SmartThings

SmartThings is the home-control app for people who run lights, plugs, sensors, TVs, and other connected devices from one place. By our assessment, its main strength is breadth: it can sit across a lot of Samsung hardware and a wide spread of smart-home gear, so one app can become the front door for the house. The downside is that breadth brings setup work, pairing, permissions, and a bit of patience when different brands do not behave the same way. In practice, it is a dashboard, automation tool, and remote control layer all at once, which is handy but not magical. Compared with single-brand home apps, it is more ambitious and usually more useful once the house has several devices in it. SmartThings is best for someone who already has a mixed smart-home setup and wants one place to manage it without juggling separate apps all day.