“Smart” devices are pretty nice, except now that products have matured, business departments keep making them worse. Products I’ve tried:
Recommend
nothin’
Testing
Z-Wave
Rating: So far, so good.
Zigbee
Rating: So far, so good. It sucks that some devices only come as Zigbee, and some as Z-Wave, so you need to buy into both to get a good mesh network.
Buy it I guess
Nest thermostat
It’s kind of a dick move of Nest/Google to purposely downgrade the UX of the cheaper Nest themostat. The “smart” “learning” functionality is total BS. I always run them in manual mode. The Google account transition has been a clusterfuck. They look nice, and give nice observability, and are convenient though. And they seem to be the best smart thermostat around.
Do not buy
Wemo
Rating: Do not buy. I was an early fan of Belkin’s Wemo, but their products just keep getting worse. Constant phantom firmware updates, terrible lag, and now they required accounts that have no value? Get out of my house, Wemo.
Wink
Rating: Do not buy. Charging subscriptions is the last gasp of a dying company