WIRELESS OPTIONS

“It’s the number one rule – wired is better than wireless as it’s more resilient and faster,” says Peter Worthy of Smarthomes. But if you’ve come to the idea of home technology quite late in your self build, or you’re renovating, you may not want or be able to chase many kilometres of cables into the walls. Easily available systems such as Google Home all rely on a wifi signal, but most of the top integrated options now offer wireless options and boosters, too, with the opportunity to mix and match with hard-wired products – useful if you’re building an extension.

“Higher end solutions are almost all hard-wired, but wireless setups – particularly when it comes to lighting, heating, and other sub-systems that require low data rates (devices that are just sending short simple commands as opposed to streaming video) – are better than ever,” says Homeplay’s James Ratcliffe. “It’s not at all unusual to use a mixture of the two, with, say, wired products in the primary living areas, where features like backlit lighting keypads are important (which make it easy to see the text on the buttons, for example) and lower-cost wireless products in secondary bedrooms, utility areas etc.”