Is Smart Home Worth It?
This has been a burning question nowadays. To be honest, there’s no direct answer to the question, is smart home worth it.
A smart home can make your life easier without any doubt. But the real question happens to be about expenses. Are we having the best bang for the buck from the monetary perspective? To be more specific, is smart home worth the money?
Here’s the thing-
What’s worth it and what’s not depends completely upon our preferences. What you look for the most in something. Getting a 500$ massage can be worth it if you think the comfort was super awesome.
So, here we will explain the perks of having a smart home and some cons of it too. We believe that you’ll be able to judge better based on the facts.
By the way, we’re calling these facts because we gathered up 7 smart home users on a focus group discussion. We asked them the same question and they shared their experiences while answering. And that’s where our facts were born.
So, let’s go through the details without wasting any more time-
Smart Home Pros
Here we will discuss only the benefits of smart homes. No, we won’t go all technical on the features and everything. Rather we will try to show you what benefits a smart home will bring to your daily life.
So, let’s answer the question of why buy a smart home–
Smart Locks for Forgetful People
Have you ever rushed to your home just to see if you’ve locked the door or not? Well, this incident is pretty common around the world.
Smart locks will save you from this tension. You can check on your door lock from anywhere. To some extents, you can even lock your door with voice command. For that, of course, you’ll need smart Hubs like Alexa or google home assistant. For this reason, smart door locks are considered as a smart home essential for living.
Moreover, if you have a doorbell camera with your smart lock then you can see who’s knocking on the door. And if you have smart speakers, then you can even talk with that someone.
Smart Home Thermostat for Super Comfort
In the past, people burnt logs and stuffs to keep the house warm. Nowadays we have to pay a hefty amount to get that warm comfort. However, smart thermostats can keep your bills at bay.
How’s that?
Well just like the smart locks you can control these thermostats from anywhere. So, even if you forget to turn that heater off, you can turn it off from outside. Some smart thermostats know just when you’re coming home. Based on that data, it can turn the heat on just before you reach home.
That’s not all- some smart thermostats can even learn things about you that you sometimes don’t know yourself. For example, some thermostats might learn that you love eating dinner at 80 degrees F. Some may learn what temperature you like while getting to bed exactly.
As a result, you get a minimum bill from the temperature control with maximum comfort.
Smart Home Security for Life Protection
These are literally life saviors. If you want to make your home extra secure, then there’s no alternative to smart home security.
So how does it work?
Well, a smart home security system is integrated with all your house home and windows. If any of those gets opened then you’ll get a notification. Now that notification can be an alarm or simply a text. It all depends upon your choice.
Smart Doorbells can Multitask
Although this one should be integrated into smart home security and smart door locks, we’re discussing it separately.
It’s because smart doorbells are separate devices. And these have some distinct features.
Smart doorbell cameras can do the security stuff to some extent. Remember when we talked about smart door locks interacting with the visitors? Well, actually this device comes with the speaker and camera.
So, it’s actually this device that allows you to talk to a visitor and all.
Moreover, with this device, you can do surveillance work to some extent. The camera that comes with the doorbell can cover around 60-70 percent of your lawn. However, based on your lawn size and your camera resolution your experience may differ.
Even if you’re unable to use this feature, it’s still super cool. You get to see and talk to the bell ringer from your bed and. In some cases, from out of your home.
With this, we’re ending our tour of advantages of smart homes.
Smart Home Cons
Now that you’re done with the pros of smart home it’s time that we explore the other side of the coin. After going through this part you’ll get a clear answer to – ‘Is smart home technology worth it?’
So, let’s get going-
Smart Home Cameras Work or Don’t Work
The title may seem confusing to you. So, let’s break it down.
All the smart home cameras record videos that’s alight. But trouble begins when it comes to motion detection.
These cameras either don’t detect any motion at all or these detect even the cloud shadows.
So, trusting the camera alerts becomes really tough. Imagine this, you’re on a meeting and your smart camera sends you a notification that there’s movement inside your house. You rush to see what’s in there. Ultimately it was some shadow of leaves falling from the tree.
However, you won’t face this problem in some of the good cameras.
Smart Homes need a Paid Cloud Service
Most smart homes use a cloud service to store all those data. But in most of the cases, this cloud service comes with a fee. Sometimes this fee is monthly. As a result, your smart home maintenance cost increases.
Smart Home Devices Run on Batteries
It’s great if all your smart home devices run by using a dc current adapter or charger. However, the case is different for a lot of users.
You need to change the smart device batteries after a certain period. The worst part about this is that these batteries don’t run out together. So, it’s pretty annoying.
Bottom line
We’ve laid out all the cards. Now you know what it’s going to be like while using a smart home.
Now it’s up to you to decide on the question- is smart home worth it. If you think the cost and subtle issues are worth the amount, you’re paying then go for it. Good luck.
