There are hundreds, if not thousands of smart lights, smart locks, security cameras, thermostats, and more, but if you want to control them all from a single interface, then you're going to need a smart home hub.
Based on our extensive testing, the Samsung SmartThings Hub v3 is the best smart home hub for the majority of consumers. Not only does it cost less than $70 and works with a wide range of devices, but its logic lets you set up fairly robust rules to trigger devices. Still, there are areas where it can be improved.
The best smart home hubs to buy now
The third-generation Samsung SmartThings hub can connect to hundreds of devices — more than most other hubs — and lets you create a wide range of different scenarios for all of the gadgets in your home.
The newest version of the hub has Wi-Fi, which means you have more flexibility in where you can place it in your house, but it's lost its battery backup, so you won't be able to control connected smart home devices if the power goes out. Despite that caveat, this is our best smart home hub overall.
The Echo Dot is half the price of most other smart home hubs, making it an inexpensive investment for those just getting into smart home automation. While it lacks Zigbee or Z-Wave, Amazon has partnered with a number of other smart home device makers to make it easy to connect their products via Wi-Fi.
The third-generation Dot has a larger and more powerful speaker than the previous model, and it has an updated design with a more attractive cloth cover. In addition to turning your lights and other devices on and off, the Dot can also read news headlines, weather reports, sports scores, and a host of other things.
The Hubitat Elevation hub is not for smart home novices, but advanced users will appreciate the depth and complexity with which they can connect all of their smart home devices. The hub itself is small, but can connect to both Zigbee and Z-Wave devices. There's a learning curve to Hubitat's web interface, and there's no mobile app yet, but you can do far more with Hubitat than SmartThings, which is why it landed on our best smart home hub list.
The second-generation Echo Plus is larger, and delivers a much larger sound, than other Echo smart speakers. The Plus also has a built-in Zigbee radio, which lets so-equipped smart home devices (such as Philips Hue lights) connect directly to your network—no bridge needed. The Plus sounds great, and connecting smart devices was a cinch, but it lacks the more complex interactions you can get with other hubs, and it doesn't support Z-Wave devices.
One of the best smart home hubs and smart displays in one device, the second-generation Amazon Echo Show improves upon the original in every way: The screen is bigger and brighter, the design is much more attractive, it has a better camera for video calls, the audio is richer, and you can do more with its display. Plus, the Echo Show has Zigbee built in, so you can connect smart home devices directly to the Show.
If you're looking for a Wi-Fi router and one of the best smart home hubs in one device, Samsung's Connect Home Hub mesh router has its SmartThings hub built in. We liked its ease of setup, its fairly speedy throughput, and the ability to expand its reach with extenders. Samsung offers the Connect Home (which offers speeds up up to 866 Mbps/5GHz and 400 Mbps/2.4GHz), or the Connect Home Pro (1733 Mbps/5GHz and 800 Mbps/2.4GHz).
Smart all the things!
Our favorite budget smart home hub is the third-generation Amazon Echo Dot; while not a hub in the traditional sense — you can only control devices connected to Wi-Fi— you can link lots of smart home devices in the Alexa app, and then trigger them using the Dot. Alexa's Routines also let you control multiple devices with a single command. Plus, the third-generation Dot has much-improved audio over the previous model.
Two new, inexpensive smart home hubs have recently emerged: The Ezlo Atom is a small USB dongle, and the Ezlo PlugHub Energy is a smart plug with a smart home hub built-in. Both can link to Z-Wave and Wi-Fi-connected devices, and are controlled via the Vera app.
If you have a Wink smart home hub, you may want to consider switching to something else. The company's headquarters have been closed, the customer support line isn't working, and users have reported that a number of third-party integrations no longer work.
