I review the best smart home tech – these are the 6 gadgets to look for in the Black Friday sale

Black Friday’s a great way to stock up on kit that might otherwise just be outside of your price range.

And, when it comes to the smart home, there’s a chance that a smart product will also help save you money in the long term (or at least make life that bit more convenient).

Of course, there are thousands of deals to be had, but these are the products that I’d particularly look out for. If the smart home’s not quite your bag, then check out our live Black Friday coverage for the best deals across all products.

Philips Hue Bridge Pro (and Hue lights in general)

Philips Hue is the best smart lighting system available. That’s because it has the widest range of lights, the best compatibility, and it also has the widest range of physical controls. Now, the latter might seem odd, given that we’re talking about smart products, but walk into a room (or have a guest come and stay), and it’s easier to flick a light switch than it is to use an app or your voice.

New this year is the Hue Bridge Pro, which is an upgrade that I’ve been waiting years for. It supports more lights, more controls and more scenes. Again, that might not sound that exciting, but the old Bridge is surprisingly easy to push to bursting point, and the Bridge Pro just makes life easier. Oh, and it can turn your smart lights into motion sensors without any additional hardware.

Whether you’re new to smart lighting or have an existing Hue setup, the Hue Bridge Pro is a brilliant product, and you can get it for 30% off if you buy it an another compatible product at the same time – the perfect excuse to buy some more lights.

Otherwise, Hue has some products for sale for between 20% and 50% off, direct from the Philips Hue store.

Tado X

Built using Thread and fully Matter compliant, Tado X is the modern smart heating system that I can easily recommend. Although you can use it as a single thermostat replacement, if you buy the Smart Radiator Thermostat X, you can turn any radiator smart and control heating in your home room-by-room, so you only ever heat the space that you’re using.

Thread means that the system responds almost instantly to changes, so there’s no waiting around as with older systems. Honeywell Evohome, for example, could take up to five minutes to respond to a change in heat.

It’s also packed with intelligence, particularly if you pay the subscription charge during the cold months: window detection turns the heating off if a window or door is opened; geolocation turns the heating off when you go out, and back on when you get home; and the new AI mode learns how your home heats up, so that the boiler can be turned off early to prevent overheating.

You can get discounts across the entire Tado X range on Amazon.

Ring Alarm

The Ring Alarm remains the best DIY alarm system that I’ve reviewed, so it’s no coincidence that it’s the system that I use. As well as being easy to install, the system makes a lot of sense if you have Ring doorbells and cameras.

As a fully integrated system, cameras can be set to record or not following the state of the alarm. For example, you could have all internal cameras turn off when the alarm is disarmed.

With a subscription fee, which also covers cloud storage for your cameras, the Ring Alarm also gets cellular backup, so you can still get alerts even if your internet goes down (battery backup covers you in case of power failure, too). And, as well as smart home alerts, you’ll even get a phone call if the alarm is triggered.

There are multiple packs available for Black Friday, but the standard pack is a good option: you get the alarm base station, keypad, motion sensor, and window/door sensors. You can buy this from Amazon for £159 (a 28% saving). Just add on any additional sensors that you need.

Amazon Echo speakers

There’s no better overall smart home system and voice assistant than Amazon Alexa, and the new range of Echo speakers are the best yet, with better audio. Pound-for-pound, the excellent Echo Dot Max is hard to beat: it sounds better than its predecessor, it has a full smart home hub built-in (Thread, Zigbee and Matter), and it’s ready for Alexa+ when it launches in the UK.

The Echo Dot Max is available for £10 less from Amazon. 

That’s not a huge discount, but given how good the speaker is and that it’s only been out for a few weeks, you won’t get it cheaper for a while.

Flic Twist

Voice control can be good, but do you know what’s faster? Physical controls. I’m a big fan of Flic buttons and the Flic Twist in particular. This clever smart button has multiple levels of control: the central button supports a click, double-click and long-press, and there’s a rotating dial, plus you can have an extra action by holding the button and rotating the dial.

I use a Flic Twist with my Sonos system in my office: the dial does volume, a click is for play/pause, and double-click skips to the next track. But, the Flic Twist is also Matter compatible and works directly with Philips Hue, so the uses are almost endless.

The Twist is currently on sale for £45.49 from Amazon. 

It’s also worth looking at the standard Flic button, which you can buy for £56.24 for a pack of three from Amazon. I use mine for smart plug control, so I can turn off power-hungry devices at the click of a button and restore power when needed.