Best Home Office Smart Hubs

Smart home devices are starting to show up everywhere – you may already have a few in your home office. Even if it is just a smart thermostat, lightbulb, or security camera, you’ll want a smart hub to securely control one or all these Internet-connected gadgets.  

However, picking the best home office smart hubs isn’t so simple. In most cases, you want one that will connect to different brands of smart devices, or you’ll end up having to make additional unnecessary purchases!

The goal is to have just one hub to rule them all from a single mobile app. Ideally, you want a smart hub to get smart gadgets to communicate with each other so that when you activate your smart lock, the hub will tell the thermostat to go on eco-saver mode and smart lights to turn off. 

The best home office smart hub is the next best thing to having a smart home – so let’s take a look at how to best upgrade your home office with these exciting new interfaces.

The Best Home Office Smart Hubs

With so many products out there, shopping for home office smart hubs can get overwhelming. Check out our top picks and see if something jumps out at you:

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The Nest Hub Max by Google might look like nothing more than a jumped-up tablet, sure. While you can use it to browse Youtube while waiting for a client’s call, it’s capable of so much more than just casual use.

The Nest Hub Max comes with a built-in Google Assistant, so you can connect it to smart devices in your home office and play music (it has a 3-inch subwoofer), adjust lights, report the news, and much more at your voice command. It is compatible with all Nest technologies and thousands of other smart devices.

The touchscreen display comes with a camera equipped with facial recognition, so it will switch profiles, depending on who is currently using the hub. The camera is also perfect for the home office because it has auto-framing that will keep you front and center while moving around during a video call accepting that large order. 

Do you need a security camera? Say hello to the Nest Hub Max that you can use to monitor any area in your house in which you put it using your mobile device. 

The Google Nest Hub Max retails for $229 on the Google Playstore, $214.99 (Chalk) or $236.23 (Charcoal) in Walmart, and $229.99 in BestBuy. 

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The Amazon Echo 4^th Gen is the latest iteration of this hub-cum-speaker that has a plethora of new features to make the Alexa experience so much better. 

For a start, the radical change in design from a flat cylinder to a ball makes it more adaptive in its audio capabilities. It can calibrate sound based on the size of the room, so your listening experience is always top-notch. It is an excellent pick from the best home office smart hubs if you are an audiophile.

However, for the purposes of this review, the Echo 4 uses Alexa to allow you to control all compatible smart devices, including selected Ring Smart Lighting bulbs and solar lights and Zigbee devices using its built-in Zigbee hub. That means you can control cameras, thermostats, lights, and smart plugs with ease. 

Another built-in feature is the Amazon Sidewalk, a shared network for Amazon Echo devices, outdoor lights, motion sensors, Ring Security Cams, and Tile trackers that work even when you’re not at home. You can use Sidewalk to transmit and support other Sidewalk-enabled devices in your vicinity and even find lost items or pets.

Amazon Echo 4^th Gen retails for $99.99 on Amazon and comes with a free smart color bulb.  You can choose from Charcoal, Glacier White, or Twilight Blue colors.  

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The Echo Show 10 is a smart display that matches the Nest Hub Max almost point by point – making it a pretty great choice.

It is a 10.1” HD smart display that plays your favorite shows on Netflix and Prime Video and sets you bopping along with your top music picks from Spotify or Amazon Music.  Like the Nest Hub Max, you can use it as a rotating photo album as well as set timers and get recipes from the Food Network. 

The Echo Show 10 also has a built-in camera with autofocus and auto framing for that spot-on video conference call. As a smart hub, it has a bit of an edge over the Nest Hub Max because it has a broader range of compatible smart devices, including Zigbee devices.  

You can order Alexa to show you what’s happening in the room where the Echo Show 10 is, operating as a high-tech nanny camera, with or without a child present. The camera is a useful feature when you go out, and you want to check if you turned the gas off. To protect your privacy, the Echo Show 10 gives you the option to turn off the camera and mic remotely, or you can simply activate the shutter. 

The Echo Show 10 retails for $249.99 on Amazon and $259.99 when you bundle it with the Blink Mini, a 1080P HD indoor, plug-in security camera. 

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The Harmony Hub from Logitech works with an incredible 270,000 devices, including Alexa, and it can connect to eight home entertainment devices. 

Harmony Hub does not have voice control, but you acquire that ability if you connect it to Alexa. If that’s not happening, you can still control everything through your iOS and Android mobile devices, which you connect using Bluetooth (or USB cable if your phone -gasp!- doesn’t have Bluetooth) or through your Wi-Fi. 

It has IR mini blasters to extend the connectivity range so you can move about the house without too much trouble. Connect Harmony Hub to your smart cameras, and you can use it to keep an eye on your home office.

The Logitech Harmony Hub retails for $149.95 on the Logitech site and Amazon. 

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The Apple HomeKit is not as popular as Google Home or Alexa but is a reasonably powerful software framework for configuring, communicating with, and controlling smart-home devices. 

The Apple TV 4K, while primarily a smart set-top box, can also serve as a cost-effective HomeKit hub. The only problem for Android device users is that it only works with devices running on iOS and iPadOS – so only give this a serious look if you’re part of Apple’s tech ecosystem.

It is not the most feature-laden of the home office smart hubs, and the Siri remote is glitchy, but it does the job of connecting compatible locks, lights, and thermostats. It also delivers fantastic streaming video quality to your smart TV, so you take the good with the bad.

Apple TV 4K retails for $179 for the 32GB and $199 for the 64GB on the Apple website. 

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A cable set-top box, the Portal TV by Facebook turns your big-screen TV into a smart hub and command center via the HDMI port. 

Once plugged in, you can control any compatible smart device without much trouble. You can interface it with Facebook Assistant or Alexa to enable voice commands so you can simply use the remote. 

A surprising feature of this rather ugly device is the quality of its video during calls. The device comes with a Smart Camera that enables smooth panning and auto framing while delivering excellent videos.

The Facebook Portal TV retails for as low as $117.20, depending on the color.

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The SmartThings Hub by Samsung 3^rd Gen is very easy to use and set up. Once you plug it into an Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection, it configures and then automatically adds and syncs smart gadgets within the vicinity. After that, it’s just a matter of establishing routines that will make your home office smart as well.

SmartThings supports more device brands than Home or Echo. Its developers intended it to support smart home wireless protocols, including Zigbee, Cloud-to-Cloud, and Z-Wave. All devices that run on these protocols are directly compatible with SmartThings.

It also works with Alexa so that it can support voice commands. However, the price might make you blink. The SmartThings Hub retails at $389.97 on Amazon. 

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