Smart homes are en vogue these days, and they come in all sorts of varying degrees. You can start off with just a couple of smart light bulbs, then gradually work your way up to a smart thermostat, locks, door bells, and beyond.

Smart lights are a great gateway into smart home tech, but there's plenty more to experiment with.

I recently moved into a new house — well, it's over a century old but it's new to me — and I've outfitted it with a collection of smart home tech from various different brands, ranging from Nest to Ring, August, and LIFX. It's made my life a bit easier and more secure, but as futuristic as it all feels, about half of my devices were made over a year ago.

I've been using a pair of LIFX's smart LED bulbs (the first-generation A19, specifically) for over a year now, and even when I originally bought them they were a couple of years old. LIXF is arguably Philips Hue's biggest competition, and I bought them after reading reviews of their superior color range and their independence from a hub. I use them every single day, sometimes in a warm white and other times in a blue or green hue, and they work without a hitch — it's hard to be terribly demanding of a light bulb, after all.

For the last few years, I had been lusting after Nest's sleek Learning Thermostats, and I finally bought one — but since I was after form just as much as function, I picked up the Thermostat 3, rather than the newer and more cost-effective Thermostat E. Despite being three years old, the Thermostat still receives fairly regular software updates and works flawlessly in the Nest app, along with integrating into Google Assistant so that I can control the temperature of my house just as easily from my Google Home as from my phone.

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