How Much Does It Cost to Build a Google Smart Home?
Reading Time: 6 minutesWe’ll highlight how much you should expect to spend to build a Google-centric smart home from the ground up.
There are thousands of smart devices available on the market, with several services that make it easy to install, set up, and use. With that, you might want to start ‘smartifying’ your home.
Of course, before diving into any home improvement project, you first have to consider the budget you should allocate. So, how much will it actually cost you to add smarts to your home?
Let’s take a look at the price of creating a Google-centric smart home.
How Big Is Your Home?
The actual cost of adding smart devices to your home will vary on the number of rooms, lights, and smart speakers you want to add. But, if you’re going to smarten your whole house, not just specific spaces, then expect your cost to increase the more rooms you have.
For example, you’d want to have at least one Google Nest Mini in every room, plus a smart bulb for each light fixture. It also makes sense to have smart plugs to make ordinary appliances, like an electric kettle or space heater, intelligent.
The Different ‘Levels’ of a Smart Home
Aside from the size of your home, the features you add to smarten your home will affect the total budget. A smart house build that only uses smart bulbs with a smart speaker is far more affordable than a smart home with smart locks, smart security cameras, and large, intelligent appliances.
The cost to smarten a home will vary depending on these variables. But, to help create a budget for your smart home, we’ll make a smart home plan for a two-bedroom house with a kitchen, dining, and living room. From here, you can see our assumptions, allowing you to estimate the cost for your home.
Basic Smarts
This is where you should start if you’re only looking for basic features, like voice control for your lights and other small appliances. While this setup doesn’t open and close doors for you or automatically turn on lights when it detects your presence, it at least makes your life easier by letting you control your home’s lighting with your voice.
Here’s what you need for a basic Google-centric smart home.
Google Nest Mini
The Google Nest Mini is Google’s most affordable smart speaker. Although you can use your smartphone to control your smart home, it’s not as convenient, especially since you don’t usually keep it on your body at home.
The Google Nest Mini starts at $49 at the Google Store, although you can get a discount if you buy two. Since it makes sense to have access to Google Assistant wherever you are in your home, you’d want to have one speaker in each room and another for the kitchen. You can use one speaker for both areas if your home has an open living and dining room plan.
Given that, you’d want to have at least three Google Nest Mini smart speakers, costing you around $150. You can also get other Google Nest speaker models for some rooms if you want something with a screen or better sound quality. You can check out our Google Nest speaker guide to help you choose the right one for each area in your house.
Smart Bulbs
If you have a recently-built home, it’s probably equipped with a neutral wire. This means you can use Wi-Fi-based smart bulbs without needing any extra accessories. However, if your home doesn’t have a neutral wire in its electrical diagram, you’ll need to use a low-power wireless smart home protocol like Zigbee.
Assuming you need two smart bulbs per room, you’d need ten smart bulbs to light each of them, plus one or two more for your bathroom, for a total of 12 bulbs. The four-pack Govee Smart Light Bulbs cost $40 each, meaning you’ll need to spend $120 to get the 12 bulbs you need to light up your smart home.
Smart Plugs
You also want a couple of smart plugs to automate some small appliances. For example, you can use a smart plug on your coffee maker to start brewing coffee as soon as your alarm rings. Or you can plug your space heater into it so that it starts warming up your home when you get in its vicinity.
The popular 4-pack 15A Kasa Smart Plug goes for $50, but it usually goes on sale at a lower price. This brings the cost of smartening a two-bedroom home to around $220.
Intermediate Smarts
If you want intelligent features beyond your lights and small appliances, these are some smart devices you could add.
Google Nest Hub
The Google Nest Hub adds a screen to the Google Nest Mini, allowing you to control your smart home via touchscreen. It also lets you watch YouTube videos and Netflix movies, and it can also monitor your sleep quality through a sensor.
If you want to upgrade the Google Nest Hub Mini in your bedroom to this, you’ll have to shell out $50 more as the second-generation Google Nest Hub goes for $99.
Smart Doorbells
Smart doorbells help improve your security by allowing you to see who’s at the door wherever you are. You can even communicate with them using it. Since we’re building a Google Smart Home, we’ll choose the Google Nest Doorbell for our build. However, you’re free to use other smart doorbell brands as long as they’re compatible with Google.
The Google Nest Doorbell costs $180 although you can get it for less because Google often offers a discount.
Smart Sensors
Another way to improve the smarts of your house is to use smart motion sensors. You can use these devices to activate and turn off lights, allowing you to save electricity. You can also install smart sensors on your doors and windows to improve home security.
The 2-pack Ecobee SmartSensor for Doors and Windows costs $80. But what’s great about this is that it works simultaneously as a window and door sensor and an area motion sensor.
The total price for intermediate smarts means you’ll have to spend an additional $310 for these gadgets. If you add the $220 you need to spend on the basic kit, you’d need a $530 budget to give intermediate smarts to your home.
Advanced Smarts
If you want further automation and advanced in-house communication, you should invest in the following smart gadgets.
Google Nest Hub Max
The Google Nest Hub Max adds a bigger screen and a camera to the Google Nest Hub. This lets you see the contents you’re viewing on it better, like a recipe, and let you make video calls. This device is best placed in the kitchen or living room, where your household can use it as a digital bulletin board.
The Google Nest Hub Max is $229, so be prepared to shell out serious cash for this device.
Smart Security
It’s also wise to have smart security cameras and smart locks around your home for better protection. You can use these devices to see who’s inside and around your home, ensure that your doors are locked and secured wherever you are, and even alert the authorities if you feel your home is unsafe.
A 2-pack Google Nest Cam is priced at $330, while the Google Nest x Yale Lock Smart Lock goes for $228. If you’re getting two of each (for a total of two smart locks and four Google Nest Cams), you need to shell out $522 for the whole set.
Smart Appliances
While you can smarten your small appliances with a smart plug, a fully smart device is a great way to automate your life. After all, if you can issue advanced commands to make your life easier, then the cost will be worth it.
These appliances can include smart TVs, smart thermostats, smart vacuums, and more. You can also check out the best smart kitchen appliances to make your home machines natively intelligent. With so many devices, you’ll probably spend more than $1,000 to get these items.
But just considering the Google Nest Hub Max and smart security devices, you’ll have to spend an additional $751 already, bringing the total budget to $1,281 or more. And if you want even more intelligent appliances, be prepared to spend thousands of dollars more.
A Smart Home for All Budgets
With just a starting budget of $200, you can start making your home smart. Even if you have the money, you don’t need to splurge on advanced home smarts right at the beginning.
Instead, you can start with the basics and slowly build your smart home ecosystem. That way, you can see what works and what you’ll need from your smart home, so you know what devices to prioritize for your build.
Reference: https://www.makeuseof.com/google-smart-home-cost/
Ref: makeuseof
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