ThirdReality Smart Plug
The plug we'd buy again first. Real energy monitoring, fully local in Home Assistant, and it makes the Zigbee mesh stronger instead of weaker.
4.5 / 5 Runs local
Smart home, field-tested
Gear that survives a working farm will survive your house.
We run 31 lights, 21 automations, and a barn's worth of plugs and sensors in a real family farmhouse with mud boots, kids on the light switches, and rural internet. Then we tell you what held up and what didn't.
- ✓ We own everything we review
- ✓ Local-first: no cloud lock-in
- ✓ Failures published, not buried
31lights on the network
21automations running daily
13rooms wired up
9,114cloud errors logged so you don't have to
0paid reviews. Ever.
The starter kit
Starting from zero? Buy these three, in this order.
Every pick runs locally in Home Assistant, makes your network stronger, and does something useful on day one.
- 01
FIG. ThirdReality Smart Plug Buy firstThirdReality Smart Plug
Gives you your first useful automation on day one (the washer-done alert) and strengthens your Zigbee mesh for everything you add later.
4.5 / 5 - 02
FIG. Aqara Motion Sensor Buy secondAqara Motion Sensor
Motion lights are the moment your family stops rolling their eyes at the smart home. The built-in light meter stops lights from firing at noon.
4.0 / 5 - 03
FIG. ThirdReality Zigbee Bulb Buy thirdThirdReality Zigbee Bulb
Put these in the rooms where motion sensors trigger. They repeat signal, so every one you add makes the network stronger.
4.0 / 5
Buying guides
The short list. Ranked by what we'd buy again.
Start here
The HovelHack Starter Kit: 3 Things I'd Buy First
If I wiped my house and started over tomorrow, I'd buy these first, in this order. All three run locally in Home Assistant, so nothing breaks when the internet does.
Read the guide → Smart plugsBest Zigbee Smart Plug for Home Assistant (2026)
The one plug we'd buy again, and the one we'd pull out of the ground. Tested on a washing machine, front lights, greenhouse lights, and farm pumps.
Read the guide → Smart bulbsBest Zigbee Smart Bulbs for Home Assistant (2026)
30 Zigbee bulbs in one farmhouse. Here's what we'd buy again, and the cheap bulb that quietly weakened our whole network.
Read the guide → Don't get burnedCloud Smart Home Gear to Avoid (and What to Buy Instead)
If a device needs a company's servers to switch on, it can stop working on a day you didn't choose. Here's the gear that burned us and the local swap we'd make.
Read the guide →Latest verdicts
Every review, ranked
Green means it keeps working with the internet unplugged. Red means it doesn't.
Aqara Motion Sensor
Tiny, fast, and cheap motion sensor with a built-in light meter. The light meter works great, but only if you mount it where it can see daylight.
4.0 / 5 Runs local
ThirdReality Zigbee Bulb
A solid, local-only Zigbee bulb that doubles as a signal repeater. It costs a bit more than the bargain bulbs, and in our house that's worth it.
4.0 / 5 Runs local
Sengled Zigbee Bulb
Fine bulbs at a great price, but they don't repeat Zigbee signal. Fill a house with them and your mesh gets thin fast.
3.0 / 5 Runs local
Etekcity Outdoor Plug
Weatherproof and handy, but it's controlled through VeSync's cloud. In Home Assistant we hit thousands of rate-limit errors and lost four of six sockets.
2.0 / 5 Cloud-only
Photo: Eric Robinson / Unsplash
Don't buy this
It ran our greenhouse lights. Then the cloud said no 9,114 times.
The Etekcity Outdoor Plug looks great on the shelf. In Home Assistant, every command goes through someone else's servers, and four of our six sockets went dark. We'll tell you what to buy instead.
Field notes
Build logs from the barn
Oct 25 Oct 20
I Lost 14 Smart Bulbs in One Night. Here's What Actually Happened.
Half our Zigbee lights went 'unavailable' at 12:17 a.m. The cause wasn't bad bulbs. It was how our mesh was built.
Calibrate Your Light Sensors Before You Trust Them
Our 'only turn on when dark' automations were guessing. Five minutes of history graphs fixed it, plus a winter sun gotcha nobody warns you about.
How we test
Four rules. No exceptions.
Photo: Barn Images / Unsplash
01
We own it or we don't review it
No spec-sheet rewrites, no "hands-on" from a trade show booth.
02
Local beats cloud
If it dies when the internet does, it loses points. Loudly.
03
Failures get published
The broken stuff is the most useful thing we can tell you.