If you really wanted to, you could even start your Alexa Smart Home for $22 bucks. Here’s the thing with Alexa, you don’t need to buy a Dot or Echo or an Echo show to turn your home “smart”. To see if starting a smart home is for you, all you need to do is buy a smart plug, download the Amazon Alexa App and Amazon Shopping App.

Get the Amazon Echo on Amazon!
Amazon US: https://shreh.ca/2uIufzC
Amazon CA: https://shreh.ca/2uI3zPH
Amazon UK: https://shreh.ca/2uI3ADf
Amazon DE: https://shreh.ca/2uIaIPY

Top 5 Smart Plugs for Amazon Alexa:    • Top 5 Amazon Alexa Smart Plugs - Belk...  

At Smart Home Reviews Eh, Monty and I have been using Alexa in my own home for several months now, alongside with Apple Home and Google Home and here’s our current conclusion. Amazon Alexa is designed more for living in your home, Apple Home is more for enjoying your home. Google Home in it’s current state needs a bit more work.


If you want an in-depth comparison between the three different platforms, check out my ultimate comparison:    • The ULTIMATE Apple Home vs. Google Ho...  

So let’s get into the guts of this video. I’m going to show the cheapest way to start an Alexa smart home and then outline the next steps you should take if you’re sold on using an Alexa smart home.

First of all, you’ll need to get a smart plug. A quick search on Amazon will bring you a plethora of different Alexa enabled plugs with prices ranging from $20 to $60. I personally have used over a dozen smart plugs and the cheapest one I have is the KooGeek Smart Plug P2 for about $35 dollars. The Belkin WeMo Mini that I’m going to show you in this video is one of my favourites. Mostly because it’s small.

Once the Plug shows up on your doorstep, find something in your home you want to automate. You can use the smart plug to control a lamp, turn on a kettle, printer, power bar, fan, control your hair curling/heating appliances or if you really wanted to, you could plug your Google Home into the smart plug. I’m not sure why, but you could.

Once you’ve plugged the device in, you’re going to need to go through Alexa’s 7 step installation process of downloading the manufacturers app, linking to the gadgets own wifi, install the unit in the app, sign-up for the manufacturers web service, goto your Alexa app, find the corresponding manufacturers Alexa skill and link your account. After all that, you have to discover your devices. And sometimes that doesn’t work as you can see with this error message.

If you think this is a brutal install process, it is especially when compared to Apple Home which is equivalent to the process of a self-checkout at a grocery store.

Here’s the slightly odd part of this entire setup. Now you’re going to download and open up Amazon’s shopping app. Yep. The shopping app.

If you’re in the US, you’ll be defaulted to the US store but if you’re anywhere else, you’ll need to change to the US store in order to Access Alexa.

But that’s all you have to in order to remotely control whatever appliance you’ve connected your smart plug to. Now you can start issuing commands to Alexa like:

- Alexa, turn on my setup lights.

Easy.

And that’s how you get started with your Alexa smart home for $40 bucks. Or $20 if you go with this sketchy looking plug or $60 is you want a name brand one. It’s not that straight forward but it will let you try an Alexa smart home without having to spend a whole lot of money.

If you do like it, consider getting yourself a variation of the Echo as you’ll be able to call out Alexa from anywhere in the room or house instead of using the shopping app.

The next step would be to automate your smart home. Automation are probably one of the most useful features of a smart home as you’re able to ensure things are turned on or off, to lock your house automatically when you leave or to have certain settings accessed easily. If you need an intro to IFTTT or Stringify, check out that video.