Get your house in order: the 11 best Apple HomeKit gadgets
It's time to lay the foundations of your Kevin McCloud-pleasing smart home...
Your smart home tech might still feel like a bunch of foreign exchange students trying to converse for the first time, but the big platforms are finally maturing enough to make them work as an automated whole.
Whereas Amazon and Google have taken a similar approach – a voice-controlled device that can operate many of your smart home gadgets – Apple’s idea has been a little different. HomeKit brings together a myriad of compatible devices, enabling you to not only control them via the Home app in iOS and via Siri, but also hook them up to work together.
But what kind of gadgetry likes to party on Apple’s smart dance floor? Here are our favourites so far:
Hold on, what’s HomeKit again?
HomeKit is a pretty simple thing to grasp – it’s an ecosystem developed by Apple that lets you control your smart home devices via the Apple Home app and Siri. You can link together devices from different manufacturers in ways that simply weren’t possible before.
Say you have a Honeywell smart thermostat, an Elgato motion sensor, and Philips Hue lighting – before HomeKit there wasn’t really a sound way of making them talk to each other. But using the Apple Home app you can easily trigger events (say your lights and heating to come on when your motion detector is tripped). It offers you the ability to mix and match manufacturers, picking the best of what you want for your smart home. And that’s ace by us.
1) Nanoleaf Aurora (£180)
Nanoleaf’s Aurora is a different kind of smart lighting system – and one that interior designers will find, no doubt, ‘ever so chic’. Basically, the Aurora is a modular lighting system that tessellates on your wall to form all manner of glowing geometric shapes.
You simply snap the triangular lights together (using a small chip) and then stick them to your wall. Using the Nanoleaf app – or indeed Apple Home – you can change brightness and colours. They won’t be to everyone’s taste and won’t fit in every room, but they’re pretty cool nonetheless.
2) Elgato Eve Thermo (£60)
From its name, you might have this pegged as a smart thermostat. Well it ain’t! It’s a thermostatic valve that replaces the standard valve on your radiator. And of course, being HomeKit-compatible it means you can tweak the temperature in individual rooms (wherever you have a valve) using the Apple Home app or just by asking Siri.
You can also get some insights into heating patterns or quickly get room temp at a glance. Bluetooth Smart tech – connecting directly to your phone – means you don’t need another bridge or hub in your gaff either.
3) Philips Hue White and Colour (£150)
Hue has pretty much become the de facto standard when it comes to smart lighting – and for good reason, its app lets you set all kinds of mood-based lighting scenes. Want the same ambience as a Hawaiian sunset? No problem, just bring the Pina Colada.
And with HomeKit integration, it means you can quickly switch between colours, temperature or preset lighting scenes – and automate your lighting schedules – using your voice (Hey Siri) or the Apple Home app. There’s a load of kits available, with starter packs including the Ethernet port-hogging bridge.
Buy Philips Hue (White and Colour Starter Kit) here from Argos
4) Tado Smart Thermostat Starter Kit V3 (£199, or £3.99 p/month)
Tado’s Smart Thermostat is one of the coolest-looking out there, and it lives up to its name by being more intelligent than Einstein’s dinner suit. Its location-based heating control is ace, automatically turning down your thermostat when you’re out of the house.
For £3.99 per month you can get the Tado Smart Thermostat and the new bridge, which will ‘very soon’ be compatible with HomeKit, meaning you can add Siri voice control to the already available Amazon Echo integration. If you’re already a Tado user, you can also upgrade to the HomeKit-enabled bridge for free. Nice.
5) August Smart Lock $229
Fancy opening your door using your voice? Yes, like a real-life Ali Baba you can – thanks to HomeKit integration – open the August Smart Lock by just asking your smartphone.
The device looks like no other lock you’ve seen, kinda like a futuristic hockey puck, and has pretty much all the smarts you’d expect, including being able to track exactly who comes and goes (thanks to being able to create unique digital keys for each user). Like all HomeKit-compatible smart locks, we’re not exactly sure when it’s coming to the UK, but we hope it’s soon.
6) Netatmo Smart Thermostat (£149)
This funky looking thermostat was designed by France’s answer to Jony Ive, Philippe Starck. In fact, we should really call it by its full name, the Netatmo by Starck Thermostat For Smartphone (sorry, Philippe).
It’s a slick affair, with a simple readout of current and desired temperature, the smart bit being that the device learns your habits and lifestyle (through app-based questioning rather than say, Tado-like location-aware settings). Being HomeKit-compatible, you can of course simply ask Siri to boost your temperature. Oh, and it also supports Amazon Echo, and, get this…Windows Phone!
Elgato Eve Motion (£45)
Motion sensors aren’t for everyone, but they do offer a discreet alternative to security camera and are handy for triggering other smart home devices. For instance, using the Eve Motion in combination with Eve Lighting, you can enable a particular lighting scene to come on when you walk up to your door – all through the Home app.
Or use one in conjunction with an Eve Motion switch to turn on an appliance when you walk into the room – be it your TV, a fan or your audio system. This may seem a little OTT in the world of home automation, but it’s a guaranteed in-law impresser.
8) Nanoleaf Smart Ivy (£62)
These lights look like they’ve come straight out of the Death Star. And as their museum plaque would say, their geometric design challenges what a conventional lightbulb should look like.
Super-efficient (using just 7.5W to produce the same amount of light as a 60W incandescent) and controlled via the Nanoleaf base, you can quickly turn them on and off using commands to Siri – as long as you’ve set up the name of your lights in the iOS app first. Oh, and they’ll last 27 years, by which point they’ll have probably taken over the earth and enslaved mankind.
9) D-Link Omna 180 Cam HD (£200)
The first HomeKit-compatible security cam might not be the best one around, but it does promise easy integration with everything from lights to heating and blinds.
A 180-degree wide-angle lens lets you see what’s going on in the nooks and crannies of even the biggest of rooms, while a built-in microphone means you can spook your spouse out by shouting at them when you’re at work.
Like all HomeKit tech, you need to have an Apple TV or homebound iPad if you want to get notifications or watch footage remotely from outside your house. Still, the Full HD footage is great and HomeKit-compatibility means you can not only view what’s going on in the Home app, but also turn on (and off) other HomeKit devices using the motion detection feature.
10) Honeywell Lyric T6R £150 (wired), £170 (wireless)
Most smart thermostats like to disappear discretely into the background, but this Nest-botherer really looks the part with its simple black-and-white touchscreen display and rounded corners.
Geofencing features means it’ll learn where you are and set your heating accordingly, while manual scheduling is easy with the accompanying Lyric app. And of course, because it’s HomeKit-compatible it’ll work with Siri voice commands and chat to everything else in this list.
11) Philips Hue Go
Yes, we know, more Philips Hue – but this time it’s a portable smart light that you can stick anywhere and still reap the benefits of HomeKit integration.
The Hue Go is basically a small, round table light that can change colour and link – via a Hue Bridge – to your other Hue lighting around the house. Its 300 lumens means it’s pretty darn bright, and seven different light effects can change the ambience of your room in an instant. Pair it with a motion sensor in the Apple Home app to have it come on when you walk into the room.
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