If there's an electrical appliance that exists, there's a strong chance that you can also get a 'smart' version of it. Some of these products can be incredibly useful, such as smart bulbs, smart plugs, smart vacuum cleaners and smart dishwashers. There's one small problem, however; different smart tech products don't tend to play nicely together. With manufacturers using different communication protocols and proprietary apps, your smart doorbell may not talk to your smart display, even though this would be incredibly useful.

Thankfully, there is a way to integrate all your smart tech into your smart home, allowing you to control all of your smart home devices from one place. Even if your smart home gadgets are from different manufactures and use different communication protocols, you can use a smart home hub to control all of your different devices, provided that they are compatible with the smart home hub that you choose.

It's very likely that you already have a device in your home that can be used a smart home hub; even a low-cost smart speaker like an Echo Dot can be used as a smart home hub, although it may not be able to control all of your devices.

If you want to bring all of your smart home tech under one roof, instead of having to use an endless variety of different apps, then here are some of the best smart home hubs you can get your hands on right now.

The best smart home hubs: Our top picks

The Amazon Echo Hub isn't even available to purchase yet, but it's already jumped to the top of picks for the best smart home hub. Unlike other Echo devices on this list, which are smart speakers or smart displays first-and-foremost, the Echo Hub has been designed specifically to be the central hub of your smart home. What's more, although you can still control everything with your voice, the Echo Hub has much more focus on touch control than any of the other Echo devices.

The Echo Hub is a connectivity powerhouse, with support for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Sidewalk, Thread, and Matter, although it doesn't support Z-Wave. It's an 8-inch wall-mountable display that allows you to control your smart home from the customisable dashboard. You can turn off your lights, open your smart blinds, or start your smart coffee maker with just a tap, or you can run an Alexa routine to do all three at once. You can also see multiple live streams from your security cameras and video doorbells. And next year the Echo Hub will get support for Amazon Map View, allowing you to control your smart devices from a digital floor plan of your own home. When the Amazon Echo Hub was first announced in 2023, Amazon said it would be released 'later this year' so we hope that it's release will be imminent.

You may already have a smart hub in your home without even realising it. That's because the Amazon Echo isn't just a great smart speaker with rich sound and Alexa smarts. It's also a smart hub in its own right, with the ability to control smart devices over Wi-Fi, Zigbee, and now Thread too, thanks to the built-in Thread border router. This means that you can control a huge range of devices with your Amazon Echo, from Zigbee light bulbs to Thread smart plugs.

And of course, it's easy to control your smart home with your voice, since the Amazon Echo comes with Alexa built in. You can even create routines in the Alexa app, to control multiple smart devices at once. For example, when you say 'Alexa, good night' you can have all of your lights turn off, your smart plugs power down, and your smart lock secure your front door. There's even a temperature sensor inside, so you can turn on the smart plug for your fan when it gets too warm.

If you're an Apple user, then you may have a lot of HomeKit compatible smart home accessories that you can control through the Home app on your iPhone or Apple Watch. You don't need a smart hub to control many HomeKit devices locally; you can control your Philips Hue lights from the Home app without any other equipment, for example. However, if you want to be able to control your smart home remotely, you'll need a hub that remains in your home and can transmit the appropriate commands to your smart home devices.

The HomePod Mini works as that smart hub. You can connect to HomeKit devices over Wi-Fi, and the HomePod Mini is also a Thread border router and Matter controller, meaning that you can control Matter devices, such as the Nest Thermostat. The HomePod Mini also has built-in temperature and humidity sensors that you can use to monitor the conditions of the room that the HomePod Mini is located in, or to trigger automations if the humidity or temperature reach specific values.

And of course, with the HomePod Mini, you can use Siri to control your smart devices with your voice, even if you don't have your iPhone with you. It's also a pretty solid sounding speaker for the size, but if you're looking for even better sound quality, the larger HomePod also works as a smart home hub, too.

If you have smart home tech such as security cameras or video doorbells, you can view the feeds from these devices on your phone, but that's not always optimal or particularly convenient. That's where a smart home hub with a screen can be a real game changer. For example, if you have a video doorbell, it can automatically display the video feed on the screen when the doorbell rings, so you can see at a glance who is at the door.

The Echo Show 10 is a great choice if you're looking for a smart home hub with a built-in screen. It can control Zigbee and Matter devices, although unlike the Amazon Echo (4th Generation) it can't be used as a Thread border router. The 10-inch screen is ideal for monitoring video feeds from smart security cameras or video doorbells, and when you're making calls on the Echo Show 10, the screen will even follow you around the room so that you don't go out of frame. And using Alexa you can control everything with your voice; commands such as 'Alexa, show me the front door' will bring up the live video feed on your screen.

If you're all in on the SmartThings smart home ecosystem, for a while there was no official hub you could use. Samsung stopped making the excellent SmartThings Hub, but you could still buy the Aeotec Smart Home Hub which was essentially the same thing with a different badge. But in 2023 Samsung released the new SmartThings Station hub, and it's excellent.

The SmartThings Station has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Zigbee built in, offers Matter support and can act as a Thread border router. It doesn't include Z-Wave, however. If you have Z-Wave devices, you'll need a smart home hub that supports this protocol, such as the next on our list.

There's a physical button on the hub that you can use to run three different automations with a short press, long press, or double press, and you can even use the SmartThings Station as a wireless charger supporting up to 15W. Using the SmartThings app, you can create routines to control the wide range of compatible smart home products, and it works with voice assistants such as Alexa and Google Assistant, too.

Z-wave is yet another communication protocol used by some smart home devices. It's a low-power wireless protocol that works in similar way to Zigbee; each device in the network can act as a repeater, allowing you to create a mesh network that can pass information back and forth. This is ideal for larger homes as it means even if devices are a long way from your Z-Wave hub, your smart home devices can still communicate by passing the information from device to device. Z-Wave is also built on a quieter frequency than Wi-Fi, so you won't have to worry about your smart home devices interfering with your home network.

The Aeotec Smart Hub not only offers Z-Wave support, allowing you to integrate your Z-wave devices into your smart home, but it also supports almost all of the other major protocols too, including Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Matter, and Thread. This means that you can control a wide range of different devices from this hub, even if they don't all speak the same language. The one thing that isn't supported, however, is Apple HomeKit; you won't be able to use the Aeotec Smart Home Hub to control your HomeKit products.

Google may not have quite the same level of supported devices as Alexa, but there is still a huge range of smart home products that will work with Google Assistant. For hands-free voice commands and remote control, you're going to need a smart hub. The Google Nest Hub Max is a great option, as it has a built-in 10-inch touchscreen display that allows you to see the live feed from your Nest Doorbell with a single voice command.

The Google Nest Hub Max can connect to a smart home kit via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Matter, and can act as a Thread border router. The smaller Google Nest Hub (2nd Gen) also has a Thread radio inside, but for some reason, you can't currently use it. Hopefully, this should be rectified in a future update. The Google Nest Hub Max has some other nice features to, such as the ability to play or pause a song just by waving your hand and can even monitor your sleep if you have one in your bedroom.

The Apple TV 4K (2022) is a little different from the other hubs on this list, because its main purpose is as a video-streaming device. However, if you're in a household with a lot of HomeKit compatible smart tech, your Apple TV 4K (2022) can act as a smart home hub, allowing you to control those devices remotely, even if you're on the other side of the planet. It's also a great streaming box, with apps to stream popular services such as Apple TV+, Disney+, and Netflix, as well as allowing you to play Apple Arcade games, or to follow Apple Fitness+ workouts on the big screen.

The Apple TV 4K (2022) comes in two sizes, a 64GB version that doesn't have an Ethernet port, and a 128GB version that does. The other key difference is that the 128GB model can act as a Thread border router, but the 64GB version can't. Bizarrely, both models of the older Apple TV 4K (2021) work as Thread border routers, so if you have Thread devices, you might want to opt for one of these cheaper models instead. Matter devices will still work regardless of which model you buy.

If you'd rather not have to pay through the nose for an all-singing, all-dancing device to act as your smart home hub, there are more economical options available. Aqara makes a wide range of affordable smart home devices, from motion sensors, water leak sensors, and temperature and humidity sensors, to video cameras and even smart pet feeders. The majority of these devices communicate over Zigbee. The benefit of Zigbee smart home devices is that they form a mesh network; each device can pass on commands or data to other devices, ensuring that you never have devices that are too far out of range.

In order to take advantage of Zigbee, however, you'll need a Zigbee hub to communicate with your devices. The Aqara Smart Hub M2 is a Zigbee smart home hub that plugs into your router. Commands from voice assistants such as Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa are then translated by the hub into Zigbee commands that are sent to your devices. There's Bluetooth connectivity, and there's also a very useful infrared (IR) transmitter. This allows you to send IR signals to otherwise dumb devices. If you have an old TV, for example, you can power it on and off using the Aqara Smart Hub M2 to send the same signals that your TV remote would send.

This smart hub is very different from the others on this list. That's because although it's possible to purchase Home Assistant Yellow, a ready-made smart home hub for Home Assistant, the majority of Home Assistant users create their own. In reality, Home Assistant isn't a smart home hub at all; it's the software that you need to run your own smart hub. The software can be run on a wide variety of devices, from a cheap Raspberry Pi to a Mac or PC. The beauty of Home Assistant is that you can create the exact system that you want; if you have a lot of Zigbee devices, for example, add a Zigbee dongle to your Home Assistant hub, and you can control them all. Prefer Z-Wave? Add that dongle instead.

The power of Home Assistant is that it works with an enormous range of smart home tech, with more than 2,500 official integrations, and many, many more unofficial ones. This allows you to integrate almost anything you can imagine into your smart home; if it's smart, the chances are that there's an integration for it. You can then build highly complex automations that allow all of your smart home devices to work together. The options are almost limitless, but there is a caveat: the system comes with a pretty steep learning curve, so you'll need a reasonable level of tech know-how. If you're willing to put in the time, however, Home Assistant can make your home truly smart.

The bottom line: What is the best smart home hub?

Amazon Echo devices already made great smart home hubs in their own right, but the new Amazon Echo Hub is the first time that the company has produced a device that's designed from the ground up to be the hub of your smart home. Voice control with Alexa has always been great, but sometimes you just want to give something a quick tap without needing to speak out loud. The Echo Hub gives you the best of both worlds, allowing you to control all of your smart home devices with touch controls or with your voice.

If you're looking for a low-cost alternative, then the Aqara Smart Hub M2 is packed with features at an excellent price. You can control devices over Wi-Fi and Zigbee and can even control some dumb devices using the built-in IR transmitter.

How I chose the best smart home hubs

When selecting the best smart home hubs, I wanted to ensure that there were options that would work with the most popular smart home ecosystems, such as Apple HomeKit, Alexa, and SmartThings. I also wanted to include hubs that covered the most popular communication methods, including Wi-Fi, Zigbee, and Thread. I made sure that there were a range of price points, from budget options to more expensive smart speakers with built-in displays. Finally, I included Home Assistant in the mix because although it's not a smart home hub in its own right, in my opinion it's one of the most powerful ways to make your home smart; my own smart home is controlled by Home Assistant running on a Raspberry Pi.

What should you look for when buying the best smart home hub?

There are a number of considerations when choosing a smart home hub for your home. Here are some of the key questions you'll need to keep in mind.

What devices does my smart home hub support?

Building a smart home is far more frustrating than it should be, because there's still no real overarching set of rules how smart home devices should operate. Each company has its own set of protocols, meaning that very few smart home devices will play nicely with each other. A smart home hub can help, allowing you to connect a range of smart home devices from different brands, but not every smart home device will work with every smart home hub.

The Amazon Echo was the first smart speaker to really gain critical mass, so understandably there are a lot of smart home devices that will work with Alexa. This isn't the case for every smart home device, however. If you're looking for a smart home hub, you should look at the kit you already own, and choose a hub that clearly states that it will work with what you already have as a jumping off point in your research.

What voice assistants will work with my smart hub?

Many smart home hubs have voice assistants built in, such as the Amazon Echo, Google Nest Hub Max, or Apple HomePod Mini. Once again, not every smart home hub will work with every voice assistant, however. Some smart home hubs also don't have any built-in microphones, such as the Aqara Smart Hub M2, so if you want to use voice commands, you'll need to use your phone or a separate smart speaker. If you have a preferred voice assistant, make sure it's compatible with your smart home hub of choice.

What communication protocols do I need?

There are numerous ways for smart home devices to communicate, from Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to Zigbee and Thread. Not every smart home hub can communicate over all of these methods, however. If you only want to control Wi-Fi smart plugs and light bulbs, then this isn't an issue, but if you have Zigbee motion detectors, or Thread lighting, then you'll need a smart home hub that's compatible. Matter and Thread are an effort to try to introduce a common language for smart home devices, so choosing a smart home hub that supports Matter and Thread may offer you some level of future proofing. If you're using Z-wave smart tech, then you'll need to find a smart home hub that supports Z-wave, such as the Aeotec Smart Home Hub.

What else can my smart home hub do?

Many of the smart home hubs on this list do more than just communicate with your smart home devices. Choosing one may also come down to the other features that you're looking for. You might want a new smart speaker, or a smart display, or you might be looking for a new streaming device. If so, you can find one with a smart home hub inside that will give you the best of both worlds.