Comment: With Black Friday deals, now is the time to go all-in on a Google-powered smart home

Google makes some of the best and most popular smart home devices on the market. From Google Home Hub to the Nest x Yale door lock, the ecosystem is one of the — if not the — most comprehensive out there. The prices this holiday shopping season, but particularly this Black Friday 2018 weekend, make now a better time than ever to go all-in…

Check out the 9to5Toys deals hub for the best Black Friday promotions spanning all retailers, includes many of Google’s first-hand sales as well as dozens of other big discounts and savings on the latest Google Pixel, Android phones, Google Home, Nest, and more.

Smart home products have been inching their way into the average home over the last several years, but as of late their maturity as products and their up front cost are intersecting more than ever to make them a no-brainer. In the Google ecosystem, you can take the plunge and go all-in today with a couple smart security cameras, a thermostat, a Home Hub, some Google Home Minis, a smart doorbell, and more, all for under $1,000.

Best Google smart home Black Friday deals

Assuming you have no smart home products at all, these are the products we think you should buy today (and this weekend) to get the best value for your dollar: Google Home, Google Home Hub, a couple Google Home Minis, a couple 3rd gen Chromecasts, a Nest Cam Outdoor, a couple Nest Protect smoke detectors, two Nest Cam Indoor cameras, and a Nest Hello Doorbell.

Of course this is just a theoretical plan and you can modify it to fit your needs, but if you buy all these today and take advantage of all the best deals that 9to5Toys has dug up for you, you can make a significant dent in your smart home-ification project for less than $1,000!

Step 1: Google Home, Home Mini, Home Hub

The team over at 9to5Toys have been killing it with the Google deals coverage, and some of the best deals this Black Friday are on Google Home products. As part of this theoretical smart home plan, we’d recommend you buy a variety of Google Homes. A standard Google Home will be perfect for the living room or a master bathroom, a Google Home Hub is perfect for the kitchen, and we’d recommend a couple more Google Home Minis to outfit throughout your home where you see fit.

The newly-launched Google Home Hub (which we reviewed pretty recently) is a steal at $99, a $50 discount just a month or so after hitting the market at $150. If you think you might need more than one for your home, now is the time to pick them up. Our plan only has one, though. You can find it at Walmart at that price right now, or through the Google Store if you want a color other than Chalk and Charcoal.

Also on our list of recommendations this weekend are the Google Home Mini which is also currently going for $25 at Walmart, and this is the perfect price to buy more than one. We’ve put in two for our plan. Finally, we have a single original Google Home Speaker in our plan, which is going for $79 today.

(Bonus: If you’re looking for some mounts or stands for those Google Home Minis, there are a half dozen options on Amazon that might come in handy — and all of them are pretty affordable. There’s the AMORTEK Hanging Google Home Mini Mount for $9, the Mount Genie Pedestal for $11, the Dot Genie Backpack mount for $15, and of course the wacky Dock Socket light socket mount for $35.)

With a Google Home Hub, two Google Home Minis, and a single standard Google Home, you’re looking at a total of about $230 for Step 1 of our plan if you take advantage of the best Black Friday deals.

Step 2: Chromecasts

Chromecasts have been around for a long time, so you might not associate them with “smart home” products necessarily, but now they tie in with the rest of your Google-powered smart home ecosystem more than ever. You can of course cast your favorite shows and YouTube channels to your TV using just your voice thanks to Google Assistant, but even more features — like adding them to speaker groups to listen to your tunes across many Assistant devices simultaneously — are still coming soon.

Last month, Google introduced the latest generation of its renowned streaming dongle, and this Black Friday we are already seeing some deals for it. We’ve “budgeted” $50 for adding a couple Chromecasts to this imaginary smart home plan (because we assume you probably already have some — or at least devices that are already have Chromecast built-in). We’d recommend two of the 3rd generation models.

As tracked by the team over at 9to5Toys, the best Black Friday deals for the third generation Chromecast start at $25 at Walmart. That’s for the black model and a nice $10 discount on a brand new product (check out our review if you haven’t already). If you only need one Chromecast, there’s the Chromecast Ultra with 4K at $49 from Walmart today… or the Chromecast Audio at $15 if that’s more your thing.

Given $50 set aside for a Chromecast (or 2.. or 3) and $230 for Google Homes, we have about $700 to work with in this budget for the most important aspect of the Google-powered smart home — Nest products.

Step 3: Nest Thermostat E and Nest Protect

The most iconic of the Nest products is the Nest Thermostat, and thankfully not only is there an affordable version now widely available called the Nest Thermostat E, it’s also seeing some Black Friday deals. This is the smart thermostat we’d unequivocally recommend today (be sure to read our Nest Diary post about it to learn more), and it’s especially a no-brainer at Black Friday prices.

As noted at 9to5Toys, Good Guys Electronics has the Nest Thermostat E for just $108 shipped today when you use 20% off code BF20 at checkout. The Thermostat E normally sells for $169, so the savings here are pretty substantial — and some of the best that 9to5Toys has ever seen.

Also important for any smart home are those smart products that actually keep you and your family safe. The Nest Protect has been around for a long time, and it’s well-regarded as one of the best smoke and carbon monoxide detectors you can buy (we had a Nest Diary entry for it, too). 9to5Toys shared that BuyDig has it for $79 shipped when you use that same Black Friday BF20 code at checkout. We’re suggesting you pick up two of them at this price for our $1,000 smart home budget.

Step 4: Nest Security Cameras

To make sure you get the best value, we’ve prioritized Nest products in this plan that actually have deals running today and this weekend. With that in mind, we’d recommend you pick up a slew of security cameras. In particular, we’re seeing some of the best deals on Nest Cam Outdoor, Nest Cam Indoor cameras, Nest Hello Doorbell — all of which are great picks no matter when you buy them.

For our $1,000 budget, we’ve set aside just under $500 to take advantage of these Black Friday deals. 9to5Toys dug up a number of killer Nest Cam and Nest Hello deals launched this morning, including Nest Cam Indoor down to $129 at Newegg, Lowe’s, and Walmart. There’s also the Nest Cam Outdoor at $149 at Walmart, and a Nest Hello Video Doorbell deal also at Walmart for $179.

That rounds out our $1,000 budget if you buy one of each of these — roughly $130 for the Nest Cam Indoor, $150 for the Nest Cam Outdoor, and $180 for the Nest Hello doorbell. And that brings out total for all these products in Steps 1-4 to just under $1,000. Given all the deals, this is probably the best $1,000 you’ve ever been able to spend on the Google smart home ecosystem.

Step 5: Things you should add later

Of course, these are not all the products you could ever include as part of a big smart home makeover — there are many things we didn’t get to include here. There are smart light bulbs and strips from a variety of third-party makers, smart plugs, and even some Google products didn’t make the list. And 9to5Toys has done a great job summing up some of the best deals from makers that aren’t Google.

Most notably, I’d strongly recommend the Nest Secure security system to just about all homeowners out there. We’re unfortunately not seeing many deals on it this weekend, but we’ll be keeping an eye out over the next month or so. It’s a pretty expensive bundle and we’ve seen the starter pack drop as low as $250 before. At that price, it most definitely would have made this list.

Other smart home deals you might want to consider on Black Friday, and throughout next week can be found over at 9to5Toys, in our ongoing-updated Black Friday roundup, at the Google Store, and more.