Google Home Accessories Worth Buying
Once you have a Google Home, the accessory ecosystem starts mattering. Most of what's marketed as a Google Home accessory is overpriced or pointless. A short list of what's actually worth the money.
A Google Home alone does about 20% of what makes a smart-home setup useful. The rest of the value is in the accessories that the speaker actually controls: bulbs, plugs, thermostats, speakers in other rooms. The accessory market is also where most people overspend, because the marketing for a $50 smart bulb makes it sound much more valuable than it actually is. The way I think about it, you want to spend on the accessories you'll use every day and skip the ones that exist mostly to be demoed at a Best Buy.
Worth Buying
Smart plugs. The TP-Link Kasa HS103 four-pack at around $30, or the Wemo Mini at $25 each. These are the highest-value accessory in the entire category because they turn any dumb appliance (a lamp, a fan, a coffee maker, a Christmas tree) into a voice-controlled one. The way to use them: pick the lights and small appliances you actually turn on every day, plug them through smart plugs, and use Google Home routines to turn the right ones on at the right time. This is the accessory category that actually changes daily life.
Chromecast Audio. Discontinued by Google in early 2019 but still findable in the secondary market for $20 to $35. Plug it into the back of a stereo or a powered speaker and that speaker becomes part of your Google Home multi-room audio group. For a household that already has decent speakers, this is the cheapest way to extend music throughout the house without buying smart speakers in every room.
Smart bulbs, but selectively. The Philips Hue starter kit at $200 is overpriced for what most people use it for (turning the lights on and off). Buy them only if you actually want color-changing or scene-based lighting. For most rooms, smart plugs plus regular bulbs deliver the same on/off voice control at one-fifth the price. Hue is the right answer for a media room where you want red lighting at movie time, not for a kitchen where you just want overhead lights.
Worth Buying If You'll Use It
A Nest thermostat or equivalent. $250 for the third-generation Nest, $169 for the Nest E. The HVAC integration with Google Home is genuinely useful: schedule changes by voice, away mode triggered by phone location, energy reporting in the Google Home app. The catch is that the payoff requires you to actually set up routines. A Nest you ignore is a $250 dumb thermostat.
A second Google Home Mini in another room. The Mini at $49 (or $29 on sale) is the cheapest way to extend voice control coverage. The way to think about it: you want a Google Home wherever you regularly find yourself wanting to ask a question or set a timer. For most households that's the kitchen, the bedroom, and one common space. Three Minis are about the cost of one Google Home and cover way more of the house.
Worth Skipping
Most third-party stands and skins. The Google Home Mini fabric covers, the "dock" that holds it at an angle, the magnetic wall mounts. The Mini is small and light enough that it doesn't need any of these. Don't pay $20 for a stand for a $49 device.
Smart locks, for now. The August Smart Lock and the Schlage Encode integrate with Google Home but are expensive ($200 to $300) and have a meaningfully higher failure mode (a battery dies, you can't get into your house). For most people, this is the wrong product to buy in 2018. The category will mature; wait two more years and re-evaluate.
The smart fridge. None of the smart fridges actually do what the marketing says they do. They show you a calendar and let you order milk through Alexa, neither of which justifies the $3,500 price tag. Buy a normal fridge and a Google Home Mini for the kitchen. You're $3,000 ahead.
The Real Strategy
The right way to build a Google Home setup is to add accessories one at a time, starting with smart plugs for the appliances you already turn on every day, then add a second speaker once you find yourself shouting from another room, then add lights or a thermostat if those become friction points. The mistake most people make is buying the whole catalog at once and then discovering they don't actually use the smart bulbs because they never sat down to set up the routines.
A Google Home plus three smart plugs and one extra Mini is roughly $200 of accessories on top of the original speaker, and it's enough setup to cover 80% of what people actually want a smart home for. Everything beyond that is incremental and worth evaluating on its own merits, not buying because the box at Best Buy looks complete.
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