Best smart home devices to buy in 2022

Yes, smart gadgets are a great way of simplifying your everyday life. Using your voice and touch controls, these internet-connected gadgets let you turn on lights, set the thermostat temperature, check who is at the front door, listen to music, set reminders, get daily news briefings, stream the latest movies or TV shows, and monitor surveillance systems.

You can set up routines to control how your devices perform in collaboration with each other (like turning off the all lights when you say “good night” or changing the brightness of your living room bulbs when the TV is on), plus they have separate mobile apps so you can get notifications and alerts while on-the-go. Smart home devices are ideal for pure convenience, as they give you much more control than traditional home devices, and let you control them remotely.

While it’s tempting to create a vast futuristic voice-controlled utopia, it’s probably best to start on a smaller scale. Good news: you don’t have to spend a fortune to get a taste of a smart home, and it’s easy to get a basic setup for under £100. For that, you’ll get a smart display or speaker, plus a couple of smart light bulbs, a smart plug and a video doorbell. The Echo Show 5 is regularly discounted to under £40 and the Echo Dot to under £30, while TP-Link Tapo bulb two-pack cost £19.99. A duo of Meross smart plugs is under £20 and Amazon’s budget Blink video doorbell is often on offer for around £35. If we only had £100 right now, here’s how we could spend it to get a smart home on a budget:

• Echo Dot 5: £26.99
• Blink video doorbell: £34.99
• Meross 2-pack smart plugs: £17.99
• TP-Link smart bulbs x2: £17.98

Most smart devices need a consistent wifi connection to work, and if your internet does go down there’s a good chance your devices will become much less smart – but not totally unusable. Each product is different, but usually, features that rely on a constant cloud or wifi connection for features will be disrupted – like a voice assistant checking the weather, a security camera letting you access live footage or your bulbs changing colour via an app.

But in many cases, the product will still work – just at a basic level. A smart thermostat will still let you change settings manually, a smart lock will also be able to connect to your phone via Bluetooth (or in some cases use a physical key as a backup) and a speaker will still let you set alarms and timers. Your bulbs will still turn on, but only manually.

Unlike the other major platforms, Apple’s HomeKit offers local control via a dedicated hub (this can be an Apple TV, HomePod Mini or an iPad), meaning it doesn’t always rely on a constant cloud connection. As a result, your HomeKit smart devices can continue to work if you suffer an unexpected outage, although just like the other platforms Siri voice assistance will be disrupted if the wifi in your home drops.