Our goal at Homejell is to be the central hub of all smart home data. We focus less on the narrative around smart home products, and more on the quantifiables. We think this is the best way to help people choose the best smart home products, rather than spend money on duds.
By focusing on Research, Scoring, and Ranking all smart home products on the market, we all can get a better idea of which products will significantly improve daily life without breaking the wallet.
Research
We pride ourselves on our research, because we know our stuff: we’ve been publishing smart home articles since 2014. We search high and low, like Google ninjas, finding all the crucial details other websites can’t. And then we turn them into readable beautiful, easy-to-digest formats for one reason — to help you pick the best smart products for your home.
We use (mainly) primary materials from the manufacturer for research, like: guides, forums, FAQs, and installation videos. Everything verifiable. And if it can’t be verified, we reach out to the manufacturers directly.
Scoring
Taking all the data we find and making it quantifiable is our primary goal. And a lot of smart home products have features that make it hard to put a number value on the product. For example, Continuous Video Recording (or CVR) in smart cameras isn’t something that has a number attached to it. A camera either has it or doesn’t. And this can make it hard to decide whether or not it’s better than other smart cameras on the market.
What we do is we take what we feel are the most important features or specifications, and score them all them based on their importance.
A concrete example of this would be if you’re buying a smart tv. A good measurement would be its size and resolution. Generally, the bigger the tv, the better — But what about pixelation? If you have a giant tv, and the resolution is terrible, you’ll end up with a giant fuzzy screen.
What we’re getting at is that an 8k smart tv, at 60 inches, is probably better than an 4k tv at 80 inches. So we would say that the television resolution is more important than its size, and so we score it that way. A simplified version of the above:
Television 1: 60in (3pts), 8k resolution (8pts) = 11pts
Television 2: 80in (4pts), 4k resolution (2pts) = 6pts
Some features (like resolution in televisions) are super important, and other features are completely worthless (like hertz in sous vide). We score what’s appropriate, and omit what isn’t. With the goal of boiling down all products into…
Ranking
This is the end goal of Homejell. We want to boil everything down to a ranking system which compares all products on the market. The easier everything is to compare, the easier it is for people to build their dream smart home.
We have ranking systems for each style of product, and then ranks for their internal features. So, if you’re looking for a smart sprinkler system, and you don’t care about design or hardware, just longevity, you can search our smart sprinklers for the best ranked sprinklers when it comes to longevity.
We want to make sure that everyone can find the best smart home products in their respective categories.
It’s good to note that our ranking system is also relative. So as the market matures and products become better and better, newer features get ranked more highly and discontinued products fall our of our ranking system. So, a 720p smart camera might’ve been worth 2pts in 2016, whereas now it’s worth 0.1pts because no manufacturer worth their salt releases a new camera at 720p.
Questions, comments, or concerns about our system?
Reach out to us and let us know!
