12 Best Alexa-Enabled Smart Devices (Review) In 2020

The Echo Dot is Amazon’s most popular smart speaker. Customers often buy it as their first foray into the world of smart speakers because it’s small and relatively inexpensive. Its size makes it absolutely perfect as a kitchen or desktop speaker.

The most important feature is voice activation. With a few simple commands, you can stream music from Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, Sirius XM, and more. You can choose songs, play, and pause, and adjust the volume. Plus, you can ask Alexa to answer questions, read the news, check the weather, set alarms, and control compatible smart home devices. Basically, it’s one of the most comprehensive Alexa-enabled smart home devices.

The Amazon Smart Plug is one of the most low-key, even mundane products on this list. But it will still change your life. Plug it into a wall outlet and you can control pretty much any electrical appliance using just your voice. It’s most useful for lamps, cooling fans, humidifiers, coffee machines, and other everyday appliances.

One of the great things about the Amazon Smart Plug is that it falls under their Certified for Humans scheme. That means it’s struggle-free, stress-free, and tinker-free. You don’t need a complicated set of instructions to operate it – just plug it in, open your Alexa app, and start using your voice.

Any normal household device can be improved by Alexa, and that’s true for this doorbell. Don’t think of it as a standard doorbell, it’s more of a home security device. Certified Refurbished Ring Video Doorbell Pro shoots 1080p video of the front of your house, sends notifications to connected devices when someone’s at your door, and even lets you talk to visitors when you’re not there. If you’re concerned about home security at all, the Ring Video Doorbell is the product for you.

The listing attached to this article is for a refurbished product, which means it’s used but is certified to look and work like new. So, if you want to bag yourself a bargain, this is the way to go. It’s worth remembering that you need existing doorbell wiring to fit the Ring Video Doorbell, which could be an extra expense if you don’t already have it.

Ever since The Clapper (remember the ‘clap on, clap off’ adverts?) came out in the 80s, the world has been waiting for a new way to switch lightbulbs on and off. The Clapper seemed like a good idea, but it didn’t work half as well as the adverts suggested. These smart light bulbs from Phillips are in a completely different league. They’re widely regarded as the best smart light bulbs on the market, so we knew they’d make their way onto this list. Philips Hue White A19 60W Equivalent Dimmable LED Smart Bulb Starter Kit contains two lightbulbs and a smart hub. The smart hub is what makes the pack so much more expensive than the lightbulbs themselves. The hub is what connects the lightbulbs to your smart device and Alexa.

These lightbulbs do much more than just turn on and off. You can set a wake-up alarm, set timers, set your lighting to your daily routine, change colors to match your mood, match the weather, sync it to your music, and program them with motion sensors. This incredible versatility is what warrants the high price tag. Once you’ve bought the starter pack, the Philips Hue Hub can control up to 50 lightbulbs, so there’s plenty of scopes to deck out your whole house. There’s also a host of accessories that you can buy, such as Hue Dimmer Switch, the Hue Tap, or the Hue Motion Sensor. You can also pair it with other smart home devices like Nest or SmartThings.

Next up we’ve got the Amazon Echo Show 8. Amazon has already dipped into the tablet market with reasonable success, but they’ve never created anything to rival the iPad. The Echo Show is a smart move on their behalf because they’ve gone down a similar, but different path. The Echo is one of the best mid-range smart displays on the market.

It has an 8-inch HD screen that provides an impressive picture quality. There are two other screen sizes available (5-inch and 10-inch) but we think the 8-inch provides the best mix of viewing pleasure and value. You can ask Alexa to show you movie trailers, full movies, TV shows, YouTube videos, and much more.

The Insignia NS-43DF710NA19 43-inch 4K TV is one of the best-value smart TVs on the market. It also has built-in Alexa capability, which means it deserves a place on this list. It comes with a Voice Remote with Alexa, which means you can launch apps, search for titles, play music, switch inputs, control smart home devices, and more. That means never again will you have to do any annoying button-bashing when you’re searching for your favorite show.

It also comes with the full Fire TV experience, which means you can watch thousands of channels and apps (including Netflix, Disney+, YouTube, Prime Video and more). If you’re going to buy a smart TV, you might have as well bought one that you can control with your voice and watch pretty much anything on. The other big draw about this TV is the picture quality. It has over 8 million pixels that provide ‘stunning clarity, deep contrast, and vivid colors’. It’s also one of the cheapest smart TVs of this quality on the market. You may also like some of the best Sony 4D LED TVs from our list, so check them out.

The ecobee4 Smart Thermostat might not be the most exciting Alexa enabled smart device on the market, but it’s one of the most useful. It works in basically the same way as a normal thermostat – you put it in the room that you use most often and it detects the temperature in that room. But, as you had probably guessed, this smart thermostat has a few tricks up its sleeve.

The most obvious trick is that you can control the temperature with your voice. As long as you are in range of a connected device. And, like all Alexa-enabled devices, you can control your music, ask to hear the news, set a timer, and do so much more. Of course, you’re not buying a thermostat to play your favorite songs on, so let’s look at the more relevant features and benefits.

Smart technology has changed the home security industry. Now you can have security cameras in your home that aren’t invasive, don’t cost the earth, and have a ton of features that make you feel safe when you leave the house. The Blink Indoor Home Security Camera System is one of the best.

The most important feature is the motion detector. If it detects anyone (or anything) in your house when it’s not supposed to be, it will send an alert straight to your smartphone and record a clip that you can access on the cloud. This means that you can catch any intruders in the act and have possibly had evidence to get them convicted in court.

The Samsung SmartThings Multipurpose Sensor is another home security device that has revolutionized the way we protect our homes. From the first couple of product pictures, it’s not completely clear what the sensors are for – until you see them mounted on a door. They can be installed on any window, door, or cabinet and it will send you an alert when they’ve been opened unexpectedly.

They can also detect any rattling movement, a tilt, or a change in temperature, which covers you for pretty much any emergency. The sensor isn’t as one-dimensional as it sounds, though. It’s a really smart bit of tech. For example, if you leave the house and leave the window slightly ajar, the sensor will detect a problem and send you a notification. This feature makes it perfect for people who can never remember if they shut all the windows.

Next up, we’ve included the 8th Generation Acer Spin. This has long been one of the best selling laptops of its kind and this new model has Alexa built-in. That makes it much more than just a standard laptop. The biggest selling point of the Acer Spin has been the fact that you can spin the screen around and use it as a free-standing screen. This makes it one of the best laptops for entertainment and design purposes. Now though, it’s been made even more useful with the inclusion of Alexa. There’s so much you can do with this laptop without ever touching a button, which makes it perfect for artists, chefs, and anyone else who gets their hands dirty.

It wouldn’t be a very good laptop review without looking at the spec. It’s got an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 with 4 GB of dedicated GDDR5 VRAM, which is a graphics card for playing computer games. It’s also got a power-efficient Intel Core i7-8550U Processor, which has plenty of power to run this midrange laptop. All-in-all, it’s a really solid laptop under the hood. For more similar devices, check out our selection of the best 2 in 1 convertible laptops.

The Fitbit Versa 2 is the first fitness watch with Amazon Alexa built-in. The new swim-proof design is one of the most advanced Fitbits yet and takes fitness tech to a whole new level. As you’d expect, it’s got a heart rate monitor, step counter, tracks calories and much more. It also has Fitbit’s Sleep Score technology. This uses your heart rate, time asleep, and restlessness metrics to tell you how well you’re sleeping. Sleep has a huge effect on your overall fitness, so the Sleep Score feature is really useful for health freaks.

Having Amazon Alexa built-in is the biggest difference between this and older Fitbits, and it makes a huge difference. Using your voice, you can get quick news and information, check the weather, set alarms, and control your smart home devices. You can also control Spotify on your wrist and save up to 300 songs. The battery life is pretty impressive as well. It lasts 6 days on a single charge, so you don’t have to keep charging it constantly like older fitness trackers.

Last on our list is the Caavo Control Center Smart Remote and Home Theatre Hub. This product is a life-saver for anyone that has a coffee table full of remote controls. Plug anything connected to your TV into the control center (PlayStation, Apple TV, Amazon FireStick, etc.) and you can use the universal remote to control all of them.

In addition to that, you can control everything using your voice. This makes the whole entertainment experience easier and faster – no more button bashing! The most impressive thing about the Caavo Control Centre is that it automatically searches all of your entertainment channels. For example, if you say “watch Friends”, it will search Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and more.