This year's winners in the world of connected home tech
The votes are in, the numbers have been crunched, and it’s time to unveil the winners of the 2024 Ambient Smart Home Awards.
2024 has been a year of significant strides for the smart home.
We’ve witnessed the continued maturation of Matter, AI innovations taking center stage, and voice assistants becoming increasingly intelligent and ever more personalized.
Sustainability has emerged as a key focus, with brands keen to flex their eco-credentials, and we’ve seen a shift away from hubs and bridges with connectivity radios built into everyday appliances.
With this dynamic landscape, the opportunities for creating a cutting-edge smart home have expanded exponentially.
So, without further ado, let’s delve into our top smart home picks for 2024….
The Mammotion Luba 2 AWD 1000 is an absolute monster of a robot lawnmower, with a super wide cutting angle, multiple cutting options and precise GPS mapping all on offer.
It resembles a Formula 1 car and it’s one of, if not the best, performing robotic lawnmowers that we’ve ever tested.
Get it set up how you want it using the companion app, and you won’t have to worry about manually cutting the lawn ever again.
The Amazon Echo Hub could be the perfect device for Alexa smart home enthusiasts.
All of the modern smart home hardware is on board for not only Alexa, but Matter too, and the form factor and UI make smart home control a breeze.
It’s the second, active, display that’s the USP with the Hub. It kicks in when the proximity sensor detects you coming closer and presents you with all of your favorite smart home controls, automations, feeds and more in one easy-to-use place.
The Echo Hub is undoubtedly the best smart home touchscreen companion for an Alexa household.
The Arlo Home Security System is an incredibly simple system to setup and operate, thanks to the multi-skilled sensor that is the star of the show.
If you’re already using Arlo security cameras to protect your house then adding the Home Security System to the mix is also a no brainer as it’s all managed in the excellent Arlo Secure app.
You’ll be able to easily add an array of features to take your home monitoring to the next level.
By stacking the two drawers on top of each other, the Ninja Double Stack XL Air Fryer offers 9.5-litres of cooking space in a device that doesn’t take up any more counter space than a single-drawer device.
The design also introduces two-level cooking, so up to four different items can be cooked at once.
With simple controls and brilliant results, this is the ultimate two-drawer air fryer.
The Dyson Purifier Big+Quiet Formaldehyde more than lives up to its name but, if you have the space then you’re looking at a top tier air purifier that is pretty much unrivalled in terms of ridding your indoor air of all those nasties that have such an impact on our health.
It’s super easy to setup, the app is great, performance is superb and, as you’d hope from the name, it is pretty quiet too.
An unsung hero of the smart home world, the The Meross Smart Wi-Fi Garage Door Opener is a very cheap and relatively easy option for making your existing dumb garage door controller smart.
It works with hundreds of existing garage controllers, even ancient ones, and ties them into your smart home ecosystem of choice, whether that be HomeKit, Alexa, Google Home or SmartThings.
That doesn’t just mean open and closing via an app but also having extra security measures in place using routines and automations.
The Reolink Argus 4 Pro is the best smart security camera so far from a brand which seems to raise the bar with each new launch.
The dual lens 180-degree wide angle works brilliantly, with visuals stitched together with no obvious evidence in the footage and the color night vision, without the need for additional lighting, works brilliantly.
Throw in Wi-Fi 6, local storage and a pretty decent price-point and you’re looking at one of the best smarty security cameras on the market.
The Ruark R410 integrates both high-end sound and design, to deliver a standout music experience that feels modern yet steeped in nostalgia.
It’s crafted to please audiophiles with its premium sound quality and its adaptive EQ, while design lovers will appreciate the beautifully constructed cabinet that harkens back to classic 1970s systems.
It isn’t just a speaker, it’s a crafted piece of audio furniture that marries retro aesthetics with modern tech capabilities.
In terms of raw power output, thanks to the X-Boost mode that cranks things up to 3100W, and the high capacity battery, the EcoFlow Delta 2 Max takes some beating in the ever-increasingly competitive market that it operates.
Whether you’re a regular camper who doesn’t want to go totally off-grid, you’re after a reliable back up solution for your home, or you’re looking to power a small remote building using solar then the Delta 2 Max ticks all of the boxes.
The Aiper Scuba S1 is a great robo pool cleaner, with a simple-to-use feature set and a great cleaning performance, at a decent price.
It cleans pool floors, walls and the water level too and can run for up to 2.5 hours at a time, from a full charge, and can churn through 70 gallons per minute of suction and filtration, collecting large and small debris in its the basket as it goes.
With multiple lighting options on every panel, combined with cross platform compatibility and an intuitive installation process, the Govee Glide Hexagon Light Panels Ultra may well be the very best wall-based smart light panels of all time.
It’s a comprehensive smart lighting experience that will transform any room or gaming setup, and Govee blows the competition out of the water because of its absolute multitude of customization options.
The Sonos Arc Ultra is an absolutely superb single-box soundbar solution and one that could very well be the knight in shining armor that Sonos has been waiting for in what’s been a pretty iffy year.
It offers a very impressive delivery of Dolby Atmos with excellent height and width representation, with great bass, a wide soundstage and fantastically clear vocals.
Heralding one of the most “significant breakthroughs in audio engineering this century,” the overall sound performance is superb, with the Arc Ultra offering an excellent representation of 3D sound output.
The Ninja Woodfire Pro XL was already a firm favorite here at The Ambient and the Connect takes things to the next level, making it easier than ever to cook – and crucially, smoke – meat to perfection thanks to the companion app.
But it’s not just all about the meat, as the Woodfire Pro Connect XL also boasts other cooking modes including air frying, roasting, baking and grilling, with a huge cooking space on offer.
It’s undoubtedly the smoking element of the Woodfire that impresses the most though, making it super simple for even novice BBQ chefs to create tender, smokey meat with very little effort or hassle.
The Lithe Audio iO1 is a slick looking outdoor ready speaker than can be configured in multiple ways and is capable of wireless streaming via a plethora of platforms and services.
The sound quality is superb and you even have the option of adding an extra passive speaker to create a stereo pair.
It’s a superb all-in-one option for anyone looking to enhance their outdoor entertainment.
A great upgrade for locks with a thumb turn, the SwitchBot Lock Pro can turn a dumb door into a smart one, while maintaining the all-important key entry option as a final manual override.
This smart lock excels with its flexibility, offering app, keypad (with or without fingerprint), SwitchBot Remote and Matter control.
For those that want to upgrade their door lock without having to physically change the cylinder, the Lock Pro is a superb choice.
The Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box 8K is a premium upgrade that brings immersive home theater lighting to a whole new level.
With HDMI 2.1 support for 8K resolutions and 120Hz refresh rates, it’s tailored for enthusiasts seeking top-tier video and gaming experiences.
For those already embedded in the Hue ecosystem and looking to supercharge their setup, the Sync Box 8K represents a superb upgrade and was well worth the wait.
Taking all the technologies that Ring has developed over the years and packing them into a battery powered device, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro is the pinnacle of wireless doorbells.
It’s the addition of 3D Motion Detect that really makes the difference, dramatically reducing the number of alerts the doorbell generates by using a radar-based detection system.
Add in excellent image quality, tight Alexa integration, clear audio and clever automatic replies, and this is the best battery-powered doorbell available right now.
Revamped with a load of new features in 2024, including an all-important low latency, live sync, mode for Sky Sports, the 4K Dolby Vision visuals are superb and the wealth of streaming services on offer is ever-expanding.
The equipment is also much more modern, quieter and easier to setup than the traditional Sky satellite equivalents and Sky Stream is the future, there’s no doubt about that.
Extremely fast, and extremely powerful, the Netgear Orbi 970 Series is the fastest Wi-Fi 7 mesh system that we have ever tested.
It has a multitude of 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports, plus quad-band networking and, for large homes and very busy networks, there’s nothing as good as this.
The Eufy Omni S1 Pro is an incredibly powerful system, and one that works wonders on hard floor.
Quality vacuuming, combined with a self-emptying, self-cleaning station makes this the best overall mopping robot that we’ve tested.
Its roller and dirt removal system proved far effective at deep stains, beating all other robots that we’ve tested before.
The Haier X Series 11 washing machine is at the higher end of the price-spectrum but that’s for good reason. The performance is superb, it barely makes any noise when in use and the Ultra Fresh Air tech makes washing schedules more flexible than ever.
Throw in a large 11kg drum, a great energy rating, AI smart clothing type detection, auto-dosing and a plethora of dedicated washing modes and you’re looking at one of the top performing washing machines on the market.
