4 warning signs to stay away from a smart home brand

 Here are some warning signs to look out for when choosing equipment for your smart home.

1. Poorly Rated Mobile Apps

One of the easiest ways to determine whether a smart home product is worth your time is to look at the brand's app. If you interact with a product every day, chances are you'll be using the mobile app primarily to do so.

This means you'll want to avoid any inconveniences that come with a poorly designed or maintained smart home app. So, when you find yourself interested in a device, check out the app's reviews to see how the community views it. You'll want to sort by 'recent' reviews if possible. And if you notice an app with mostly negative reviews, that's a clear sign that you should consider avoiding that product or brand altogether.

Additionally, reviews can also be a good indicator of how a brand will respond to your concerns about a product. That doesn't mean that ALL negatively reviewed apps are deal-breakers outright, but it's important to pay attention to what most people are saying before investing your money in a particular device.

2. Only positive reviews

A recent trend in the smart home industry is to attach some kind of bonus or reward to a positive online review. The way it works is simple: you buy a product and inside the packaging is a postcard or flyer offering to send you a gift for reviewing the product on sites like Amazon or Trustpilot.

The problem is, for many of the reviews prompted by this tactic, the buyer hasn't spent much time using the product. Plus, some people worry that if they leave a bad review, the company won't send them a gift. This means that people are more likely to leave positive reviews than they would if they weren't being subtly 'bribed' by the company.

Furthermore, sometimes companies decide to only post positive reviews to make the brand look more reputable than it actually is. Not only is this dishonest, but it can also cause you to waste money if you're not careful. You should always be skeptical of brands that only have positive reviews – statistically, not everyone likes the products they buy.

3. Poor compatibility with the Big Four

Currently, most reputable smart home device brands support at least one of the big four smart assistants in the industry: Apple Home, SmartThings, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home. Most support two or three. This is because most reputable brands understand that smart home owners prefer to use one of these assistants to streamline interactions with their technology.

So if a brand doesn't easily integrate with the big four assistants, or if they insist on forcing you to only use their proprietary app, it should make you think twice before making a purchase. Part of the reason here has to do with future use.

If a company's product doesn't support an established standard, you should be concerned that it may not last long. But there's also a bit of concern that a device that isn't supported by the big four won't be developed enough to stand out from the crowd.

4. Brands overlooked by major smart home industry publications

Little-known smart home manufacturers often approach tech reporters to tout their latest products. Many times they'll offer to send a review unit of their new wares as a way to get attention. But often the reason these companies don't have a big presence in the industry is because their products aren't particularly unique.

In my experience, the amount of media coverage a product gets is almost always related to the quality of that product.

Remember, there's no single journalist invited to review smart home products. But if multiple journalists pass on a device, they're probably doing so for good reason.

That's not to say that major publications don't make mistakes and ignore lesser-known, high-profile smart home gadgets. But in most cases, if a product is being overlooked by industry experts, it's probably not worth your time.

Samuel Daniel

Update 04 September 2024