This story is part of Amazon Prime Day, CNET’s guide to everything you need to know and how to find the best deals.
Amazon’s annual Prime Day sale is still live here on Wednesday, and the discounts are flying fast. That includes some fresh deals on smart home gadgets and home appliances, some of which bring them to the lowest prices we’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, competitors like Best Buy and Target are counter-programming Amazon and dialing up some pretty decent deals of their own.
That means it’s a great time to keep an eye out for good sales on tech for the home, and that’s exactly what we’re doing here at CNET. We’ll update this post regularly in the coming days with the best discounts we’re seeing on smart home gadgets and appliances — for now, here are the deals most worth checking out.
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If you like the idea of “Alexa plus a screen,” then the wall-mounted Echo Show 15 might be right up your alley with an attractive, large-sized 15.6-inch display, customizable widgets for the home screen, and a visual ID feature that can identify the face of whoever is using it. We’ve never seen it on sale for less than $200, but for Prime Day, Amazon has it marked down to $180.
Amazon
The newest Echo Dot comes in an updated spherical design, but aside from that, there wasn’t too much that set it apart from previous models. That makes it an ideal “wait-for-a-sale” gadget, and right now, for Prime Day, you can pick one up for $20, which is about as inexpensive as current-gen Echo devices ever get. You can even sweeten the deal by adding in a free six-month subscription to Amazon Music, or, for an extra $5, an Amazon Smart Plug.
Don’t care so much about the sphere, and just want the lowest possible price on a new Echo device? The puck-shaped, 3rd-gen Echo Dot from 2018 is still an excellent little smart speaker, and it’s currently marked down to just $18, which is a buck cheaper than the all-time low.
Arlo
Arlo’s well-reviewed lineup of outdoor-ready security cameras are some of our favorites in the category, and the Arlo Essential Spotlight Cameras are among the company’s most affordable. Now, for Prime Day, a 3-pack is marked down to $250, saving you $100 off the retail price.
The Arlo Essential cameras come with most of the same features we like about the more expensive Arlo Pro cameras — namely, high-quality livestreams of whatever you’re pointing them at, plus customizable alert notifications, color night vision, and other advanced features via the optional Arlo Smart cloud service, plus compatibility with Alexa and the Google Assistant, or with Apple HomeKit provided you’ve got a compatible Base Station or SmartHub. Just about the only thing we didn’t like about these cameras when we tested them out was that Arlo stripped out the removable battery-pack design — that means you’ll need to take the whole camera inside when it’s time to give it a charge (and the micro-USB charge cable Arlo provides is comically short).
That’s a fair tradeoff at this price — the Arlo Essential three-pack rarely drops below $280, and at $250, you’re getting three cameras for less than you’d usually pay for two. Single cameras are marked down to $100 each, as well, and if you’d like a longer battery life, the Essential XL Cameras are on sale at a slight discount, too. Among all of the Arlo discounts, however, this Essential Camera three-pack looks like the best deal of the bunch.
Read the CNET review of the Arlo Essential Spotlight Camera.
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Pitched as an “invisible smart lock,” the Level Bolt Smart Lock is another option that promises to smarten up your home’s front door, complete with a clever design that replaces your door’s deadbolt. That makes for a lot less bulk on your door than the average smart lock, and it supports Alexa, Apple HomeKit and the Google Assistant. Usually priced at $199, Amazon’s got it marked down to $132 for Prime Day, saving you $67.
Ecobee
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Eero Pro 6E is the Amazon-owned home networking brand’s first mesh router with support for Wi-Fi 6E, which means it can connect with other Wi-Fi 6E devices over the newly-opened, ultra-wide 6GHz band. It’s the fastest, fanciest Eero system to date, and one that performed quite well when I put it through multiple rounds of tests. Plus, it supports speeds faster than a gigabit thanks to a multi-gig Ethernet WAN port, a nice piece of future-proofing.
Even at full price, I already recommend the Eero Pro 6E as an upgrade pick for homes that want to take advantage of fast, gigabit-level internet connections — now, for Prime Day, Amazon has multiple Eero Pro 6E setups listed for hundreds off. Larger, multi-story homes might want to consider stepping up to the three-pack, which usually costs $699 but is currently on sale for $419 — but I think that the two-pack would be more than enough for most homes (and you can always add another device later if you need it). At $299 — or $200 off the normal price of $499 — it’s one of Prime Day’s best discounts.
Amazon
The best bet for good Wi-Fi in large, multistory homes is to go with a mesh router — and preferably one that comes with more than one satellite extender. This three-piece Eero 6 Plus system gets you there, and it’s marked down to just $194 for Prime Day, saving you $105.
The Eero 6 Plus doesn’t feature Wi-Fi 6E support or a tri-band design like the Eero Pro 6E does, but it’s still an excellent and capable system that makes great use of Wi-Fi 6 and a well-developed mesh to deliver fast speeds at range. You can read more about how the two systems stack up in my full rundown, but if you’ve got a lot of ground for your home’s Wi-Fi network to cover, you’re going to want to give this deal some thought.
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At $180, the battery-powered Nest Doorbell was already less expensive than key competitors like the Ring Video Doorbell 4 and the Arlo Wire-Free, and it was already marked down to $130 ahead of Prime Day. Now, through July 17, it’s down even lower, to $120. That’s a total of $60 off of the retail price, and one of the best prices we’ve seen it listed at all year.
For the money, you’re getting a sophisticated smart doorbell with an attractive design, multiple color options, two-way talk, high-def resolution, a 145-degree field of view with a 3:4 aspect ratio, smart alerts, and more. During our tests, we were particularly impressed with the low latency of the video feed, which helps keeps the conversation snappy during two-way talk. You’ll need to pay $6 a month for a Nest Aware subscription if you want to unlock facial recognition and a full 30 days of video storage, but you can skip that and still enjoy person detection, vehicle-, package- or animal-specific notifications, and up to three hours of free video storage.
As a Google device, the Nest Doorbell is best suited for smart homes centered around other Nest gadgets and the Google Assistant. For instance, you can sync your Nest speakers with the doorbell to sound the chime whenever someone’s at the door, or call up the doorbell’s video feed on your Nest Hub smart displays. The Nest Doorbell doesn’t offer native support for Apple HomeKit, but it does work with Alexa, so Amazon-powered smart homes can connect the doorbell with their Echo smart speakers and smart displays, too.
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The second generation Ring Alarm home security system is pretty budget-friendly to begin with, but now, you can score that simple DIY starter kit for $120, which saves you $80.
For the money, you’re getting the Ring Alarm base station, a keypad for punching in your code, a motion sensor, a contact sensor for monitoring a door or window, and a range extender. Ring bills it as a good setup for an apartment or condo, but if your space is a little bigger, you can always add additional sensors and devices to your setup a la carte style.
Admittedly, we still have some qualms with Ring about its partnerships with police organizations, but that’s more of a concern for the company’s video doorbells and its other camera gadgets (and it’s worth giving Ring some credit for recent moves to increase transparency about police requests for public footage in the Neighbors app). You’ll want to read up on those concerns before adding any of Ring’s cameras to your setup (and yep, they’ll all sync up with this system as well as you’d expect), but if you’re just looking for a simple and affordable layer of security for a small home or apartment, this deal is worth a look.
Read the CNET review of the Ring Alarm home security system.
Amazon
Hop on over to CNET’s picks for the best smart scales to smarten up your bathroom, and you’ll find the $99 Withings Body Plus listed as the best option for customizability. Not only does it allow you to personalize the main display with usual metrics like weight, body fat, BMI and more, but you can also sync it with Apple Heath or Google Fit to track things like your daily steps. The scale’s readings were accurate and consistent when we tested them out, and it supports up to eight separate users, making it a good pick for large families.
For Prime Day, Amazon has the Body Plus smart scale marked down to $69, saving you about thirty bucks. That isn’t the best sale we’ve ever seen, but it’s still a few bucks lower than the usual sale price. If you’ve been eyeing it, now’s a good time to pick it up.
Amazon
Ten bucks for a color-changing smart bulb that works well with Alexa and the Google Assistant might sound like par for the course these days — but consider that the Wyze Bulb Color puts out 1,100 lumens of brightness at full, white light settings. That as much brightness as you’d get from a 75W incandescent bulb, whereas most color-changing smart bulbs top out at 60W levels (about 800 lumens or so). That makes this deal a worthy one if you’ve been looking to stock up on smart bulbs and want something extra bright.
Amazon
Dash already has one model on our list of the best air fryers for your kitchen — we loved the value, the way it looked, and the way it cooked, but also noted that it didn’t come with digital controls or presets. This model, the Dash Tasti-Crisp, adds those bells and whistles back in, and right now, it’s marked down to $64 for Prime Day, which is $16 less than usual.
It isn’t hard to find this model on sale, but this is still a better-than-average sale price for it. If you want to give air frying a shot but you don’t want to spend too much, this could be a good Prime Day pick.
Ninja
It’s not terribly unusual to see Ninja’s Foodi Multicookers marked down below $150 (here it was earlier this year), but this Prime Day deal brings the 8-quart, XL-sized Foodi down to that range, which might be pretty tempting if you’ve got a big family to feed.
So what all can the Foodi do? Aside from the ever-popular air frying mode, the Foodi works as a pressure cooker, a dehydrator, a steamer, a sauté pan, a slow cooker, a sous vide cooker, a countertop oven, a yogurt-maker, and more thanks to a multitude of different cooking settings. At $130 — or $100 off — it’s a pretty decent time to pick it up.
Shark
Self-emptying robot vacuums automatically deposit the dirt and debris they suck up into a bin at the charging base. That means you won’t have to empty things out nearly as often. Our top-recommended self-emptying robot vacuums regularly retail for well over $500, but this deal from Shark gets you there for $300. That matches the all-time low for it on Amazon, and saves you $250.
We haven’t reviewed this specific model, but other Shark robot vacuums have delivered passable performance for the price in our cleaning tests, especially on hard floors. The self-emptying design and Wi-Fi connectivity for syncing the thing up with Alexa or the Google Assistant are both nice features for the price here.
Amazon
If your kitchen is decked out with black stainless steel appliances and you want a microwave that blends right in, this 1.6 cubic-foot, 1,250-watt model with inverter tech from Toshiba is one of the most powerful free-standing microwaves the company sells, and it’s on sale for $34 off during Prime Day, bringing the cost down to $166. That’s not quite as good a deal as the holidays last year, when it dropped to $150, but it’s close enough for this microwave to merit some consideration.
Vitamix
Vitamix blenders are about as powerful and sophisticated as blenders get, and they don’t come cheap. This one, the Vitamix 5200, comes with a 64-ounce. jar, variable speed control, and a seven-year warranty, and it usually retails for over $400. Now, for Prime Day, it’s marked down to $300, which is a better-than-average deal for it.
