The best smart home devices can make your home more automated, safer and cleaner. In some cases, these connected products can even help you save money.
Whether you’re looking to turn your lights on from your smartphone, stream music to a speaker using Alexa ( Google Assistant or Siri,) lock your doors remotely or vacuum your floors without lifting a finger, these smart home devices provide complete convenience.
The number of smart home brands is constantly growing. That said, not all smart home devices are as reliable as they claim. We’ve tested dozens of offerings across all categories, from the best home security cameras to the best smart light bulbs. Whether a device can be controlled by an app or a voice, we’re here to help you decide if it fits your needs.
So, without further ado let’s get started!
10. Chamberlain MyQ
If you’re looking for the best smart garage door opener, look no further than the Chamberlain MyQ. It includes a sensor for your garage door as well as a hub that connects to your Wi-Fi network. When you send a command using your smartphone, it is relayed to the hub, which then goes to the sensor that activates your garage door. The MyQ app, available for Android and iOS devices, lets you check to see if your door is open, and then close — or open — it remotely.
MyQ will work with most brands of garage door openers made after 1993 that have standard safety sensors, according to Chamberlain. Currently, MyQ works with Nest, SmartThings and Xfinity Home smart home systems. The one thing it doesn’t do, though, is work with Alexa.
If you have a wide variety of smart home gadgets, you’ll need a central system to integrate and control them all. While it has its imperfections, we found the Samsung SmartThings hub to be the best of the lot. It works with a wide range of devices and now has Wi-Fi built in, so you don’t need to plug it into your router; this makes it easier to place in your house for the best connection to all your smart home devices.
Because the SmartThings hub has both Zigbee and Z-Wave antennas, you can pair it with several of the best smart home devices. Using the companion app, you can arrange dozens of scenes and automations. It also has a comprehensive home monitoring component, which can send you an alarm, record video, turn on lights, play sounds, and unlock your doors in the event of an emergency.
8. Nest Protect
The Nest Protect is the top choice among the best smart smoke detectors. When it picks up on something in the air, it sounds an alarm and lets you know what room in your home triggered the alert. Plus an LED ring on the bottom of the alarm changes color in case of an emergency, giving you and the people you live with a visual cue.
What we like most about the Nest Protect is how well it integrates with some of the best smart home devices. When you use smart home routines, your smart smoke alarm can automatically turn on your lights, making it easier for you to get out of your house. However, these routines only work for those who have converted their Nest account to a Google Assistant account. It also does not natively work with Alexa.
The $25 Wemo WiFi Smart Plug is one of the best smart home devices and our top choice among the best smart plugs. It’s more compact than competing options out there, even its predecessor the Wemo Mini. And while it doesn’t have energy monitoring like some other smart plugs, the Wemo WiFi Smart Plug does work with all the major smart assistants.
This smart plug has a physical switch, so if you don’t want to use your voice or an app to turn your appliance on or off, you can click the switch on the Wemo. It also has a clever Away mode. which can make it seem like you’re home even when you’re not by turning a lamp on intermittently.
The Nest Doorbell (battery) gets almost everything right, and that’s why it’s not just one of the best smart home devices but the best video doorbell we’ve reviewed. The video doorbell’s 3:4 vertical aspect ratio means you can see more of your front door; it can work either wired or on battery power alone, and it has a lot of great features, such as the ability to recognize familiar faces, packages, animals, and vehicles.
Even better is that the camera also offers some of those features for free, as well as three hours of rolling video storage — things that used to require a subscription. If you want longer storage, you can still sign up for Nest Aware, which starts at $6/month. As such, it pairs nice with the Nest Cam.
There wasn’t much to improve on in our August Smart Lock Pro review, but the company went ahead and tweaked its original to make it smaller and easier to use. As our new top pick among the best smart locks, the the August Wi-Fi Smart Lock is 45 percent more compact than its predecessor, so it looks less obvious on your door. It also has Wi-Fi built in, so you can skip the August Connect bridge for linking your lock to your home network.
Everything we enjoyed about the August Pro is still here: An easy installation process, features such as DoorSense (which lets you know if your door has been left open), and compatibility all the leading smart home systems, from Alexa to Google Assistant to Xfinity. And, the August Wi-Fi lets you keep the keys from your existing deadbolt.
Philips Hue White starter kit includes two bulbs and a hub to connect them to other smart home devices. While you can’t change these bulbs’ colors, you can adjust their brightness (up to 800 lumens), and add up to 50 to a single hub. Philips’ bulbs also work with a wide range of smart home systems, including Alexa, Apple HomeKit, IFTTT, Google Home, and Nest. In fact, there’s all sorts of things you can do with Philips Hue bulbs, check out these 9 things you never knew you could do with smart lights.
Philips Hue lights also have an app, Philips Hue Sync, which lets users synchronize their smart bulbs with multimedia content on their Mac or Windows PC. For example, you can set your lights to flash and change color in time with music, video and movies being played on your computer. Users can also modify the color schemes and themes to suit their tastes. For $30 more, you can upgrade your starter kit to include 4 bulbs instead of 2.
The fifth-generation Ecobee SmartThermostat has everything we liked about its predecessor, the Ecobee4, such as Alexa built in, a slick touchscreen interface and a remote sensor that helps ensure all the rooms of your house are getting heated or cooled properly. But the most up-to-date version has a better speaker so you can actually use it to play music, all of Alexa’s features (including Drop-In and messaging), and Spotify integration. The remote sensor has a longer battery life and better range, too.
Its audio can’t compete with the Echo Dot or other Alexa speakers in terms of quality, but the Ecobee is clever means of equipping a room with Alexa without plugging in another smart speaker. Not only is the Ecobee one of the best smart home devices you can buy, it’s our leading choice of all the best smart thermostats, too.
The well-designed Nest Cam (battery) has a simple shape and is one of the easiest home security cameras to install, thanks to its magnetic base. Its 1080p camera captures sharp images day and night, and its microphone and speaker made conversations a breeze. That’s the main reason we consider it the top choice among all the best security cameras we’ve tested.
The Nest Cam (battery) also offers three hours of rolling video storage for free, as well as person, vehicle, and animal detection. If you sign up for a Nest Aware subscription (starting at $6/month), you also get familiar face detection as well as the ability to store up to a month’s worth of video.
1. Amazon Echo Dot with Clock
The name says it all: This is an Echo Dot with a clever LED clock built in its face. However, this seemingly simple addition adds a ton of functionality to the Echo Dot, making an even better smart home companion. In fact, we wish more smart home companies took Amazon’s cue and make minor —yet effective — enhancements to already excellent devices.More than just the time, though, the Echo Dot with Clock’s display can also show you the current temperature, and also functions as a timer. It also has an ambient sensor that automatically adjusts the brightness of the display based on the lightning of its surrounding environment. The Echo Dot with Clock costs $10 more than the Echo Dot, but based on our experience, we think it’s a worthwhile upgrade for those who want to know the time without having to ask Alexa.
There are three different ways of taking a screenshot if you own a modern Mac. But all of them involve keyboard shortcuts. However, if you own a MacBook Pro having a Touch Bar, there is another method. macOS Software also provides you with several options for saving, deleting, or opening those screenshots easily. You can apply the same tips to the latest models also, such as MacBook Pro with M2 Chip and MacBook Air also.
How to screenshot on mac
Let’s take a look at some of the methods you can choose to take a screenshot on Mac.
1. Cmd-Shift-3
You can use this shortcut for capturing the screenshot of your Mac’s entire screen.
2. Cmd-Shift-4
You can use this keyboard combo for turning the cursor into a crosshair. You can then drag it for selecting a part of the screen to capture. Releasing the mouse button then will take the shot.
You may use some other options as well after you hit “Cmd-Shift-4”.
· Press & Release the Space bar
After pressing & releasing the spacebar, the crosshair will turn into a camera icon. You can move that icon over any window you want for taking a screenshot of. The screenshot taken this way will feature a “White Border” around that window with some drop shadow as well.
· Press & Hold the Space bar
After you drag crosshair for highlighting a specific area, don’t release the mouse button. This will lock in the size and shape of that area but will allow you to reposition on the screen. It is a good option if the area you selected initially is a bit off. You just need to hold down the spacebar for repositioning it before you release the mouse button for taking a screenshot.
· Hold down “Shift” Key
After you drag crosshair for highlighting a specific area, don’t release the mouse button. This will lock in each side of that selected area you made with crosshairs. This will not only let you save the bottom edge, but you can move the mouse as well for positioning that edge.
After that, release the “Shift” key instead of the mouse button ad press it again. This will reposition the edges of your selected area. Toggling between the two edges also becomes easy; you just need to keep the touchpad engaged while pressing the “Shift” key at the same time.
3. Cmd-Shift-5
This shortcut command was introduced few years back in macOS Mojave. It calls up some parts of the panel along with screen capture options. You get to see three screenshot buttons on your screen for capturing it entirely or a part of it. But that doesn’t end here; you can also record your entire screen or some selected part using the buttons. On the left side of the screen is an “X Button” for closing the screenshot panel. Or you can use the “Escape” key also for this purpose.
Moreover, you will see an “Options” button on the right side of the screen. You can choose where you want to save that screenshot; Documents, Mail, Desktop, Messages, Clipboard, or any other location. And don’t forget to set a 5-second delay so that you may not lose any item while engaging the screenshot tool. The tool automatically enables “Show Floating Thumbnail” by default. This will put a small preview thumbnail (in the lower right corner of your screen) of the screenshot you just captured. This procedure is quite similar to the one we witnessed for iOS. But you can’t turn this preview thumbnail on your iPhone. However, Mac lets you do that also. And you also have the option of showing the mouse pointer in video or screenshot.
If you see the screenshot panel causing hindrance, you can just move it anywhere on the screen by grabbing its left edge and dragging it. So, it’s quite easy to take a screenshot on Mac, particularly if you follow the built-in keyboard shortcuts. And if one or two keys aren’t working, you can opt to go for others keys also (mentioned in method 2).
Now, let’s take a look at how you can screenshot on Mac that has a touch bar as well.
4. Cmd-Shift-6: Touch Bar MacBooks
If you have an older MacBook Pro or the latest version of it, you can screenshot on it as well. The screenshot will show you what’s in front of you, on the Touch Bar. Just press “Cmd-Shift-6” for taking a skinny and wide screenshot of the Touch Bar.
Easy Annotation
By embracing the “Floating Thumbnail”, you will have access to different “Markup Tools” for annotating your screenshot. You can let the thumbnail slip away, or you can swipe it away as well. This will save it to the spot where you previously saved the screenshot. Click on “Floating Thumbnail” and a new window will appear containing all the markup tools. You just need to right-click it for:
Saving the screenshot to Documents, Clipboard or Desktop.
Opening it in Photos, Messages, Mail or Preview
Showing in Finder
Deleting it
Opening in the Markup Window
Closing and saving it.
Mac screenshotters don’t work as effectively as they should with the Cmd-Shift-5 shortcut. But since you get the option of annotation without opening any preview, this one is more reliable. And deleting the messed-up screenshots when you can’t handle them is another good thing. Apart from that, a good addition is a 5-second delay which most other shortcuts don’t offer. So, this is one of the best ways of taking a screenshot on Touch Bar.
If for some reason if you can’t take a screenshot on mac, check this article on how to fix it.
Conclusion
MacOS doesn’t allow you to take a screenshot for safety purposes. But you can use various keys to do that as well. This isn’t some kind of hack; it’s just a way to save whatever is on the screen. Even though the method of taking a screenshot on an iPhone is simple, Mac doesn’t offer that much flexibility. So, just take a look at the options mentioned above and choose the one that suits your device the most.
All the aspects of running a business can feel overwhelming. This is especially true if you think of each small thing separately. However, by organizing those elements into more general categories, you can keep your thoughts more organized and create a plan to enhance your operations. The following outlines a few categories to focus on when developing your business.
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Finances
Data show that most business failures result from cash flow problems. A financial projection is an invaluable tool when it comes to managing business finances. The forecast outlines the expected income and expenses for an upcoming period. Use sales history to estimate income. The longer the business has been in operation, the more accurate the estimate is likely to be. Balance the expected income against expected expenses. Go through your financial records and calculate all fixed and recurring expenses. Add in expenses you expect to incur, and leave some room for unexpected expenditures as well. A reasonably accurate forecast allows you to determine where to cut costs and if you have funds available for optional purchases.
If you need help with managing finances, an accountant can help you keep track and make reasonable projections. A professional can help you with a variety of tasks, including paying bills on time to avoid late fees and invoicing customers in a timely manner to encourage prompt payment.
Customers
Every business needs happy customers. Take time to measure customer satisfaction through surveys and by monitoring social media. Reach out to customers who are unsatisfied and try to remedy the situation. If you see the same issues occurring repeatedly, create a long-term solution. Use surveys or a suggestion box (physical or digital) to give existing customers a chance to let you know what would improve their experiences. If your current client base is happy, they are more likely to provide word-of-mouth advertising and help you gain more business.
Another way to grow your customer base is through digital marketing. This includes social media, search engine optimization, targeted emails, and other tactics. Consider using analytics to figure out which tools are most effective. This allows you to streamline your marketing campaign and not waste time and money on strategies that do not work. A useful tool for digital marketing is a free custom logo maker where you can make a logo for free. Simply choose your imagery, font, size, and colors.
Employees
If your business is large enough to have employees, it is important to comply with all legal requirements. Make sure you understand the difference between independent contractors and employees so that you classify all your workers correctly. If necessary, get workers’ compensation insurance, and make sure that you pay the correct payroll taxes. Ensure that the workplace meets federal safety standards.
Although government regulations are important, they are the minimum. Employee satisfaction depends on a variety of factors. A generous benefits plan helps attract and retain quality workers. Treat all workers with respect. Consider allowing employees to work from home or offering a more flexible on-site schedule. Survey employees and ask for suggestions.
By focusing on employees, marketing to customers, and finances, you increase your business’s chances for success. These three key elements are necessary for success, no matter what your business specializes in. By strengthening these areas, you strengthen your organization overall.
It’s safe to say, teamwork cannot exist if collaboration between team members is not present. Moreover, a business will find it difficult to achieve its goals where there is no unity of vision. This is why collaboration is so vital to a business’s success because it’s the glue that holds everything together in a sense. So, if the teamwork within your company needs a bit of improvement, Zaarm Tech shares how to use collaboration to keep your team strong.
Foster a Culture of Open Communication
Generally, people tend to be shyer and reserved at work. Moreover, they might be more reserved in a workplace setting for fear of being judged about their opinions and views on certain matters. That’s why it’s important to foster a culture where there is open communication between everyone so that team members can not only build more authentic relationships with one another but also, so they feel heard, understood, and appreciated when being candid on work matters that they believe are beneficial to the business.
Encourage Technical Savviness
Indeed, technology is a major part of life these days, and even more so in the workplace where the majority of work is done online. And because technology is advancing at such a rapid rate, it might be best to keep everyone involved and up to speed as possible to avoid valued team members lagging behind. Moreover, including the relevant people where learning new technology is involved is one way to get people more invested in the project, as well as build unity where this may have been absent before. For example, you could offer mentoring programs to those that are interested in enhancing their knowledge. You could also host more employee workshops to encourage the further training of employees in key areas.
Encourage Acceptance of Each Other
Employees don’t always fit the same mold. They might have come from different backgrounds, speak different languages, and will most certainly have traveled different paths in life. This can, therefore, make seeing eye to eye a challenge at times, notwithstanding the workplace politics that are common in an office setting. This is why encouraging team members to be more accepting and open-minded of each other is so vital. Because when disagreements and differences of opinions arise (as they surely will) team members are bound to be more understanding and accepting of each other on good and bad days.
Create Opportunities for Cross-Functional Collaboration
Another way to enhance team participation is by creating opportunities for cross-functional collaboration. Here, it’s about encouraging staff members from different departments to work together to achieve a common goal. For example, rather than just isolating team meetings to include just the marketing department, you could opt to combine the marketing, sales, and finance teams into one to creatively brainstorm solutions and solve challenges together.
Recognize Achievements
If you should ask employees what their main motivations are at work, you’re likely to find a common thread in their answers-to feel validated and recognized for their achievements. From a morale point of view, recognizing achievements and honoring employees for their diligent and often long-standing service is one of the best ways you can encourage employees to continue giving their best. Examples of this could be to include giving out Best Employee of the Month awards, performance bonuses, long-standing service awards, and more.
Collaborative Tools You Should Be Using
Nowadays, promoting teamwork between members couldn’t be any simpler. With project management tools like Trello, Asana, and even Google Suite, sharing and collaborating on ideas has become so much easier with many of these tools allowing collaboration in real-time. What’s more, many of these collaborative tools allow for increased workplace flexibility. And in a day and age where flexibility and work-life balance has become increasingly important, being accommodating to these needs is one way to create a more harmonious work environment for all.
However, that’s not to say it’s without its fair set of challenges. For example, suppose you want to market your business but you don’t have a lot of funds to invest. You can save money by using this free program to create an infographic quickly and without hassle, then enlisting your team to help you share it via social media. To do this you can also use the famous tool called Canva.
In summary, collaborating on the work front has certainly progressed in leaps and bounds to get where it is today. It comes as no surprise, either, not when you consider how vital getting along and working together in the workplace is if you want to achieve your goals.
I started Zaarm Tech to share my knowledge with the people who need it. I have always loved to explore more on tech. Currently I am pursuing a Bachelor of Information Technology and specializing in software development and web design. Check out my shop today!
