Best Prime Day smart home deals: Echo Show 5 for $50, Google Home Mini for $25 right now – CNET

The big Amazon Prime Day sales event is in full swing with exciting deals available on a wide variety of smart home products and other connected gadgets. If you’re yet to dip your toe in the smart home water, now might be a good time. 

Many deals are already available with more expected to arrive over the next 48 hours. And, if you prefer the Google Assistant family, Amazon competitors from Walmart to Best Buy to Target will be selling those products at big discounts. Below, we list our favorite current smart home deals.

We’ll update this page as the deals progress, so stay tuned if you’re looking to save on a particular smart home gadget. 

Note: CNET may get a share of revenue from the sale of the products featured on this page.

Top deals  

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The Echo Dot has long been one of our favorite smart speakers, and the third-gen version looks less industrial and sounds better than before. It’s a great purchase at its normal price of $50, given that you get all of the smarts of Amazon’s assistant Alexa for a reasonable splurge and you can plug it into your own sound system. At $22, it’s an absolute steal and this is the lowest price we’ve seen in awhile. This is a good time to jump. 

If you want a bundle, you can also get three for $60 total. 

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

This is our favorite smart display with Alexa. The Echo Show 5 is pretty new, so it’s a surprise to see it on sale already, but this deal is awesome. The Show 5 has a 5.5 inch touchscreen. You can talk to Alexa and it can wake you up with a nifty sunrise animation. 

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Not to be left out, Google is offering big discounts on smart home products as well. The Google Home Mini is a great alternative to the Amazon Echo Dot. Like the Dot, it packs a lot of smarts into a small and affordable package. If you’d rather center your home around Google Assistant instead of Alexa, this is a great place to start and this is a great time to jump. The $25 price makes the Mini an easy splurge. Note that this deal and the following deals on Google Home products are currently the same at Best Buy and Walmart.

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$50 is the lowest price we’ve seen for the 2nd gen Amazon Echo. If you want an Alexa smart speaker with slightly more sound quality than the Dot, grab this now. 

Chris Monroe/CNET

While it’s not the lowest price we’ve seen, $79 for the Nest Hub is still a decent deal and the Nest Hub is still our favorite smart display, despite tough new competition. If you want a smart speaker with a touchscreen for extra visuals, this is the one to get. It’s particularly great as a family photo frame and as a kitchen assistant.

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Note that this sale is only for Amazon Prime members, with the discount applied at checkout. Right now, you can snag the Ring Video Doorbell Pro for the nice price of $169. The smart doorbell works with Alexa, and lets you check on your porch remotely with an app. You can even tell the delivery person to leave your package with your Amazon Echo Show 5 smart display. 

Chris Monroe/CNET

I was hoping for this one. The Lenovo Smart Clock is a great alarm clock that’s a little too much at its normal $80 price. At $60, it makes a lot more sense. In addition to voice controls through Google Assistant, you can customize your alarm to control your smart home and wake you up gradually with a sunrise animation. 

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Sonos One is one of our favorite smart speakers. It sounds great when playing music and costs significantly less than other premium smart speakers like the Google Home Max or the Apple HomePod. Even better, you don’t have to commit to one platform when buying it as it works with both Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant. The $180 price on the second gen model is a great deal if you want a platform agnostic smart speaker with awesome sound quality. 

Chris Monroe/CNET

The Max was recently on sale for $212, so it could drop again, but $249 is still a bargain. Google’s premium smart speaker uses the same assistant as the rest, but soups up the sound quality so your music booms. It’s one of the better premium smart speakers out there — and this price is much easier to swallow than the original $400.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

The original Google Home mixes smarts and sound quality well for a reasonable price. Google’s first smart speaker was designed to compete with the Amazon Echo, and it does so handily, with plenty of features thanks to the built-in Google Assistant. The $69 price is a good deal that mirrors Amazon’s similar one on the Echo.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

The second-gen Echo Show refined the design of the first model and offers better sound quality and a 10-inch HD screen. It combines the functionality of a smart speaker like the Echo Dot with a touchscreen you can use for video calls and controlling your smart home with a tap. We like the $90 Echo Show 5 a little better, but $160 for the full-size Show is a tempting offer. 

Even better, the deal now includes a free Echo Dot and a Philips Hue smart bulb for nothing extra. That’s a great bundle. 

Chris Monroe/CNET

This is our favorite smart speaker for controlling your smart home. The Echo Plus has the same Alexa capabilities as the rest, it sounds better than other Amazon Echo speakers, and it has a built-in Zigbee hub so it can talk directly to small smart home sensors. With the Plus, you can do away with bulky third party hubs, so the $110 sale price is pretty appealing.

Amazon is now bundling in an Amazon Smart Plug for no extra cost as a Prime Day exclusive. The Plus and the Plug make a great smart home starter kit. 

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Facebook’s smart display doesn’t have as many features as the Echo Show, but you can still talk to Alexa and it’s specifically designed for video calls. The camera will pan and zoom to track you so you can move around the room while chatting and stay in frame. It’s perfect if you have out-of-town grandparents who want to keep up with the action of your little ones. Given Facebook’s recent privacy scandals, it’s a tough sell, but the huge discount is great if you don’t mind putting a Facebook device with a camera in your home. 

Smart home security deals

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Amazon has sales on all kinds of Ring products for Prime Day, which makes sense as Amazon owns the smart home brand. The outdoor Spotlight cam hangs on your porch and provides reliable lighting and monitoring for your yard. The Spotlight Cam is also easy to set up, making it one of our favorite outdoor cams. The $139 price makes it a steal. 

Chris Monroe/CNET

The Stick Up Cam doesn’t stand out from the crowd as well as the Spotlight cam. It’s an indoor cam with a wired and wireless version. It’s a solid performer, but lacks some of the features of similar security cams. Still, at a discount, it’s worth considering. 

The original Ring doorbell is on sale on Prime Day, too, in addition to the newer Pro model. If you don’t need a slimmer design and 1080p streaming, go with the older Ring instead of the Pro to save yourself some money. 

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Ring’s simple, but reliable security system was already reasonably priced. The Prime Day sale makes it a great buy if you want a DIY system monitoring your home. 

Chris Monroe/CNET

This price includes professional installation, which normally costs $108. It would be a $98 discount without that and the Yale lock is a stylish and smart way to upgrade your door. 

The Blink XT2 is a weatherproof security camera with a battery that can supposedly last for two years. Getting a two-pack for $100 is a nice deal. 

Router deals

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Both the bundled system and Eero’s individual routers will be on sale on Monday. The mesh system in particular creates a seamless network capable of covering a large home. Our main issue with it is the price, which is dramatically less for Prime Day. If you want a mesh Wi-Fi system, this is a good time to grab one. 

D-Link has it’s mesh system on sale today as well with a great price on a two pack meant to cover up to 6,000 square feet. 

TP-Link’s Powerline Ethernet Adapters are a smart, simple way to extend the range of your home’s internet connection. Just plug one of the units in near your router and connect the two with a LAN cable. Then, plug the second unit in wherever you need a hard-wired connection, and connect your laptop, smart TV, gaming console with another LAN cable. You’ll enjoy speeds of up to 1,000 Mbps no matter how many walls are between you and the router. The 2-piece kit usually sells for $50, but today, you can get it for $34.

Today you can save almost 50 percent on this gaming router from Netgear. 

Other smart home deals

Chris Monroe/CNET

Our favorite smart thermostat has an Alexa speaker built-in and includes a temperature sensor so you can customize settings based on a specific room. The Ecobee SmartThermostat features better microphones and a sleeker finish than previous versions, and the sale brings the price into the range of less capable competition. 

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

This smart lock fits onto your existing deadbolt, works with Wi-Fi thanks to the Connect module, and is compatible with both Alexa and Google Assistant. It’s a great smart lock at a great price today. 

Juan Garzón / CNET

iRobot’s budget Roomba cleans your floors and listens to your voice commands. It’s also on sale today, making the already reasonable price even more appealing. A couple more expensive models are also on sale today. The Roomba 980 is $550, a whopping discount from the $900 list price. The Roomba 891 is $300, down from $550. 

Make your garage door smart with this hub that attaches to door and connects it to Wi-Fi. You’ll then be able to open and close it with a voice command to Alexa or Google Assistant. MyQ also has an app so you can close the garage with a tap when you’re out and about and wondering if you’ve left it open. 

This is a great price on four connected lights if you want to add smart lighting to your garden or your patio. 

Sarah Tew/CNET

Sonos also makes a sound bar with Alexa and Google Assistant built in. That’s on sale today too for a big chunk off of its normal list price. 

Chris Monroe/CNET

Lots of smart bulbs from Sengled will be on sale on Prime Day. The best deal available now is this four-pack of soft white bulbs plus the necessary hub. With the smart home coupon, the bulbs are only $30 at checkout, which is a whopping 50 percent off and a great way to get started with smarter lights in your home. 

A couple Lutron Caseta lighting products will be on sale on Prime Day. We’re big fans of these highly capable and versatile in-wall dimmer switches. 

Click the coupon for the smart home sale price at checkout. 

Leviton makes a wide variety of smart lighting products. Most are on sale for Prime Day for 20 to 25 percent off, including smart plugs and a variety of smart dimmer switches. This particular dimmer is almost 50 percent off, making it our favorite deal of the bunch. Click the smart home discount coupon and you’ll see the price at checkout. 

Originally published earlier, updated with new sales.


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