Mashable Readers’ Choice Awards 2025: Your favorite smart home devices

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Home products have become much “smarter” in recent years. According to Statistsmart home penetration will reach 89.5% in 2025 and 99% by 2029. This means that virtually every household in the United States uses some form of smart home device. We’ve come a long way since the days of The Clapper.

Smart home devices can add a level of convenience to everyday life, provided they are properly configured and truly provide seamless integration and a user-friendly experience.

But this begs the question: which home devices actually deserve to be smart?

Instead of just answering this question ourselves, we put it to you, our readers. In our first-ever Readers’ Choice Awards, we asked which smart home brands you use and love across different smart home categories.

Best Home Security Cameras in 2025

First of all, there are the security cameras. In a survey conducted by U.S. News & World Report, 62% of respondents use outdoor security cameras, while 36% use indoor security cameras. Home security cameras can obviously be great for some peace of mind and a sense of security, or for keeping an eye out for porch pirates. But your privacy is also an important factor to consider in a device that captures constant images of you, your home, and your neighborhood.

Blink was the winner here in terms of overall satisfaction with a score of 7.8 out of 10, narrowly beating Ring and Wyze, who both scored 7.7. A note from us: we do not endorse Ring in our product recommendations. due to a multitude of privacy concerns.

(Be sure to click the arrows in the chart below to navigate through each of the categories of our survey results.)

The three brands were fairly consistent across the board, but each stood out in certain areas. Blink users liked the ease of setup and use, affordable pricing, and free cloud storage.

Wyze was ranked best in cost, but worst in audio quality and motion detection, which could be a potential trade-off. Price was certainly an important factor with those surveyed, with comments such as “Great products. Reasonably priced,” “Cameras work well and priced within budget,” and “Wyze security cameras are decent for the price.”

Our readers praised Ring for its ease of installation, with two respondents writing, “I’ve owned several generations of cameras for over 20 years and Ring is the easiest to install and use” and “I’ve had security cameras in the past.” None were as easy to install and use as Ring.”

A common complaint among all three brands was that the cameras did not record enough time before motion was detected.

Best Smart Home Assistants in 2025

Smart assistants are like the brains of a smart home. They act as a platform to control other devices via voice, calendar, or other triggers. Smart assistants can range from small speakers that take up very little space to large displays that sit on your counter or mount on the wall. Apple’s Siri is arguably the most popular among smartphones, while Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa are the big names in smart home devices.

Google was our winner across the board, although Amazon Alexa was a close second. One survey respondent said: “I like Alexa for routine stuff and integrations, but Google Assistant [is] better [at] answer the questions. »

Some respondents had similar experiences in that they enjoyed the convenience provided by their smart assistant, but they also had frustrating interactions.

One wrote: “I had a pretty good experience with Amazon Alexa. One of the best moments was when I set up my smart home with Alexa and connected everything from lights to thermostats to smart plugs. or if I wasn’t very clear. It was a little frustrating when she didn’t answer correctly. Sometimes Alexa didn’t sync properly with certain smart devices, requiring troubleshooting. Overall though, I found Alexa to be useful and a great addition to my home automation.

And one Google user wrote: “Our entire house has screens, speakers, Google TVs built into Google TV, plus plugs, light bulbs, etc. of third parties. Just recently I upgraded to a Google Mesh router. Third-party devices can sometimes be a little tricky to set up, but once everything works, it’s nice to be able to control everything directly in the Google Home app.

Best smart lights in 2025

Smart bulbs and plugs are some of the most accessible smart home devices in terms of price and ease of use. Philips Hue, Govee and TP-Link (Kasa) are some of the big names in smart lighting. Each has a handful of product offerings, from basic dimmable white bulbs to programmable outdoor string lights or TV backlights.

Philips Hue is a more premium brand with a higher price tag, and this is clear from our survey results. Just a note: TP-Link is under investigation for security vulnerabilities. with its routers and its predatory prices.

TP-Link took the cake for most of our survey categories; although TP-Link and Philips Hue received the same rating in terms of likelihood of recommendation.

One reader wrote: “The only reason I’m not ‘extremely likely’ to recommend Philips Hue is that they are relatively expensive compared to other brands. And we saw this reflected in TP-Link user reviews, with one person writing: “I had another brand before and found them so frustrating. I was happy to find that these worked to my liking and at a lower cost.”

Best Smart Vacuum Cleaner Brands in 2025

Our vacuum cleaner expert, Leah Stodart, says: “Actual cleaning performance of course plays a huge role in how clean your floors are. But if your vacuum cleaner is difficult to clean, you won’t want to use it, whether it’s an upright vacuum that’s too bulky to take out of the closet or a robot vacuum that gets stuck more often. And those are the types of features we wanted to ask you about.

Only two brands were selected for our readers, but Stodart tests upright vacuums and robot vacuums in his apartment and has great recommendations of other brands.

iRobot offers different price points, ranging from basic and economical to high-tech and downright expensive. Our survey participants had newer models as well as older, simpler models that get the job done without any extras. One wrote: “It’s a low-end smart robot vacuum that’s easy to use and has simple features; however, that makes it desirable to many people like me because it’s easier to use than complicated systems.”

The Mashable Readers’ Choice: Smartest Home survey ran from November 16, 2024 to March 20, 2025. Stay tuned for our next survey.