Best Smart Home Hub Reviews

A major upgrade over the original Echo Show, Amazon’s second-generation smart hub stormed the market with its larger and more functional display and the powerful speaker system.

Essentially, it’s a smart speaker with a 10.1-inch crisp screen, great sound, all Alexa-powered, and with a built-in Zigbee smart home hub.

From smart switches and bulbs to any other device relying on the Zigbee wireless protocol, you’ll be able to connect them all simply and intuitively.

As an Alexa-powered device, it gives you lots of flexibility when it comes to improving your home with smart sensors. It will let you control all of them via voice or with a few taps on the Echo Show’s screen.

So, with this smart hub from Amazon, you get voice control, touch control, and the option to set a collection of routines to take your smart home integration a few steps further.

Intuitively, pairing a screen with a hub will allow you to make the most of your smart cameras or doorbells. One voice command will show you who’s at the door, so can you think of anything cooler?

This smart home hub with an integrated voice assistant from Google will be your go-to choice if you’re already a fan of all the Nest products out there.

Since Google and Nest have merged, it will give you access to and control of any Nest hardware, from lightbulbs and thermostats or smoke alarms to the more popular Hello Doorbell or the Nest Secure alarm system.

Just like you’d expect from a dependable smart home hub, this one, too, lets you set up routines. You’ll want to use them to effortlessly turn lights on or off, control the thermostat or even lock the door.

The Home View gives an overall look at all your smart home devices.

Even though the camera responds to gestures and you’re always an “OK Google” away from getting what you want, the touch controls will offer you fast, seamless access to all the smart sensors.

Do you like the thought of having one device for all your needs?

Like… from entertainment while waiting for your potatoes to sauté for dinner to a smart hub for home automation? If so, Google’s Nest Hub Max must make it to your shortlist.

Powered with mesh technology, this system comprising up to three Nova nodes will give you reliable Wi-Fi in any corner of your house while making an excellent center for your smart home.

Upon needs, you can choose the single unit or go all the way to three nodes. Regardless of the configuration, you’ll enjoy lag-free connectivity.

The best part?

It runs on smart auto-path selection, meaning that no matter where you move around your home, it will pick up the best signal by default.

Since it’s a plug & play system, even if you have to rely on multiple nodes, you’ll get them paired straight out of the box. You plug in the cables and watch it getting all set up. Then, you have the Tenda App network assistant ready to put all the customization options at your fingertips.

From the app, you can manage your entire network. Parental control, password management, or network access control are just a few of the options you’ll be getting. The actual smart home hub can simultaneously handle multiple device connections and support integration with Alexa.

Notably, the configuration options for the devices it can link are somewhat limited, and you can’t handle them from a web interface. Even so, it’s one of the best-rated smart home hubs on the market, so you’ll want to give it a closer look!

It looks like a smart speaker, though it’s a smart home hub and even the best one that Hive released so far.

Apart from all the cool things you’d expect from such a hub, the Hive Smart Home Hub 360 doesn’t just listen to your voice commands. It also listens to the sounds around your house!

The 360-degree audio detection is a feature you’ll hardly find on many other hubs.

Basically, it keeps an “eye” on all the important sounds that it picks up – a smoke detector alarm, a dog barking, or a window breaking – and pushes a notification on your smartphone straight away.

Other features that will raise your interest are the ability to keep a history with the events of the past week, so you can check all logs and audio clips while you’re away from home.

Not to mention that if your broadband ever gets down, the internal memory will step in to keep your smart home automation fully functional.

Note, though, that this Hive smart home hub will not link sensors, cameras, or other hardware from any other manufacturer than Hive.

Still, as you probably know, Hive is a pretty big name in the security niche. If you’re willing to give the Hive sensors and cameras a try, you’ll want to do it with this hub at the core of your home!

If your house is packed with Panasonic sensors and you don’t see yourself having to switch to other brands anytime soon, the Panasonic KX-HNB600EW Smart Home Hub is the natural choice for keeping all those sensors and devices connected.

Small but elegant, easy to mount on a wall and without requiring any cords, with configuration options as simple as pushing a button, this smart hub will still bring to the table a lot more than meets the eye.

Apart from making the centre of any Panasonic smart home, it can connect landlines, allowing you to turn a smartphone into a landline handset.

Add a MicroSD card to it, and you’ll be able to record videos and store them for later.

In a nutshell, this hub links all Panasonic devices and smart sensors. If you purchase an Alexa device, it will also feature voice controls.

Thanks to the “dect” wireless standard it relies on, an ultra-low energy standard, it will work smoothly and easily cover anything up to 300m, provided it’s all mostly a clear line of sight.

What’s more, it is invisible to standard Wireless products, which makes it even more secure.

And setting it up will be a breeze since all you need to do is to install an app on your phone and use the one-push pairing functionality.

Affordable and accessible, easy to configure, easier to use, you’ll want to keep an eye on this one!

Whether you’re looking to hue-ify your home or you have various sensors and devices from multiple manufacturers that you’d like to bring together, this Philips Hue bridge will do it in a pinch.

Suffices to plug it into your router and launch the app. From there, it will quickly identify and connect your smart hardware from around the house, giving you the option to customize and control its settings from within the app.

What makes this bridge particularly appealing – aside from the fact that you can integrate the gazillion of Philips hue lights with it – is that it ensures seamless connections with any of the major home automation systems on the market!

No matter if you’re a fan of the Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings, Google Home, or whatever, you can use it to make the most of this bridge.

Setting timers and alarms, controlling the lights while you’re at home or away, and all the other cool things you’ve meant to do are super comfortable with Philips Hue.