarily and recommend that.
| Price | Ease of Use | Features | Compatibility | |
| Amazon Alexa | Good | Good | Good | Best |
| Google Home | Good | Good | Good | Good |
| Apple HomeKit | Not Good | Good | Good | Not Good |
A few things should stand out to you with the table above:
I’m oversimplifying the differences between the options on purpose because it’s easy to get lost in researching all the nuances of each technology. Essentially, Amazon Alexa and Google Home are both in the same cost and feature ballpark. Alexa has a slight edge, because you can find Alexa devices on sale pretty frequently. Apple HomeKit is going to be more expensive because, well, it’s Apple. Another downside to HomeKit is it has the smallest ecosystem between the three choices, by far. We’re talking about 1,000 devices compatible with Apple HomeKit versus 50,000 for Google Home and 140,000 for Amazon Alexa. Apple compatibility is growing although it’s going to be quite awhile until it’s caught up to its competitors.
Now that you’ve chosen Alexa (yes, a massive assumption), do you need to buy anything like a smart home device to put in my home? Technically, no. You can just download the Amazon Alexa app on your phone for free and set it up to control your home. We still recommend getting a physical device to pair with your Alexa app. You’ll be able to talk to her, give her voice commands without touching a phone, and ask questions like you would anyone else in your house without having to pick up your phone. There’s something about telling Alexa to turn on the lights in the kitchen or to pause the show on Netflix that makes life much easier. If you want to buy an Amazon Echo smart speaker, feel free, although we’d like to lay out some options and our recommendation before you pull out your credit card.
Let’s first start with configuring the Alexa app because it’s a free way to see what cool new things you can do when you throw a smart hub into your smart home. Once you can see the time savings and comfort it can bring, it will make the decision of purchasing a smart hub device that much easier.