The L60 Ultra FE is the value entry to Dreame's Ultra-tier experience: most of the cleaning and nearly all the dock automation, at a more reachable price. Vormax suction rated 30,000Pa pulls dust, hair, and litter off any floor, and a TriCut blade-and-rubber brush keeps long hair from tangling. Dual flex arms extend a side brush and swinging mop into corners, baseboards, and furniture gaps. Maintenance is where it shines for the money: a ThermoHub washboard heats to 100C to scrub and sanitize the mop pads, and the Smart PowerDock handles hot-water washing, hot-air drying, auto dust emptying, water and solution refills, and charging on its own.

Three physical buttons that fire whole routines—single press, double press, and hold, each programmable—so 'goodnight' kills the lights, locks the door, and drops the thermostat from a button by the bed. They work with Alexa, Matter, HomeKit, and SmartThings, with reusable adhesive mounts and no wiring. The note for reliability: full remote automation is most dependable paired with a Flic Hub, which adds cost.

Think of the Chime 2 as the part of an Arlo setup that lives indoors. It plugs into any outlet, connects straight to Wi-Fi with no base station, and turns doorbell rings and camera motion into audible alerts you'll actually hear from across the house. Pick from a range of melodies, set the volume, or drop it into silent mode. The 80-plus-decibel siren can fire automatically on motion or audio, or be triggered from the app as a deterrent. This is an accessory, not a standalone camera—it only earns its keep if you already run a compatible Arlo doorbell or camera, so check the compatibility list first.

Netgear's Orbi 770 brings Wi-Fi 7 to a big-house mesh with the feature that keeps mesh fast as it grows: a dedicated backhaul band. Because the satellites talk to the router on their own lane, your devices don't fight that traffic, so speeds (rated up to 11Gbps) hold steady across nodes from the front door to the back yard. It's fully backward compatible with older Wi-Fi gear, and the high-performance antennas are designed for even 360-degree coverage whatever your floor plan. Security is handled with automatic firmware updates and Netgear's Advanced Router Protection. Worth knowing: it's made for use in the U.S. only.

The mesh that makes every other smart device reliable — blanket the house in Wi-Fi 6 so cameras, plugs, and hubs stop dropping off. Set up in minutes from the app, and the 6+ has a built-in Zigbee/Thread radio, so it doubles as a smart-home hub. The catch is the eero model: advanced controls and ad-block sit behind the eero Plus subscription, and wired backhaul needs its own ports.

A wired floodlight and security camera in one fixture, for the spot where you want light and a record of what tripped it. The 2,600-lumen LEDs flood the area on motion, a built-in siren adds a deterrent, and you get 1080p live view with color night view and two-way audio through the Blink app. Customizable motion zones keep alerts to what matters rather than every passing car. It taps your existing outdoor wiring, so it skips battery swaps—but that means you need that wiring in place. Cloud storage runs on a Blink subscription after the free trial, with local backup via a Sync Module sold separately. Works with Alexa.

A tiny, five-year-battery motion sensor that does the unglamorous work great automations are built on—trigger a light, a scene, or an alert across a 170-degree field, with a built-in light sensor so a lamp only fires when it's actually dark. The detection timeout is tunable from 1 to 200 seconds. The requirement: it needs an Aqara Zigbee hub and won't pair with third-party hubs.

Amazon's own-brand plug is the no-frills, low-cost way to make a lamp, fan, heater, or coffee maker smart — provided you live in Alexa's world. Setup is quick, with a zero-touch option that links the plug to your account at checkout, and there are no hubs or third-party apps: everything happens in the Alexa app. From there you flip devices remotely, build routines, and schedule by clock time or even sunrise and sunset. The compact body sits in one socket without blocking the other. The honest caveat is the flip side of that simplicity — it's built around Alexa, so it's right only if Alexa runs your home.

Permanent eave lighting that does Halloween orange, Christmas red-and-green, and everyday warm white from an app, so you never hang a strand again—100 feet of 72 RGBIC LEDs, 75 scene modes, and IP67 weatherproofing rated to live on the roofline year-round. It takes Alexa and Google. The honest part: the VHB adhesive and clip install means clean removal or repositioning later is genuinely hard.

The easy fix for a dead zone — if you already run eero. This is an add-on extender, not a standalone router: it requires an existing eero network, then drops up to 1,500 sq. ft. of Wi-Fi 6 coverage into the corner that drops calls or buffers. TrueMesh routing intelligently steers traffic to cut drop-offs, so 4K streaming, gaming, and video calls hold up across the addition, and you can stack as many extenders as your floor plan needs. Setup runs through the eero app in minutes, and automatic updates keep it current. Just confirm you have an eero system first, since this won't work on its own.

A lot of camera for very little money. Wyze's v4 steps up to 2.5K QHD, so detail and faces hold together better than the usual budget cam, and color night vision plus Wide Dynamic Range keep the picture usable in tricky light. IP65 weather resistance lets it work indoors or out, though outdoor use needs Wyze's separate adapter. A motion-activated spotlight, voice warnings, and a built-in siren give it deterrent teeth, and Bluetooth setup skips the QR-code dance. The honest tradeoff is storage: smart detection of people, packages, pets, and vehicles needs a Cam Plus or Cam Unlimited subscription, though a microSD card sidesteps that for local recording.

Blink's most affordable wireless camera, and the value play is real: up to two years on the included Energizer lithium AAs means you're not on a charging treadmill. You get 1080p live view, infrared night vision, two-way audio, and dual-zone motion detection through the app, plus a five-camera kit with a Sync Module Core to cover a property cheaply. Two caveats to go in clear-eyed: the Core has no local storage, so footage lives in the cloud on a Blink subscription after the 30-day trial, and person detection is a paid feature too. Add a Sync Module XR or 2 to store clips yourself. Works with Alexa.

The end of guessing whether the garden needs water—a wireless probe reads soil moisture and reports it on 915MHz to a Wi-Fi gateway, viewable live in the Ecowitt app, and one gateway can host up to eight sensors for multi-zone beds. It's cheap, accurate, and genuinely useful. The only requirement: the bare probe can't display anything on its own, so the included gateway is mandatory.

The 16-foot length is the whole point: this Hue Solo strip is made for long runs, behind a wide TV, along a staircase, or under a stretch of cabinets where shorter strips fall short. It pushes a bright 1,700 lumens and, true to Hue's standard, uses dedicated RGBWW LEDs rather than mixing RGB to fake white, so both colors and whites look honest. Install is stick-plug-go, and you can cut it to fit, just remember the cut is permanent. Out of the box you get solid lighting, but the automations, away-from-home control, and Matter integration only open up once you add a Hue Bridge. Premium color, premium price.

The value pick in the 4K Fire Stick line. The Select trims back from the Max but keeps what most people actually use: 4K Ultra HD with HDR10+, fast-enough performance, and Alexa voice search to launch and find shows by talking instead of scrolling. Every major app is here—Prime Video, Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, Apple TV+, HBO Max, Hulu, Peacock—alongside free ad-supported content, and Alexa+ adds more natural, conversational search. It doubles as a light smart-home remote for lights, weather, and music. If you want real 4K HDR without paying for the Max's extra speed and features, the Select hits the essentials at a lower price.

A sensible step up for a main room without a big jump in price: 50 inches of 4K with Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos, so movies get real contrast and dimensionality rather than a flat picture. Toshiba's REGZA Engine ZR drives the processing, and the AI upscaler does a credible job lifting Full HD streams toward near-4K clarity — useful since plenty of content still isn't native 4K. Gamers get a proper Game Mode with ALLM, VRR, and eARC, while Ultimate Motion and Sports Mode keep fast action clean. Fire TV is built in, so your apps sit on one home screen with no extra device to plug in.