Amazon may have just solved the smart home problem

One of the biggest barriers to running a fully smart home remains the reliance on smartphone apps and voice assistants. Setting up devices and learning how to use them is one thing, but making sure everybody in your home – not to mention visitors – can access the controls, is another.

There have been some strides made toward solving this, but now Amazon has released a device that – assuming you have an Alexa-powered smart home – could be the missing piece of the puzzle.

The Echo Hub keeps track of all your home’s smart gadgets, including speakers, lights, plugs and cameras, assuming they’re Alexa-compatible.

The $330 Echo Hub looks like a small tablet which, at a glance, you could mistake for a regular smart display like Google’s Nest Hub or Amazon’s own Echo Show. However, the difference is this new device is designed solely for easy and communal home control.

It comes with hardware to mount it to your wall and has radios inside to connect Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Thread and Matter devices without needing to go through external gear or your phone – meaning quick and reliable control.

In practice, it’s like the wall panel that controls your central heating or air conditioner, except it’s connected directly to all Alexa-compatible smart gear in the house. And, unlike the Echo Show, which frustrates me constantly with its insistence on showing promoted and recommended content or “tips”, I was pleased to find the Echo Hub is all business.

You can set it to show a photo slideshow while idle, if you’d like, but when it senses someone approaching, it snaps back to a straightforward and customisable control panel.

Your home screen can show a mix of devices from around your house.

By default, the left side of the screen lists your rooms; touch one and you’ll see all the gear set up in each, including lights, plugs, thermostats, speakers, cameras, doorbells or whatever else you have.

The Hub smartly arranges things into groups, so, for example, if you have four lights in your kitchen you’ll see a big button for each, but also a panel to let you turn all on, all off, or dim all. There’s also a screen for your routines where you can see all the schedules and rules you’ve set, with buttons to activate them right away in case you’ve woken up early and none of your lights are on.

Along the bottom, devices are grouped by type (lights, plugs etc), and then there’s a home screen made up of widgets of your choosing; pin a favourite room here, or a list of your lights, or multiple feeds from your cameras, or even a calendar, sticky notes or weather forecast.

Laying a smart home out like this is so logical that it’s surprising that it’s taken Amazon this long to come up with a suitable product.

I’m sure people will still argue that it’s easier to just use the physical switches on their walls for lights and power points, but being able to see the status of everything from one screen is useful. And if you’ve already dabbled in setting routines to handle your lights, the panel is a practical alternative to “Alexa, turn off the bedroom lights” when you need to deviate.

It’s also more equitable than using your phone, for example, letting anyone in your home see who’s at the door when they ring the doorbell, rather than keeping that information in your pocket.

The Hub is flexible, depending on what devices you use. For example, if you have a smart lock on your front door, and an Alexa-compatible security system, you could put it in your entry-way to replace a keypad and show at a glance if your door is locked.

If you have a smart light setup in your lounge room, it could go there to control those, and also show the front door camera in case someone arrives while you’re absorbed in a movie. I’ve tested the Hub mostly in my office where it controls my lights, activates a fan, manages my music and alerts me to couriers.

It also works as a regular Echo speaker, responding to voice commands to answer questions or play music or movies on any connected gear you may have (or directly from its own screen and speakers, though it’s not great for that). There are also some Hub-specific commands like “Alexa, show the kitchen panel”, if you need to navigate the screen but have your hands full.

Of course, this isn’t yet the perfect solution for handling smart homes. For it to replace switches entirely, you’d need multiple units throughout the house, and when you’re setting up new devices you still need to use the generally confusing Alexa app before they’ll show up on the Hub.

However, as an all-in-one control panel, it’s far superior to existing displays like the Echo Show, and tech-averse visitors will have a far easier time using it than fiddling with an app or shouting at Alexa.

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