The 7 Most Useful Smart Home Devices

In the home of the future, refrigerators tweet and coffee pots let you know when grandma missed her morning cup. But people willing to pay a price can already live in this sci-fi reality.

Companies are quickly introducing an array of smart home appliances that let you use your smartphone to open your blinds or turn off your lights, and, yes, tweet from your fridge. (Thank you Samsung.)

At Fortune, we waded through the piles of gadgets and gizmos, comparing user reviews and product descriptions, to list seven of the most useful smart home devices on the market. We skipped over some popular products like locks (you can open and close them with your smartphone) and light bulbs (you can turn them on or off or dim them with your phone), because we couldnt find anything hitting the sweet spot in combining automation with simplicity. Heres what did make our wish list.

Image credit: Canary

A consumer survey by research firm IHS found that most desired smarthome device is is something that detects intruders. The second is for a device that detect hazards like fires, water leaks, and carbon monoxide. Start-up Canary kills two birds with one machine by packaging an HD video camera, microphone, motion detector, and a temperature and humidity sensor into a sleek cylinder. When the machine, also called Canary, senses something out of the ordinary happening when youre away from home, you get an alert with video footage and options for responding. Canary, also automatically changes its settings when you get home so the motion detector doesnt go off when you want some late night milk and cookies.

Image credit: Honeywell

Both of these thermostats let you control your home's temperature from anywhere in the world using your smartphone. Furthermore, these two products automatically learn your temperature preferences based on your behavior and adjust your thermostat accordingly. Were not going to take sides on the Honeywell vs. Google Nest debate. Nest fanatics rave about the ease of installation and minimalistic design, while Honeywell fans like the more nuanced control of Honeywell's Smart Thermostat. Honeywell just introduced a new product, the Lyric ($279), which piggybacks off of Nests design, with the additional ability use your smartphones location to adjust the temperature as you come and go in real-time. However, users are saying its still riddled with bugs and to stick to the more useable (but clunkier) Honeywell Smart Thermostat.

Image credit: Nest Labs

Nest Protect is a home fire alarm that will tell you if theres smoke or CO in your house and where its coming from. You can get phone alerts whenever it goes off or when the battery needs to be changed. Better yet, the phone app lets you create an emergency plan ahead of time (because, be honest now, who among us has gotten around to creating an emergency plan?). In the event of an emergency the app will send you a customized list of useful tips. And for those who care about design, it has the sweet minimalism thats characteristic of all of Nest's products.

Image credit: Rainmachine

More:
The 7 Most Useful Smart Home Devices