Getting Started

If you’re standing at the start of this and it feels like a lot — hubs, protocols, ecosystems, five brands for every gadget — take a breath. A renter’s smart home is simpler than the marketing makes it look, because the one rule that matters filters out most of the noise: if a device can’t go up without drilling and come off clean at move-out, it isn’t for us. That single rule throws out the hard-wired thermostats and the doorbells that need a transformer, and it leaves you with a short, friendly list of things that just plug in, stick on, or screw into a socket you already have.

So what should you actually buy first? For most renters the highest-impact upgrade is a smart plug— it costs the least, installs in literally one second, and instantly makes a lamp or a fan smart. From there the three devices people ask about most are a video doorbell (who is at the door, did my package arrive), a camera for the inside of your place, and a retrofit smart lock that keeps your existing key. None of those four requires a single hole, and each one leaves with you.

The question that trips up beginners is the hub. The good news for a renter is that you very often don’t need one: smart plugs, most bulbs, and Wi-Fi cameras and doorbells connect straight to your router and to an app on their own. A hub only earns its place once you start adding the cheap, reliable sensors that talk over Zigbee or Thread — or if you simply want to run everything by voice, in which case a small Echo on a shelf is the easiest glue there is. We walk through exactly when a hub is worth it, and when it’s money you can skip.

Below are our two starting points: the apartment starter kit, a cross-category bundle — a hub, a doorbell, a camera, a lock and a plug — each chosen for reversibility, and our guide to the best hubs for renters, which starts by asking whether you need one at all. If you want to go deeper on any single category, the doorbell and smart lock roundups pick up where this leaves off. Everything we recommend earns a Lease-Safe rating first.