I’ve been protecting good house and safety merchandise for years, and I’ve written about and reviewed scores of good gadgets. Yet I can depend on one hand (plus an additional finger or two) the variety of good gadgets that my household and I truly depend upon.
Sure, I’ve loads of good devices in my home which can be nice-to-haves. I just like the air high quality monitor in our completed basement, good for maintaining tabs on the VOC and CO2 ranges in our downstairs lounge. There’s additionally a Google Nest Hub in our kitchen that shows household photographs, whereas an Amazon Echo Dot in my daughter’s bed room sometimes blurts out the climate.
But whereas these gadgets definitely come in useful, they’re additionally expendable. If one thing went flawed with the Google show (which we actually solely use for its picture body skills), we may in all probability stay with out it. Same goes with the air high quality monitor (our iPhones can inform us the outside AQI), and the voice assistants on the good audio system are so flaky, we barely discuss to them anymore.
On the opposite hand, there are some good devices in our residence that might set off a minor disaster in the event that they failed, to not point out a direct journey to Amazon for replacements.
Here are the good gadgets that I completely, positively depend upon, beginning with…
Smart lights
Ben Patterson/Foundry
Well, yeah, lights are important in any house. But through the years, I’ve created a reasonably complicated Philips Hue setup with dozens of bulbs, and some free-standing lamps that change on, flip off, fade, brighten, and alter colours based on a multi-layered sequence of automations.
It’s refreshingly uncommon for any of my Hue bulbs to fail, however once they do, they don’t keep failed for lengthy. Just per week in the past, one of many overhead Hue bulbs in our kitchen conked out and inside 48 hours, I’d changed it. Can’t have a useless Hue bulb marring my kitchen lighting scenes!
We additionally simply added a pair of battery-powered Hue smart lamps to our eating room, which we transfer from the edges of the room to the eating desk for meals. (We stay in a Brooklyn rental, so changing our ugly overhead lights with pendants isn’t actually an possibility for us.) The moveable lamps have modified the entire complexion of the room, particularly at meal time, and we are able to’t stay with out them now.
Related: Best smart lighting 2025: Smart bulbs, string lights, outdoor, and more
Video doorbell
Ben Patterson/Foundry
This battery-powered Ring Battery Doorbell Plus sits in a stick-up mount on our entrance door (once more, as residence dwellers, we are able to’t drill into the door), monitoring the comings and goings at our doorstep and in our shared hallway.
Not solely does the doorbell alert us to guests (we get alerts from the Ring app when somebody presses the button, and we are able to even see and converse with them remotely), but it surely additionally retains an eye fixed on basic exercise outdoors our residence. That grew to become important after we seen somebody had been splashing olive oil on our entrance door. Thanks to our Ring video historical past, we managed to catch the wrongdoer within the act.
As it stands, I can’t think about life with out having eyes on our doorway.
Related: Best video doorbells 2025: Reviews and buying advice | PCWorld
Ben Patterson/Foundry
Speaking of doorways, I put in a contact sensor on our entrance residence door some years in the past, and it’s grow to be one other must-have good machine.
This Philips Hue Secure contact sensor is ideal for letting me know any time somebody opens the door, both through cell alerts (which additionally pop up on my Apple Watch) or by way of mild automations (which, in my case, pulse the lights in my downstairs workplace).
Besides warning me whereas I’m at house that somebody’s opened the door, the sensor additionally provides me peace of thoughts once I’m away that no one’s getting into the home once they shouldn’t be–a key challenge, given {that a} sure teenaged member of the family retains forgetting to lock the door when she leaves.
I’m truly on my second door sensor now after the primary one grew to become glitchy. I in the end settled on the Hue Secure mannequin, however there are many different nice choices accessible.
Related: Best DIY home security systems of 2025: Reviews and buying advice
Apple TV 4K
Wait, isn’t the Apple TV 4K a streaming field? It is, but it surely additionally doubles as an Apple HomeKit hub, full with a Thread border router that allows Matter-enabled good gadgets to hook up with the web.
With my Apple TV 4K on the case, I don’t want to fret about utilizing a sensible speaker or show as my good house hub, and as a bonus, it excels as a video streamer, delivering spectacular 4K video high quality together with Dolby Atmos and Vision assist.
I truly did have an older mannequin Apple TV 4K go glitchy on me a number of years again, however after some with some subpar experiences with different streaming gamers, I went proper again to Apple, snapping up a next-gen model of its streaming field. Since then, it’s been clean crusing.
Related: Best streaming devices of 2025: Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Roku, or Google TV?
Harmony common distant
Logitech stopped manufacturing its once-popular line of Harmony remotes practically 5 years in the past, which is why I’m treating my Harmony Companion (which comes with its personal wi-fi hub) like a valuable jewel.
Universal remotes like these from the Harmony model can management a number of A/V parts directly comparable to TVs (good or not a lot), Blu-ray gamers, audio receivers, sport consoles, and different house theater parts.
Backed by a large database of A/V tools (which, impressively, Harmony mum or dad Logitech nonetheless maintains), a Harmony distant can management different gadgets moreover house theater gear, which means you’ll be able to press a single button on the wand to show in your TV, streaming field, and receiver; set your parts to their correct inputs and outputs; and even flip your good lights off or set off a specific lighting scene.
Of course, increasingly shoppers are merely utilizing their good TV remotes (which have changing into more and more refined through the years) to regulate their house theaters, main Logitech to ultimately throw within the towel.
Still, there are some issues my Harmony distant can do {that a} good TV distant can’t, which is why you’d must pry my Harmony from my chilly, useless fingers. (You can nonetheless purchase Harmony remotes on eBay, however be ready to pay by way of the nostril for one.)
Smart plugs
Ben Patterson/Foundry
We stay in a century-old Brooklyn brownstone that lacks central air, and our downstairs incessantly turns right into a sauna because of an uncovered scorching water pipe. That’s why we’ve got a community of followers always whirring away in our house, and good plugs are important for controlling them.
With three Matter-enabled good plugs (one from Eve Systems, and one other two from Meross), I’ve our followers set to activate and change off at sure hours, and I can management them manually with shortcuts on my iPhone. I can even say “Hey Siri, turn kitchen fan off” to cease the fan whereas I’m cooking.
Fans aren’t the one issues I take advantage of good plugs with. I even have a quartet of dumb clip-on Ikea lights downstairs that I management with Philips Hue good plugs, good to be used with the Hue Bridge.
Related: Best smart plugs 2025: Transform your dumb outlets into smart sockets
Smart water leak detector
Ben Patterson/Foundry
Here’s one thing that used to drive me loopy: Coming downstairs within the morning and stepping on a soaking moist carpet.
Our downstairs basement was susceptible to flooding throughout heavy rains, and if the rainstorms hit in the midst of the evening, I’d be clueless till the following day, when the injury had already been accomplished.
Ultimately, we did two issues: First, we referred to as the owner and demanded some gutter and drainage repairs (which, fortunately, we acquired). Second, we put in a sensible water leak detector within the space of the workplace the place the water normally seeped in.
There are a number of glorious makes and fashions of good water leak detectors accessible, some are battery powered, permitting you to drop them right here and there as wanted, whereas others are tethered to an influence twine. I went with the latter, deciding on a Matter-enabled leak detector from Eve Systems.
Fortunately, we haven’t had any leaks downstairs in additional than two years—but when we did, the Eve detector would sound an built-in alarm, set off alerts on our telephones, and switch our bed room lights all the best way up, supreme for waking us up within the occasion of a late-night flood.