I have always perceived setting up a smart home as a means of convenience, with some luxury added. At least, that’s what I thought a decade ago when I set out to automate my smart home. Today, a wide range of affordable to expensive smart home solutions involve even the most basic and budget components. Despite the evolving smart home platforms, protocols, and devices, I’m guilty of wasting several dollars and committing blunders while setting up my smart home. I hope that my mistakes save others from frustration, headaches, and overspending while setting up a smart home.

If you've ever built anything, you know that a decent screwdriver is going to go a long way in making the process easier. While you can always go all out with an electric screwdriver from your local hardware store, we think this one that's made for smaller projects is going to be a better option, especially at its current price, which comes in at just $18 during Amazon's Prime Day sales event.

Although VR is still a compelling technology, it's taken a backseat over the years, as the hype from the early days has died down substantially. Of course, that doesn't mean that the technology is dead, and Meta is still trying to drum up some excitement for the technology in 2025, introducing new hardware to a new generation.

Prime Day is one of the best times of the year to stock up on smart home gear. With big price drops on all of Amazon’s many smart home brands, from Blink and Ring to Echo speakers and Eero Wi-Fi routers, plus a ton of other manufacturers getting in on the action, making your smart home better rarely gets more affordable.However, there are a lot of deals, and it’s frankly overwhelming. So, I’ve sifted through them all to find the best deals on some of my favorite smart home products. If you’re looking to get started with smart lighting, add some smart indoor air quality devices to your home, have a robot do your dirty work for you, or get a helping hand in the kitchen, these products will serve you well.Smart lighting dealsPhilips Hue Smart Light Starter Kit My favorite smart bulbs, this starter kit contains four 75W A19-sized E26 color bulbs and a Philips Hue Bridge — all you need to get going. The color-changing bulbs work with Matter, but you’ll find the best features in Hue’s app, which lets you set adaptive lighting and sleep/wake routines as well as fun, colorful options.Where to Buy: $199.99 $159.99 at Amazon $199.99 $165.99 at Best BuyPhilips Hue Festavia string lightsThese are the best holiday lights money can buy and they are on sale in July, so now is the time to grab them. With beautiful colors, a nice selection of festive scenes, and an easy-to-use app, they are super reliable, come in two lengths, work with all the major smart home platforms, and are Matter-compatible.Where to Buy: $219.99 $153.99 at Amazon (65-foot) $359.99 $241.99 at Amazon (130-feet)The Lutron Caseta line of smart switches is one of the most reliable smart lighting lines, and its newer Diva Dimmer Switch starter kit, featuring a more traditional style, is on sale at Amazon for $99.95, 20 percent off. It comes with a Lutron bridge and a Pico remote and works with or without a neutral wire.Govee’s inexpensive, easy-to-use Smart Outdoor String Lights offer 96 feet of full color and tunable warm white light and are great for a patio or porch. With Matter compatibility, they can work with any smart home system and are down to $80 from $120 at Amazon.The Aqara Hub M3 is down to $99.99 from $149.99 at Amazon. It’s not a lighting product, per se, but as a Matter Controller and Thread Border router, it allows you to add any Matter-compatible lighting product to Aqara’s app and control it using the company’s extensive automations. It’s also a good foundation for using any of Aqara’s own smart lighting products, which include a wide range of smart switches (with and without neutral wires), smart bulbs, and a cool ceiling light.Deals on indoor air quality gadgetsEcobee Smart Thermostat PremiumThe Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium is an excellent option for adding smarts and some style to your HVAC system. As well as being a smart way to control your energy use, the thermostat can also act as a video intercom for Ecobee’s excellent doorbell camera and an indoor air quality monitor.Where to Buy: $249.99 $209 at AmazonAmazon’s compact indoor Smart Air Quality Monitor is just $44.99 ($25 off) at Amazon for Prime Day, and can give you a heads up via an Echo speaker or the Alexa app when your indoor air quality changes. It’s LED will also warn you by turning red, and unlike a lot of IAQ devices, it will detect CO levels. Read my review.The super-cute SwitchBot Air Purifier Table is now down to $154.99 from $269.99 at Amazon. This versatile gadget purifies your air while serving as a functional table, plus it has a built-in wireless charger. A three-in-one bargain this Prime Day. It also supports Matter, so you can connect to any smart home system. Security camera dealsRing Battery Doorbell PlusThis wireless Ring doorbell has great video quality, head-to-toe view, and speedy response times for a battery doorbell. It works with Amazon Alexa and can send alerts for people and packages with a Ring Home subscription.Where to Buy: $149.99 $79.99 at Amazon $149.99 at TargetThe new, second generation of the inexpensive Blink Video Doorbell is on sale for $29.99, 57 percent off. That’s a serious bargain for a device that adds better video quality, a broader field of view, and several other upgrades to the original.I’ve been testing the Arlo Wired Floodlight Camera this summer, and it’s a great device for keeping an eye on your property. With 2K video quality and a wide field of view, plus motion-activated security lighting, you’ll catch any action without worrying about battery life. It’s down to $99.99, 33 percent off, at Arlo.com and Amazon, but you will need to factor in the $10 monthly subscription fee for recorded video.Blink Wired Floodlight CameraWith 1080p video, 2,600 lumens, and a 105dB siren for $50, this is a great budget buy. You sacrifice better video quality and tunable lighting over other options. But there’s person detection (with a monthly fee) and local recording (with additional hardware). It integrates with Amazon Alexa, has a nice design, and can be mounted horizontally or vertically.Where to Buy: $99.99 $49.99 at Amazon $99.99 $89.99 at The Home DepotBlink Outdoor 4The Blink Outdoor 4 security camera has 1080p recording, motion detection, night vision, two-way audio, and up to two years of battery life. That’s a lot for $40. There’s also the option of local recording with the Sync Module XR, and the camera supports on-device person detection (for a monthly fee).Where to Buy: $99.99 $39.99 at Amazon $179.99 $69.99 at Amazon (two-pack) $259.99 $99.99 at Amazon (three-pack)Deals on smart speakers and smart displaysAmazon Echo Show 8 (third-gen)Amazon’s Echo Show 8 is the company’s best smart display for using Alexa in your home. Spatial audio and room-adaptation software mean improved audio quality, and it can show different info on its eight-inch display based on whether you’re standing near or farther away. Read our review.Where to Buy: $149.99 $109.99 at Amazon $149.99 at Best Buy $149.99 at TargetAmazon Echo Dot (fifth-gen)The fifth-gen Echo Dot touts a temperature sensor, better sound, and faster response time than the prior model. It can also act as an extender for your Eero Wi-Fi system. Read our review.Where to Buy: $49.99 $31.99 at Amazon $49.99 at Best Buy $49.99 at TargetAmazon Echo SpotAmazon’s Echo Spot smart speaker / alarm clock has a 2.83-inch squared-off display for showing the time, weather, music playback, and other bits of info you may want at your bedside. Unlike the original Spot, there’s no camera to worry about having in your bedroom — though it does have a mutable microphone for Alexa voice controls. Read our review.Where to Buy: $79.99 $44.99 at AmazonSmart kitchen gadget bargainsThe Bosch 800 Series Fully Automatic Espresso Machine is seriously expensive, but also one of the most hands-free machines I’ve tested — literally. You can ask Alexa to make you a latte, and it will do everything but put the cup on the tray for you. Very smart. It’s $400 off for Prime Day, at $1,183.96 at Amazon.When you’re making dinner for the family, don’t forget the pets! Aqara’s Smart Pet Feeder is down to $79.99 (from $99.99). As a Zigbee device, it does require an Aqara hub, but I can ask Siri to feed Smokey, and the job is done. Totally worth it.Robot vacuum cleaner dealsDreame X40 UltraWith a neat ability to remove and reattach its mop pads, the Dreame X40 solves the problem of vacuuming carpets (with 12,000Pa suction power) while also mopping hard floors. Its mops can also swing out and under low furniture, getting where most bots can’t reach.Where to Buy: $1499.99 $799.99 at Amazon (for Prime members) $1499.99 $799.99 at Dreame (with code)Eufy 11S MaxThe Eufy 11S Max is a super slim, repairable bump-and-roll bot with a large 600ml bin and three cleaning levels. Its biggest selling point for some, however, is that it lacks Wi-Fi, meaning you don’t have to fiddle with an app.Where to Buy: $279.99 $139.99 at Amazon $279.99 $148.99 at Ebay (via Eufy) Promo code: SUMMERBFIT10Deebot X8 Pro OmniThe Deebot X8 Pro Omni remains our favorite robot vacuum / mop. It represents a welcome return to form for Ecovacs’ flagship line, with great obstacle avoidance, a small dock, and a convenient self-cleaning brush system.Where to Buy: $1399.99 $899.99 at Amazon $1399.99 $949.99 at EvovacsSwitchBot S10$360 is a steal for this excellent robot vacuum mop, which, while an older model, does a great job and works with a neat battery-powered water refill dock that makes it the most hands-free robovac we’ve tested. A separate auto-empty dock takes care of the dust. It’s big and loud and lacks some features found on high-end robots, but it does what it’s supposed to do without costing a fortune.Where to Buy: $1199.99 $359.99 at Amazon $1199.99 $359.99 at SwitchBot (w/ code SWPD840)Update, July 9th: Updated to reflect current pricing / availability, and to point readers to our day two coverage of Prime Day.

Espressif's ESP32 line has expanded far beyond the original dual-core Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chip that first popularised low-cost IoT. What started as a chip ubiquitous in smart home technology has grown to be something so much more than that, building out an entire ecosystem of small, low-cost microcontrollers that anyone can use to do, well, basically anything. Today, the name covers several unrelated silicon "series" that share the same ESP-IDF toolchain but differ in CPU architecture, wireless mix, memory size, and peripheral blocks. We'll break down the major differences between all of them, as there's a lot to know if you're looking to invest in one of these to ensure you make the right choice.

Network switches are a great addition to the home, allowing you to connect more devices using cables and freeing up valuable bandwidth on the wireless side of things. An ISP-provided router will have a few ports rated at 1Gb speeds, but there's an easy way to more than double this speed and improve the LAN at home.

Virtual machines may have a higher performance overhead compared to containers, but they’re perfect for experimenting with different operating systems. As someone who typically runs weird experiments inside virtual machines, I often end up deleting my VMs when I’m done with the project.

I've recently started tracking all the work that I do in a day to hold myself accountable. Along with work, I also keep track of other activities, such as workouts, time spent on social media, gaming, and content streaming. This has not only helped me manage my time better but also build effective habits in the long run. While there are several tools to track habits in a fun and intuitive manner, Habitica is one of the most popular ones, thanks to a gamified approach. While the app is certainly nice, I despise its cluttered UI. It's filled with too many elements, in my opinion, which can be overwhelming for a lot of people. However, since I liked the RPG-style approach of Habitica, I decided to do some research to see if I could make use of the concept differently.

They say it takes 21 days to build a habit. While that may not seem like a daunting task, holding yourself accountable every single day for three weeks can be challenging. If you're trying to build a habit or accomplish tasks promptly, using a habit tracker is a great solution. You can list down your goals and work towards them every day without procrastinating. That said, even a habit tracker needs to make things more interesting for someone to adhere to their goals. So, I set out to find one that adds an element of fun while helping users build habits and achieve their goals. Habitica is among the popular self-hosted apps for this use case. However, it's rather overkill, and the UI is too cluttered for my liking.

If you own an Nvidia graphics card, there's a secret weapon for image quality and performance you're probably not using. I'm not talking about any upscaling or frame generation shenanigans; no, I'm talking about running your games above your monitor's native resolution.

It's no secret that Nvidia hasn't been offering good value or sufficient VRAM these past few years. The only positives coming out of the Team Green camp were DLSS 4's upscaling features and, to some extent, Multi Frame Generation. However, FSR 4 came and bridged the gap to a great extent in that department. Superior ray tracing performance remained the sole reason to buy Nvidia GPUs, but even that has been losing its status as Nvidia's biggest USP, thanks to AMD's strides and the fact that decent RT performance is unaffordable for Nvidia buyers.

Prime Day has discounts applied to countless tech products, and with the price of Wi-Fi 6E hardware falling in recent years, you can bet there are some enticing sales on powerful wireless equipment. TP-Link's Deco XE75 is powerful enough to handle busier households, and this 2-pack mesh router system is available at a low price of just $150. That may sound like a fair amount to pay for a router, but this is a versatile system with an MSRP of $300.