Tech
Smarthome 2023: Customers are so satisfied
- Smarthome 2023: Customers are so satisfied
- Appreciation – Which smart home manufacturer is the best?
The smart home market is growing. According to Statista sources, sales in Germany in 2022 amounted to EUR 6.14 billion. 7.68 billion are already forecast for 2023 and 8.65 billion for 2024. More and more customers are discovering the advantages of digital home control, want to reduce their heating costs with smart thermostats or create the right atmosphere with intelligent lighting – depending on the occasion. The whole thing can be conveniently controlled with the smartphone app or the language assistant.
In the meantime, a few brands have established themselves and are known among customers as smart home manufacturers. These include global players such as Amazon or Google, but also German companies such as Bosch or Telekom. Most offer a wide range of equipment and solutions.
We wanted to know which of these brands are the most well-known and popular, and how satisfied customers feel with their products. Together with the specialist institute for technology topics (FiFT), we carried out a broad customer survey in March. The evaluation takes place in the form of school grades, which enable an obvious judgment to be made.
How do users use the smart home?
The first thing we were interested in was what buyers do with their smart home. It turned out that the main applications are music control (22%), light control (19%), video streaming (18%) and heating control (15%) (multiple answers were possible). The smart home made it into the garden the least, with only 2 percent.
Does the smart home help save energy?
Another focus of the survey was on the current topic of energy efficiency and energy savings. The latter plays a particularly important role in intelligent heating control. 68 percent of owners of a smart heating control said they had saved money and only 5 percent felt they had not benefited from it (the rest had no opinion yet).
Because smart home devices are constantly in stand-by mode to wait for impulses from the sensors or the user, energy consumption plays an important role in the digital home. In this respect, there is a special award for this category, which goes to Philips Hue with a grade of 2.0. All other providers are slightly worse between 2.3 and 2.5.
Which brands and manufacturers are popular?
In the popularity of brands and manufacturers, Amazon Alexa and Philips Hue share first place with a grade of 2.0. AVM follows shortly thereafter with 2.1 and all others are at 2.2. When asked whether customers would recommend the manufacturer, the values are very good on average: Philips is at the top by a clear margin with a grade of 1.2. This is the best value ever achieved in this survey.
How good is the quality of the products?
A key question for many prospective buyers relates to the quality of the products: are other buyers happy with them or have there been problems with them? Here, too, Philips Hue wins the field with a grade of 2.0. Amazon Alexa and AVM follow closely with 2.1, the rest of the field achieves 2.2, only Samsung Smart Things comes last with 2.3. Overall, the gaps are small.
An important sub-question is how easy it is for buyers to operate the systems. Hue and Alexa were able to assert themselves here with 1.9. The previously mentioned energy consumption also affects the quality.
How secure is the smart home?
Again and again, hackers manage to successfully attack networked IoT devices and misuse them as gateways for the home network. An important measure taken by manufacturers to prevent security gaps in the smart home is regular device updates to keep the firmware up to date. New functions are often added with an update. How satisfied were the buyers with the update frequency? At the top is AVM with a grade of 2.1, followed by Telekom with 2.2. Google Home/Nest brings up the rear with 2.5. AVM and Philips Hue achieved victory in the overall security category with 2.2.
How much do you like the app?
The smart home is usually controlled via the smartphone. Manufacturers’ apps should therefore be user-friendly and intuitive to use. The range of functions should also be right. Philips/Hue customers like this best with a grade of 1.9, followed by Google and Amazon with 2.1 each. The Philips app has the best overall rating of 1.9, followed by Amazon’s with 2.1.
How much does it cost?
An important point for interested parties is the price: is the product worth the money? Is the price-performance ratio right? There is a special logo for Amazon Alexa and Telekom/Magenta. The respondents are most critical of the costs at Bosch with a grade of 2.7, one of the worst values in the test overall.
Who gets the overall win? – Continue reading on the next page!
