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Buying

Best Smart Home for Over £1,000

What Over £1,000 actually buys you in Smart Home, and the specific model we would choose at that budget.

Last revised

What you can expect to get for Over £1,000 in Smart Home, and which specific model we would buy at that budget.

What this budget buys you

Specialist hardware with capabilities most people will not use. Justified when one specific capability is central to your work.

Our recommendation

Roborock S9 MaxV — £1199. An extending side brush that genuinely cleans edges and corners, and it suits households with pets, hard floors and no patience.

Everything in this bracket

ModelPriceScoreBest for
Roborock S9 MaxV£11994 / 5Households with pets, hard floors and no patience

What to compromise on

Nothing, but be honest about whether you need the specialisation you are paying for.

Before you order

CheckWhy it matters
Support windowCounted from launch, not from your purchase. At this budget it is the specification most likely to end the device’s life.
Street price versus listList prices in this bracket drift within weeks. Paying list on a model that has been out six months is the most common overspend.
What is in the boxCharger and cable are routinely omitted at every price point now. Budget for them separately or the bracket is not the bracket.
Return windowTwo weeks is roughly how long it takes to find out whether the compromise at this budget is one you can live with.
RepairabilityA cheap device with an expensive screen repair is not cheap. Check the part cost before you commit, not after.

How to shop this bracket

Budget brackets are set by marketing, not by capability, and the boundaries move every year. The practical approach is to fix your number first, then buy the highest-scoring device at or below it rather than stretching for the one just above — the step up is almost never proportionate to the extra spend at this level. The exception is when the cheaper option fails on something you have already identified as non-negotiable, in which case it is not cheaper, it is simply wrong.

What spending more would buy you

Nothing we have tested sits above this bracket, so this is the ceiling rather than a step on a ladder. Spending more means buying specification you will struggle to name a use for.

What spending less would cost you

Below this bracket sits the Ecobee Smart Thermostat at £219. You save money and give up fiddly installation on older systems, which is a fair trade for some people and an expensive false economy for others.

What not to compromise on

Software support length is the one specification that does not improve with time. A cheaper device with two years of updates costs more per usable year than a dearer one with seven.

Behind this page

What this page covers — Best Smart Home for Over £1,000
Where this page sits in the reference library.

This reference page is written from the same testing notes as the reviews it supports, and it is revised whenever the hardware or the software underneath it changes. Where a figure appears here it has been measured rather than quoted from a specification sheet.

If something on this page no longer matches what you are seeing, it is out of date rather than disputed — tell us and it gets checked again.

The reviews this page supports go into the measurements behind these figures, and the knowledge base collects every reference page we keep.

Elsewhere in buying guides: Best Smart Home for Under £1,000, Best Smart Home for Under £200 and Best Smart Home for Under £400.

Frequently asked questions

The Roborock S9 MaxV at £1199.
Nothing, but be honest about whether you need the specialisation you are paying for.
Only if the extra buys a capability you can name. Moving up a bracket for a better number you will never notice is the most common way people overspend in this category.
Frequently yes. The measured gap between adjacent generations is usually smaller than the price gap, and the previous model is at its cheapest just after a replacement is announced.
Long enough that the software support window runs out first. That is the number worth checking before you buy, and the one nobody puts on the box.

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