The pace of smart home innovation hasn't slowed a whit in 2024, with new products such as the Amazon Echo Show 21 being unveiled just this week. The better news is that the smart home is no longer a niche market appealing only to enthusiasts willing to tolerate steep learning curves. We are, however, still living in a world of smart home silos; namely, Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, and Google Home. The increasingly important Matter standard will unify those ecosystems one day, but that won't happen until Matter incorporates every smart home category. Considering that, we've picked more than one product in several categories, based primarily on which silo your smart home is in.

Nationwide stay-at-home orders prompted many of us to upgrade our homes with comfort, convenience, and security devices this year. And the smart home industry was all too happy to help us indulge those instincts. But not every product on this list was introduced in 2020. We're not going to avoid recommending a great product just because it hit the market earlier than January 1, 2020. We have more than one product in some categories, differentiated by price or feature set.