GEAR OF THE YEAR

THE BEST SMARTHOME

BEST AI SMART SPEAKER GOOGLE HOME $199 | store.google.com

More than a year on from launch and tens of smart speakers later, Google seems to be keeping its position as the leading smart speaker vendor in Australia. While the Google Home Max is undoubtedly a better speaker, in terms of value, the original Google Home is near impossible to beat. Whether you’re asking it to control your smart home devices or you want to use it to listen to music, the Google Home is great in all departments.

BEST SMART LIGHTING PHILLIPS HUE Starter kits from $139 | www.meethue.com

Philips Hue is a bit of a hard sell. In addition to paying for the smart bulbs, you’ll need a $85 Philips Hue bridge before you can get them online (unless you have a Zigbee smart speaker like the Amazon Echo Plus). While this initial investment might seem pricey, it uses a separate local network to communicate, freeing up your Wi-Fi connection and allowing you to daisy-chain to bulbs outside your local network. The natural-light-alarm settings, light profiles and smart assistant integration are also some of the best available.

BEST SMART DISPLAY GOOGLE HOME HUB $219 | store.google.com

This brand new category effectively adds a display to a smart speaker, but is still largely voice drive – some apps have basic controls (such as skipping backwards or forwards when playing music) but you won’t find an onscreen keyboard or anything overly complex. That’s actually a good thing in our book, because it means that using the Google Home Hub is never fiddly to use. It’s also great for cooking in the kitchen.