WHICH SMART HOME ECOSYSTEM?
AMAZON ALEXA
If you’re looking for the cheapest and most wide-ranging smart home platform, this is it: Amazon’s aggressive discounting and extensive brand partnerships mean there’s a huge choice of Alexa-based products at knockdown prices, especially during the site’s frequent sales events, and Amazon’s sub-brands Blink and Ring make very affordable smart security products that connect to its Echos and other hub devices. There are also lots of third-party products including key devices such as smart thermostats, smart bulbs and smart speakers – so whether you want to buy Amazon’s own stuff or prefer other brands, you can still control everything with Alexa.
APPLE HOMEKIT
Apple’s desire to deliver the ultimate user experience may be laudable, but it can also be expensive: for the first few years of its existence, Homekit devices didn’t just need to pass Apple’s certification tests but had to include a dedicated Homekit chip. That gave Google and Amazon a big opportunity that they both grabbed. Today, Homekit remains the most expensive smart home option across multiple categories: where Amazon will routinely churn out smart speakers for less than £30, Apple’s cheapest is the £89 Homepod Mini. Big names such as Hue are Homekit-compatible, but some products such as Nest thermostats require additional third-party hardware.
GOOGLE HOME
Google has the second most popular platform – and as with Amazon, fully compatible products include both its own devices (including those from smart home subsidiary Nest) and thousands of third-party devices, with all the key players on board. That means Hue smart lights, various makers’ smart thermostats, smart security cameras and more. You’ll often find Google Home compatibility alongside other platforms, particularly Alexa, so there’s flexibility to switch sides further down the line without having to re-buy all your hardware. Google Assistant is arguably the best smart home digital assistant, and the app is available for both IOS and Android.
SAMSUNG SMARTTHINGS
Unusually for Samsung, it’s the underdog here: Smartthings started off as a Samsung-only platform, which again left the field open for Amazon and Google. There is a much wider range of compatible devices out there now; but as many of them also work with the other platforms, there isn’t a hugely compelling reason to pick Smartthings unless you’ve already invested in a lot of cutting-edge Samsung kit. Still, if your smart home is (or will be) a primarily Samsung smart home, then Smartthings works really well, offering its own Bixby voice assistant and features like Smartthings Find for easily-lost items such as earbuds.