10 Smart Home Devices I Actually Use! (Black Friday Edition).

Hey guys, what's up? So I've reviewed a lot of smart home tech on this channel. We get sent a lot of products to review and some of them are truly great stuff that I would recommend in a heartbeat. But this is a tech review channel and so the turnover of products passing through the studio is very high. There's new stuff coming in constantly and of course we can't keep using everything ourselves so most of it either gets sent back to the brand or we give it away. When it comes to smart home stuff, I tend to go by the motto, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And while most of the products we use are relatively easy to set up on their own, it can be a bit of a pain in the neck to get everything to communicate together. You know, to get that smooth smart home experience. And that is one of the main reasons I tend to stick with what works in my setup even if a new product might be slightly better on its own. Anyway, I do get asked which products I actually use myself so here are 10 of my favorite smart home products I use here in the studio. Let's ramble. All right, so my smart home experience or smart studio experience rather already starts when I open the door. I don't use a physical key. In fact, we ditched the physical key setup the day we moved into this space in favor of a smart lock. I'm using the Aqara Smart Lock U200 and what's cool about this one is that it's a retrofit smart lock meaning you don't have to replace your entire lock. It works with your existing cylinder including Euro and US deadbolt locks. And because it uses thread, it's super power efficient with a battery life of up to six months. If you're an iPhone or an Apple Watch user, you'll be happy that this supports Apple Home key, just tap to unlock or you can use Aqara's NFC cards which of course is great for kids or for guests. You can set a simple pin lock as well but I personally went for the fingerprint instead that way I'm sure that nobody else can get in here. Now, while I'm standing there opening my door, I'm already interacting with two more of my smart home products. My ring doorbell is registering me from the door and I have a Eufy camera mounted on the outside wall of my studio recording me from the side. I mean, the ring doorbell probably doesn't need much of an introduction. Arguably the most well-known smart doorbell on the planet. They're reliable, the footage is solid and it has a lot of customization features. Is it perfect? Not really. I don't like that there is a subscription fee for instance and the battery life is pretty abysmal. I would definitely recommend hardwiring this thing if you can. Unfortunately, I don't have that option here in the studio and that means I'm swapping out the battery every three to four weeks especially now that it's getting colder outside and the battery drains a lot quicker. I do not have that problem with the Eufy camera which also has an internal battery but it's being topped up by solar power and I've literally never had to charge it since I've installed it here over two years ago. I'm using the EufyCam 3 by the way. In fact, I'm using two of them, one out front and the other one monitoring the back door of the studio. Can't be too careful. And what I love about these cameras apart from the solar power stuff is that they're hooked up to my Eufy home base which is connected directly to my router. The home base also holds an HDD drive where all the footage is stored locally eliminating the need for my footage to be stored in some cloud and I don't have to pay a monthly subscription fee. Now, there has been a bit of controversy with Eufy in the past regarding push alerts. The problem there was if you wanted motion alert footage to be pushed to your phone, you know, when someone's at your door, you get an image, it would have to pass through their cloud first which did raise some privacy and security concerns but Eufy fixed that a while back and that is no longer an issue which is why I'm comfortable again recommending this setup. I've used it for over two years now and I don't really see myself switching unless I have a very compelling reason to. Now, when I got this setup, I couldn't get it to work with my Google Nest devices which is what I use mostly in terms of smart home assistants but it did work very well with Alexa and that is the only reason I own an Alexa show. In fact, at the time, they weren't even selling them in Belgium so I had to pick one up in the US when I was over. It sits next to my main desk in the studio where it functions as my dedicated ring and the Eufy camera monitor. I literally don't use it for anything else. Google Nest is still my home assistant of choice although with the speed of AI developing, I can see that changing at some point. I would love a chat GPT-based home assistant, completely voice controlled but until that day, Google Nest will be my go-to for the simple stuff. One of the things it does for me is activate my studio in the morning which leads me to my next smart home product of choice, the Philips Hue system. Now, I know a lot of people swear by different brands like Govee which is apparently just as good and a lot cheaper but I'm already heavily invested in the Hue ecosystem so that is what I'm using. I'm basically using two main Hue products. At home, we use a ton of smart bulbs and other lights but here in the studio, it's all about smart plugs. I block out all the daylight from the studio and I'm talking about all the light simply because I can't control daylight and there's nothing worse than shifting lights and brightness for video production. So, the entire studio is lit by lights that you see here around me and accent lights I can actually control. Now, having to turn on each individual light every single morning would be a huge pain in the neck so I decided to hook everything up to a Philips smart plug. All I have to do when I walk into the studio is say, hey, bleep, turn on the studio and bam, everything turns on automatically. I set up every light in the Philips Hue app first and then connected that to my Google Home. That way, I can operate every light individually as well if I want to and for that, I have an old iPad mini that I've dedicated as my studio control hub, if you will. It's sitting on this wireless charging unit by Pitaka which is absolutely awesome. I'm not even sure if they still make these. I'll have to check but I will try to put links to everything you see in this video in the description below. The accent lights in the studio are not Hue lights. All of the tube lights you see are made by a company called Nanlite. I've been using these things forever, pretty much since I started this channel in 2020 and so far, I've had only one tube light crap out on me. The rest is still going strong and I love them. There are definitely cheaper tube lights available on Amazon but most of them will cause flickering in my camera footage since they're not made for video. These Nanlite Pavo tubes are a bit more expensive but there are never any issues because they are actually made for video production and they always look great on camera. Now, somehow, I gotta keep this place clean as well. Narwhal recently sent over their Frio Z10 Ultra and thank you very much to Narwhal for agreeing to sponsor this video. First of all, I love the way this thing looks. The minimalist design blends perfectly into any home environment. Now, my studio can get pretty chaotic between camera gear, tripods, light stands and the never-ending pile of Amazon boxes. It's basically an obstacle course for anything with wheels but somehow, this little robot glides through it all like it owns the place. The Frio Z10 Ultra uses dual RGB cameras and dual AI chips that analyze the room in real time like it understands what it's seeing. It spots cables, boxes and even those tiny little screws that always end up on the floor and it smoothly avoids everything without getting tangled up. Then comes the deep clean system which is kind of where the magic happens. It's got this extendable mop that pushes right up to the edges and corners using adaptive pressure and tooth certified edge reach tech. It even tackles spills and sticky spots. Basically, the kind of stuff that happens when you open up one too many energy drinks during an editing session. Yeah, I know, I have an energy drinking problem and I have to say it's quiet, sleek and it cleans itself afterwards. The base station handles everything even washing the mops with hot water. So I can focus on making videos instead of cleaning the floor or the robot for that matter. You can check out the Narwhal Frio Z10 Ultra using the link below. It's smart home tech that's actually smart and this one is definitely a keeper for me. Now, there are two more smart home devices in this studio I can't live without. This 65 inch OLED Beauty by LG and my Apple TV 4K. I created this mini kitchen slash living room setup in the back of the studio which basically serves a dual purpose or triple purpose even. I use it to record a lot of videos so you'll see me using it as a set. I'm sure you've seen me check out my new tech on this couch or maybe here at my little kitchen table but I also use this space as a break room to have lunch and it's also where I screen my finished videos before I upload them to YouTube, you know, to make sure everything looks okay and there's no weird colors or anything. Of course, I could do that at my computer as well but a lot of you guys are watching my content on your TVs these days so I wanna know if everything looks good on there as well. LG does have its own operating system on board including all the apps and built-in Google TV, et cetera but personally, I prefer my Apple TV 4K. I just find the images even crisper including HDR content and Dolby Vision and I absolutely love the simplicity of the Apple remote. That's one thing Apple really got right not to mention handing over stuff from my other Apple devices like my iPhone or my tablet straight to the TV seamlessly. So guys, there you have it, my current smart home setup or at least here in the studio, not necessarily the very latest of the latest but it works well and I don't see the need to mess with it just yet. I hope you enjoyed the video. Give it a like if you did and a sub to the channel would be much appreciated. See you in the next one.