9 Best Smart Home Devices To Buy In Australia In 2025
Bring your home into the 21st Century. We’ve assembled the very best gadgets to make your home over with right here.
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It’s taken a while for the reality of smart homes to catch up with the promise of smart homes.
We all want to live in Tony Stark’s Malibu mansion with an AI voice assistant catering to our every whim. But for the past 10 years or so, all we’ve had is a bunch of different standards that never really worked well together.
That is all starting to change now. For the past few years, major tech companies have been getting behind a new standard called “Matter”, which allows for different types of products from different brands to connect, regardless of the platform you prefer to use.
There’s still a long way to go before we live in Tony Stark’s mansion, but today’s smart home products are more versatile and connected than ever before.
If you don’t know where to begin with setting up your smart home, these products are a great place to start.
We love the Amazon Echo Pop, $79 – the small but mighty smart speaker that’s affordable, stylish, and the perfect smart home starter. With over 2.5k five-star reviewers, shoppers say it's an "impressive little speaker" and a "fantastic addition to my smart home set up".
OUR TOP PICKS
BEST SMART HOME HUB
Amazon Echo Hub, $329 at Amazon
Echo Hub
Tried and Tested by Nick Broughall, Tech Reviewer
Amazon has been making smart speakers and smart displays for years, but this is the first Alexa-enabled device dedicated to controlling the smart home.
It’s designed to act as the central hub for your home. Designed to be wall-mounted (you can buy a stand, but it’s not included in the box), it has a custom user interface for controlling all of your other smart home products.
The inbuilt proximity and ambient light sensors mean the screen only powers on when you approach it, and it doesn’t shine brightly at night when you’re trying to watch a movie.
The hub works with a wide range of smart home brands. You can use it to view your Ring or Blink cameras effortlessly, but it also controls compatible robot vacuum cleaners, smart locks, and your air conditioner.
Because the Hub supports Zigbee and Matter, it’s pretty versatile. You don’t really need to know how it connects to your gadgets. You can also have it sync calendars across your family, acting as a central hub for messaging your loved ones and knowing who needs to be where on any given day.
The greatest challenge I faced with the Amazon Hub is that it really requires you to go all-in on smart home products to be truly useful. You’ll want every single light in your home to be a smart light, for example, so you can truly control the lights around the house.
It also feels a little under-powered for what it wants to achieve. Sometimes animations drop frames, and it can be slow to connect to third-party cameras like those from Eufy.
Overall, though, this is a fantastic central hub for turning your regular home into a smart home.
BEST SMART SECURITY CAMERA
Blink Outdoor 4, $149 at Amazon
Blink Outdoor 4
Tried and Tested by Nick Broughall, Tech Reviewer
Blink is a relatively new home security camera brand in Australia, but it offers one key advantage over its competition. The Blink Outdoor 4 camera can offer up to two years of battery life using two AA batteries.
That means it’s effectively a “set and forget” setup. Plug in the AA batteries, mount it in place and connect it to the Blink app, and you have home security for the next couple of years.
The setup is simple, and the Blink app is fairly comprehensive, though you do need to maintain a subscription plan if you want to keep any recordings in the cloud or want features like person detection.
Blink’s other key advantage is the ease of local recording. There’s a Sync Module 2 in the box of the Outdoor 4 camera, which lets you plug in a USB key or hard drive to record clips locally.
The catch with this home security option is that Blink itself is owned by Amazon, so while there’s seamless integration with Alexa devices like the Amazon Hub, it won’t work with other platforms like Apple’s HomeKit.
You also get higher video quality from other brands like Ring or Arlo, though Blink’s video quality is still good in both day and light situations, as is its two-way audio support.
BEST SMART LIGHTING
Philips Hue White & Colour Ambiance Smart Bulb, $99 at Amazon
Philips Hue Outdoor Motion Sensor, $74.95 (down from $99.95) at Amazon
Philips Hue White & Colour Ambiance Smart Bulb
Tried and Tested by Nick Broughall, Tech Reviewer
Undoubtedly, the most impactful change you can have in turning your regular house into a smart home is to upgrade all your lights to smart lights.
Philips Hue is the clear leader in this space. Not only does it offer a comprehensive range of smart bulbs to plug into existing lamps and light fittings, it also offers dedicated products like light strips, lamps, down-lights and more, so you can truly customise your home’s lighting experience.
Philips Hue works with all the major smart home platforms, so you can easily use your voice to turn off the lights around your home. There are both white and colour options, and Hue lamps are all dimmable, letting you create stunning atmospheres both indoors and outdoors.
The catch is that Hue lights can get pricey, and for the biggest impact you’ll want all your home’s lighting to be “smart” lighting.
A common issue with simply replacing light bulbs is that traditional wall switches can still cut power to them entirely, negating their smart features. Fortunately, Philips Hue also offers a range of wall switches to make controlling your lights easier.
BEST SMART SPEAKER
Amazon Echo Pop, $79 at Amazon
Echo Pop
Tried and Tested by Nick Broughall, Tech Reviewer
As the cheapest speaker in Amazon’s lineup of smart speakers, the Echo Pop can also be considered as one of its best.
For such a compact unit, the Echo Pop manages to deliver a surprising amount of volume. It’s not the best sounding speaker for music – If you crank it all the way, it does get a little distorted. But if you keep the volume around the 50 per cent mark and you’ll be reasonably happy with the performance.
The Echo Pop is a great way of adding a dedicated Alexa mic to your room in a stylish, discreet way. The sliced-sphere design is subtle, and the range of colours means you can have the Echo Pop fit in with any decor.
In a quiet environment, the Echo Pop has no trouble acting as your digital go-between, allowing you to control your smart home with your voice. But if it’s a noisy room, the mics do struggle to pick up audio commands a little.
If you do want better sound quality, you could upgrade to one of the bigger Echo speakers, or go all out for something like the Sonos Era 300. But for $79 at full price, and regularly discounted, there’s no more affordable way to add voice controls throughout your smart home.
SMART GARAGE DOOR OPENER
meross Smart Garage Door Opener, $89.99 at Amazon
Meross Smart Garage Door Opener
Tried and Tested by Nick Broughall, Tech Reviewer
Garage doors seem like the perfect product to integrate into a smart home, but the last thing you want to do is have to replace the entire motor with one that has integrated connectivity.
The meross Smart Garage Door Opener is not a complicated product. It is effectively two parts: The box that gives it the smart home functions, and a sensor that detects when your garage door is open.
The device is compatible with thousands of different garage door openers, but actually working out how to connect the device to your existing opener can still be a bit confusing. But once you’ve made the connection by plugging in two wires, you can easily open your garage door using any number of smart home platforms.
Because it integrates with Alexa, Google Home, SmartThings and HomeKit, it’s really simple to use voice control to open and shut the door. There is an app for iOS and Android you will need for managing firmware updates, but otherwise you won’t have to use it at all.
But my favourite feature with this product is the CarPlay support. When you approach your home, and you have CarPlay running on your vehicle’s display, a button appears to let you open or shut the garage door remotely.
BEST VIDEO DOORBELL
Ring Battery Video Doorbell, $148 at Amazon
Ring Battery Video Doorbell
What You Need You Know
Ring helped pioneer the video doorbell category, and its most recent battery-powered offering makes it easier than ever to give your home that feeling of video security.
The Ring Battery Video doorbell offers 1440 × 1440 video with a wide 150º field of view both vertically and horizontally. That minimises the number of spots you can’t see, which is great for identifying when packages have been left.
Like all Ring cameras, there’s two-way audio so you can speak with visitors, and quick notifications when the doorbell is pressed. Unlike previous entry-level models, this one doesn’t feature a replaceable battery. Instead, you pop off the entire doorbell using a custom tool to stick it on the charger.
It offers colour night vision and motion detection alerts, and you can set a pre-recorded message like an answering machine for your doorbell when you aren’t at home.
The biggest catch is that you need to pay a subscription fee to access video recordings. If you don’t, your doorbell becomes little more than a notification system, though you can still access a live stream of the camera through your Echo Hub.
BEST CLIMATE CONTROL
Sensibo Air Pro smart air conditioner controller, $219 at Amazon
Sensibo Air PRO - Smart AC Controller
What You Need To Know
Being able to intelligently control the climate in your home is an important part of the smart home, but you would rather not have to replace your entire air conditioner to add that capability.
The Sensibo Air PRO uses an IR signal to communicate with over 10,000 different models of Air conditioners, while connecting to smart platforms like Alexa, HomeKit, or Google Home.
You can easily control your home’s air conditioner from anywhere using your smartphone, or control it with your voice using a digital assistant.
The Sensibo Air PRO also detects pollutants in your air, like CO2 and TVOCs (Total Volatile Organic Compounds), sending alerts if the air pollution gets too high.
Because the Sensibo communicates using infrared like a remote control, placement is critical. If you have multiple split systems, you’ll need multiple Sensibo units as well.
BEST SMART LOCK
Yale Unity Security Screen Door Lock, $367.45 (down from $469) at Amazon
Yale Unity Entrance Lock Matt Black, $407.84 at Amazon
Yale Unity Entrance Lock or Screen Door Lock
What You Need You Know
While there are plenty of smart lock options on the market for your main entrance door, there are limited choices when it comes to security screen doors. The Yale Unity series of smart locks offers an elegant solution for both doors.
Using a combination of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS, the Unity smart locks can work with your smartphone to automatically unlock as you approach the door with your smartphone.
They also come with RFID tags to act as digital keys, when you’re stuck, or you can purchase a digital keypad for a more manual entry.An LED light indicates the lock status, while a digital deadlock feature lets you securely lock the door both from both inside and out.
If you want to use Alexa or Google Assistant controls, you’ll also need to pick up the Connect Plus Hub 2. This also offers the ability to offer guest access and the ability to simultaneously unlock both security and entrance door at once.
BEST SMART BLIND OPENER
Aqara Roller Shade Driver E1, $104.70 at Amazon
Aqara Roller Shade Driver E1
What You Need You Know
If you’re truly looking to automate your smart home, having a system that will open and close your blinds without manual interruption is a must.
The Aqara Roller Shade Driver E1 is an affordable way to add automation to your roller blinds, though you do need an Aqara hub for full functionality.
With support for a range of beaded cables and easy installation, you can use the Aqara app to set schedules for your blinds to open and close. With additional sensors, you can also set routines to open and close the blinds depending on the brightness in your home.
The Roller Shade Driver E1 supports voice control through platforms like HomeKit, Alexa and Google Home, while on-device buttons also allow for easier manual control as well.
The integrated batteries should last about two months between charges, though you can power the E1 permanently using the USB-C port.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR WHEN BUYING A SMART HOME PRODUCT
There are several things to look for when choosing a smart home product:
Compatibility and interoperability: Make sure your product is going to work with the platform you use most. If you build your smart home around Apple’s HomeKit, for example, make sure your device is supported by the platform. Also, look for devices that support Matter, which is an industry standard all the major manufacturers have agreed to for interoperability.
Functionality and use case: The possibilities of automating your smart home are infinite, so make sure you are getting the most out of your investment. Focus on your pain points and build your smart home from there.
Security and privacy: While home automation is great, it also introduces security risks. Minimise dangers by investing in reputable brands and making sure you keep your devices up to date with the latest firmware.
Reliability and performance: Read reviews of products before investing to make sure it will do what you want it to. It’s also a good idea to stick to well-known brands so you can get support should something go wrong.
Ease of use and setup: Having a smart home is great when everything works, but when something goes wrong, you want it to be easy to troubleshoot. You also want to find products that are easy to set up.
Future-proofing and scalability: Choose products that don’t use proprietary standards or communications, and seek products that support the Matter protocol out of the box.
Cost and value: Always work within your budget. Keep an eye out for discounts during major events like Black Friday to save on your purchases.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What are the most important things to consider when buying smart home devices?
The most significant things to think about are the compatibility with your current smart home system (think Alexa, Google Home, Apple HomeKit), the wireless protocol it uses (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread), whether the device offers useful functionality to solve a problem, and the device's security and privacy features to protect your network and data.
How do I make sure smart home devices are compatible with each other?
Aim for devices within the same smart home ecosystem for easier integration. Look for devices on the same wireless protocols like Wi-Fi, Zigbee, and Z-Wave, and consider devices that support the emerging Matter standard for broader compatibility. Always check product specifications.
Are smart home devices safe from hackers, and what can I do to improve security?
Like any connected device, smart home products can have security vulnerabilities. To improve safety, choose devices from reputable brands, look for strong encryption and two-factor authentication, keep the device's firmware updated, and consider using a separate guest Wi-Fi network.
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