Convenience Is a Perfectly Good Reason to Make Your Home Smart
I am an anomaly within my circle of friends. How so? Even though I am fast approaching retirement age, I am very much interested in smart home technology. Electronics and gadgets are one of my hobbies. But more importantly, I can see how smart home tech makes a home more convenient to live in.
Every time I mention the convenience factor to someone who is not interested in smart home technology, I get the same response I used to hear from my father when I was a teenager: “convenience isn’t everything” or the companion “life doesn’t always have to be more convenient.”
That may be true, but I am not about to give up the convenience of owning my own car to return to the days of riding a bicycle everywhere. Convenience is a perfectly good reason to do all sorts of things. It is a perfectly good reason to make my home smart.
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Convenience Is the Big Thing for Consumers
Millions of American consumers now embrace home automation to one degree or another. Back in 2021, 40% had already adopted smart home technology. That number is expected to reach 57% by the end of 2025. That is a lot of people using smart home devices.
What motivates them? Convenience. An estimated 46% of American consumers adopt smart home technologies due to the convenience such technologies offer. There are other reasons, like energy efficiency and home security, but convenience is the number one reason consumers jump into the smart home pool.
Convenience Can Be Simple
One of the easiest to understand examples of convenience is found in smart lighting. A simple smart light combined with a motion sensor eliminates the need to turn lights on and off with your hands. Walk into a dark room and the light goes on by itself. Walk out and the light turns itself off.
Then there is the smart lock. As the experts at Vivint Smart Home explain, the smart lock makes locking and unlocking the front door more convenient by eliminating the need for keys.
Smart locks can be activated and deactivated with access codes, biometric scans, and even mobile apse and voice commands. Unlocking the front door by speaking to your phone is a lot more convenient than fumbling with your keys while you’re holding several bags of groceries.
Convenience Is an Ongoing Pursuit
I remember my father insisting that certain modern conveniences were not necessary. They were neither life sustaining nor critical to safety and efficiency. He was absolutely right. But the one point he left out in all his rantings against convenience is the simple fact that the pursuit of convenience has been going on forever.
Why did human beings decide to tame horses and pack animals? Because they represented a more convenient way to get both human beings and cargo from one point to the next.
A washing machine is more convenient than a tub of water and a washboard. Email is more convenient than snail mail. I could go on and on. Human beings have been pursuing convenience for as long as we have roamed the earth. We do not suddenly throw it away because some people aren’t fans of home automation.
I get the fact that convenience is relative. I find some aspects of home automation more convenient than others. I am okay with that. The beauty of modern home automation is that consumers can choose their own level of convenience and work from there. Convenience is a perfectly good reason to make a home smart, no matter what that home eventually looks like.
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