Best smart home hubs: Our top 4 picks

Smart home hubs have quietly become the backbone of modern connected living, and with compatibility standards finally maturing, there’s never been a better time to invest in the right one for your setup.

Before you buy, you’ll want to think about a few things. Protocol support is arguably the most important consideration: a hub that works with Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter and Thread will serve you far better than one locked into a single ecosystem. You’ll also want to weigh up how much technical effort you’re prepared to put in, since some hubs reward tinkerers with near-limitless flexibility while others prioritise a smoother out-of-the-box experience for less hands-on users.

Every product on this list has been tested by our team of reviewers across real-world smart home setups, not just evaluated against spec sheets. We assessed how reliably each hub discovered and communicated with devices from different brands, put their automation tools through their paces to see how far you can push routines and logic flows, and paid close attention to app stability and setup experience over extended use. Response times, local versus cloud processing, and the quality of third-party integrations all factored into our verdicts too, ensuring nothing earns a place here without genuinely proving its worth.

Scroll down to find the smart home hub that’s right for your setup.

Homey Pro 2026

The Homey Pro 2026 is the most capable and flexible smart home hub we put through its paces, and if you have a sprawling collection of devices or want a single hub that ties everything together from the start, this is the one to get.

The Pro 2026 is a refresh of the Early 2023 model, and in terms of looks and protocol support, the two are essentially identical. Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread, Matter, 433MHz and InfraRed are all on board, just as before. The real difference sits under the hood: double the RAM pushes the app limit from 60 on the older unit to more than 100, making it a smart pick for anyone juggling a large number of devices or running a bigger home.

Getting set up is straightforward. The Homey app walks you through each step and flags which devices are ready to pair. One thing to be aware of is that Thread devices come with distance limits, and you will need Bluetooth switched on to make that first connection.

Device support is genuinely excellent. We managed to connect everything we threw at it, thanks to the wide selection of official and community-built apps. The real standout is automation. Homey calls these Flows, and you can stack multiple triggers and actions together in a single routine. They fire off quickly and proved reliable enough that we ended up shifting all our routines over to Homey entirely.

If your existing smart home setup already does everything you need, there is no pressing reason to switch. But for anyone who wants a serious hub backed by massive device compatibility, the Homey Pro 2026 is difficult to beat.

Read our full Homey Pro 2026 review here.

Homey Pro mini

The Homey Pro mini hits a sweet spot between price, performance, and features, and it earns its place as a strong runner-up on this list after bumping the original Homey Pro down a spot, given the original costs quite a bit more.

Think of the mini as a trimmed-down version of the full Homey Pro. You get the same 1.5GHz processor and the same Thread, Zigbee, and Matter support, but with half the RAM and support for 20 to 25 apps rather than the 60 you get on the Pro. For most households, that ceiling is plenty to run a smart home without running into limitations.

The design shifts too. Where the Homey Pro is a cylinder, the mini is a rounded square, which makes it easier to tuck away on a shelf or behind a router. The bigger change is connectivity. The mini drops Wi-Fi in favour of Ethernet, which sounds like a downgrade but isn’t. A wired connection is far more dependable, and if you’re building a smart home hub you’d want it hardwired anyway.

Performance holds up well in everyday use. The Homey app has come a long way since earlier testing, Matter support keeps improving, and if you have older kit already in place there is still a long list of compatible brands to fall back on. Homey’s automation also runs deeper than what you get from HomeKit, Google Home, or Alexa. Where HomeKit sticks to basic triggers, Homey lets you stack conditions using an “And” option, combining multiple inputs to get exactly the behaviour you want. Our reviewer built a Flow that switched off a smart plug and turned on the garden lights when the office door was locked, but only after sunset.

For anyone looking to start building a connected home without overspending, the Homey Pro mini is a capable and well-rounded choice that offers strong value for what it costs.

Read our full Homey Pro mini review here.

Philips Hue Bridge Pro

The Philips Hue Bridge Pro is a must-have upgrade for anyone already running a Hue setup, and a smart starting point if you are building a smart lighting system from scratch.

If you have already invested in Philips Hue, the Bridge Pro fixes pretty much every gripe people had with the ageing original Bridge. The migration tool is genuinely excellent, making it straightforward to shift your existing bulbs and accessories across, and support for far more devices means plenty of room to keep expanding. Starting fresh with Hue? This is the only Bridge worth considering.

You can connect the Bridge Pro to your router via Ethernet or use its built-in Wi-Fi. In testing, Ethernet proved more reliable, though the wireless option means you can tuck the Bridge somewhere less visible while still controlling everything remotely. The unit is chunkier than its predecessor and draws power over a modern USB-C cable.

Installation is refreshingly painless whether you are upgrading or starting from zero. The Hue app walks you through the migration tool for existing setups, while new users simply pair lights manually. Technically you can control Hue bulbs over Bluetooth, but that route is limited. The Bridge Pro is what unlocks the full feature set, including Matter support and remote access.

The numbers tell the story clearly. The Bridge Pro handles up to 150 lights, up from the previous limit, and supports 50 accessories compared to 12 on the older model. Scene storage has jumped to 500, a significant step up from the 16MB that caused real headaches for anyone with a sizeable Hue collection. Speed is another genuine improvement, with the Bridge Pro responding almost instantly in testing and none of the odd quirks we occasionally saw with the old Bridge, such as lights randomly losing their room assignments.

Matter support is built in and works as advertised. Using the code on the base of the unit, we added the Bridge Pro to Apple HomeKit, Alexa and Homey without any difficulty. Motion Areas rounds things out nicely, using a handful of bulbs as makeshift motion sensors with adjustable sensitivity, selectable scenes and automatic light shutoff after a period of inactivity. For any Hue household, this is a straightforward upgrade worth making.

Read our full Philips Hue Bridge Pro review here.

Aqara Panel Hub S1 Plus

The Aqara Panel Hub S1 Plus is a proper smart home controller that does far more than flip your lights on and off. It pulls double duty as a Zigbee hub and a Matter bridge, gathering a decent spread of devices behind one touchscreen, and wiring it up is straightforward if you have handled a light switch before. The catch is that if your smart home already juggles HomeKit, Alexa and Matter, expect to spend some time fiddling with settings before everything plays nice. Once it is all dialed in, though, the ability to run cameras, lights, scenes and more from a single panel makes this a genuinely interesting bit of kit, even if you are not already deep into Aqara’s gear.

The 6.9-inch touchscreen puts it in direct competition with the Amazon Echo Hub and the pricier wall panels from Control4 or Crestron, and it goes head to head with the Brilliant Panel and the Rithum Switch too, since it draws power straight from your existing light switch wiring. At 199 x 113 x 56mm and weighing just over 500g, it is a much slimmer way to get smart controls onto your wall than the Echo Show 15 or 21. You get dual-band WiFi alongside the Zigbee hub and Matter bridge functions, so the S1 Plus can manage live camera feeds, thermostat tweaks and lighting scenes from one place. Themes, dashboards and widgets are all customizable, and you can drop in family photos too, with the 1440 x 720 display doing them real justice.

The S1 Plus can drive a couple of dumb bulbs hardwired to the switch, but it also supports MARS Tech’s Smart Load mode, which keeps constant power flowing to the circuit while controlling Aqara smart lights wirelessly. Through the app you pick between Normal, Intelligent or Power modes, and from there you can set up tighter control over Aqara bulbs, curtains, smart shades and thermostats as well. A proximity sensor wakes the homescreen as you walk up, a dimmed screensaver handles idle time, and kid-friendly modes are included. One thing worth noting is that the Aqara Copilot voice assistant mentioned in official materials is not yet live outside China.

Setup with a busy smart home takes some patience, but the payoff is worth it. This is not a fancy light switch. It is a proper hub for your whole setup, with solid control and plenty of customization across Aqara, HomeKit and Matter devices, and it stands up as one of the more capable wall-mounted controllers available at this end of the market.

Read our full Aqara Panel Hub S1 Plus review here.

Final thoughts

The smart home hub market has matured considerably, and there are now genuinely strong options across a range of budgets and use cases. In our testing, the Homey Pro 2026 stood out for its exceptional flexibility and local processing power, making it the clear choice if you want one hub to reliably handle a large, mixed collection of devices without leaning on the cloud. That said, not everyone needs that level of capability, and the Homey Pro mini delivers a compelling balance of performance and value for most households. If your priorities sit firmly within the Philips Hue ecosystem, the Hue Bridge Pro is a natural fit, while the Aqara Panel Hub S1 Plus earns its place for those who want hands-on control with a physical interface built right in. Protocol support, local processing, and long-term software commitment are the factors you don’t want to overlook before buying. This space is moving quickly, with Matter and Thread continuing to reshape what hubs can do, so check back as we update this list with new contenders.

How we test

Lab testing

We tested every unit on the same home network using a dual-band Wi-Fi 6 router, with firmware updated to the latest stable release before any measurements began. Automation latency was recorded by triggering each device’s routines ten times in succession and averaging the response time in milliseconds, with the hub at room temperature between 18 and 22 degrees Celsius. For hubs offering Ethernet connectivity, we ran parallel latency tests over both wired and wireless connections to quantify the difference. Device ceiling tests confirmed each hub’s maximum supported app or device count by pairing units incrementally until performance degraded or the platform refused additional connections. Protocol coverage across Zigbee, Thread, Matter, Z-Wave, and Wi-Fi was verified against a standardised set of third-party devices drawn from the same pool for every hub tested.

Real-world testing

Each hub ran continuously for a minimum of 14 days in a home containing at least 15 active smart devices, covering lighting, plugs, sensors, and a thermostat. We built multi-condition automations on every platform, timing trigger-to-action response across morning, afternoon, and late-night periods to catch any background-load variation. We stress-tested reliability by firing 50 consecutive automations within a 30-minute window and logging any failures or delays above 500 milliseconds. Touchscreen-equipped units received daily interaction across their full dashboard and camera feeds for the same 14-day period. Migration tools, where present, were tested by transferring a 12-device setup from a previous hub to the unit under review, measuring total time and any devices requiring manual re-pairing.