How We Rank Smart Home Devices

Most "top 10" smart home lists are pay-for-placement in disguise. Here's exactly how we research, compare, and rank products — so you can judge our work instead of taking it on faith.

What we research

Every product on our top 10 list goes through the same three sources before it earns a rank:

• Manufacturer specifications — verified against official product pages, not marketing summaries or retailer bullet points. When two brands measure the same thing differently, we say so.
• Smart home publications — buying guides and smart home coverage from established home-tech media, used to cross-check which products reviewers consistently rate and which ones keep getting flagged.
• Real buyer reviews — aggregated sentiment from retailer reviews and smart home communities, where buyers are blunt about what disappointed them. A product with glowing marketing and grumbling owners doesn't rank well here.

How the rankings work

We don't rank "best to worst" in a vacuum. Every product is ranked by who it's best for — the earbuds you'd hand an iPhone user are different from the ones you'd hand an Android user, and our list says which is which. That's why each product has a "Best for" line and an honest set of cons.

We also don't claim to have personally tested every product. When we cite a performance claim — like a noise-cancellation figure — we attribute it to its source. When review sentiment is mixed, we say so. You can read our about page for more on what we will and won't claim.

No sponsored rankings, ever

This is the whole point of the site, so we'll be blunt: a manufacturer cannot pay to appear on our lists, and cannot pay to move up them. Commissions from affiliate links never affect rankings — a product doesn't move up the list because it pays more, and a product we can't monetize doesn't move down. Several products on our top 10 currently have no affiliate link at all, and they're still ranked where the research put them.

How we show prices

Prices on this site are shown as manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) — the official list price, not a sale price we spotted somewhere. Smart home gear goes on sale constantly, so the price you pay will often be lower than MSRP. Always verify the current price with the retailer before buying.

Where a product has meaningful variants, we show the MSRP for each: the Schlage Encode Plus, for example, is listed from $329 because the finish changes the price.

How we make money

BuyRanked Smart Home is reader-supported. When you buy through links on this page, we may earn a commission from the retailer at no extra cost to you. That's the entire business model — no sponsored placements, no paid reviews, no selling your data. Read our full affiliate disclosure.

Corrections

We get things wrong sometimes — specs change, prices move, new models launch. If you spot an error or think we ranked something wrong, tell us. We read everything, and we update the rankings when the facts change.