The Best Black Friday Apple HomeKit Deals Still Available on Lights, Smart Plugs, Locks, and More

I'll save you the time:

Hue - yes, easy to use, works well.
Eve - probably works well, but generally overpriced if you can find a Hue equivalent.
Nanoleaf - just say no. Constantly failure, awful app, just miserable experience.

Ecobee - absolutely yes, better than any alternative.

Camera's mostly still suck. Most important issue is the latency. If they are battery powered, they will probably have terrible latency to try to save power. If you can't run a power cable to where you want, see if you can find a solar powered version with a fairly serious (not gimmicky) panel. That might be a combo that gives decent latency with no power issues.

Meross - oh god no. Endless problems pairing and connecting to HomeKit.

Aqara - maybe OK, but YET ANOTHER FSCKING hub. I have my quota of hubs, and Aqara arrived too late to the party. Hard pass until this is fixed.

Sonos - well, you know what happened to the app don't you? Use your brain!

I generally agree. But with Nanoleaf, some of their products can connect via Matter, so you can avoid using their app. You have to evaluate each product not each brand, as some exceptions exist. That said, all the Hue stuff is good if you can afford their price.

I have some Aqara that uses Zigbee. If you have a Zigbee network already Aqara/Zigbee is reliable. But yes, you do need a ZigBee radio someplace to save as a controller. I have a small USB dongle for that purpose.

As of 2024, there is no good single brand that does everything.

I'll save you the time:

Hue - yes, easy to use, works well.

Meross - oh god no. Endless problems pairing and connecting to HomeKit.

Aqara - maybe OK, but YET ANOTHER FSCKING hub. I have my quota of hubs, and Aqara arrived too late to the party. Hard pass until this is fixed.

Hue is great.

Meross is great — I own 2 of those power strips and they work flawlessly.

The listed Aqara camera does not require a hub.

Our various Meross devices work great.

NEVER buy any "smart home" accessory that requires an Internet or "cloud" subscription to work. Several reasons...

1) Do you really want some Chinese company to record every time you open a door or turn on a light? OK, you have nothing to hide and don't care?

2) Do you want your light switch to stop working when the Internet disconnects? It is very annoying to need to use a flashlight when you need to reboot a router

3) what happens years from now when the cloud company decides your equipment is obsolete and no longer worth supporting? Then you need to replace it all.

4) Latency is poor if the data has to do a round trip to some far away server. It simply works better then the connection is local to your house.

Look for stuff that works without the need for data go over your Internet connection

OK, that's all reasonable advice.
Not at ALL sure what relevance it has to my comment that you quotes, but whatever...

I'll save you the time:

Meross - oh god no. Endless problems pairing and connecting to HomeKit.

Our Meross garage door gadget has been 100% reliable and fast, unlike the MyQ gadget I bought a few years ago that frequently won't respond or open. Not sure what your issue is but mine is awesome (and it was cheap!)

Would love to have the disposable income to build the one Nonoleaf Skylight Best Buy shows. By my count twenty one boxes required, $4,200. Hey at least they’re on sale, right? 😄