Are Smart Coffee Tables Worth It? What You Need To Know Before Buying

If you're looking for new furniture for your house, you may have come across smart coffee tables — though they may not be the most well-known smart home device. These gadgets will smarten up your living with an interesting and useful centerpiece — but is it the right centerpiece for your home? First, it's important to drill down into what exactly a smart coffee table is. Searching Google will quickly lead you to the Sobro Coffee Table, which sports a mini-fridge, Bluetooth speakers, and fancy LED lights that are all controlled with a touch screen. If any coffee table is considered smart, it would certainly be this one.

Smart coffee tables integrate technology into their designs, which makes them different from normal coffee tables. But it's also important to know that these smart coffee tables are not the same as many smart home products you'll think of, such as a smart speaker or hub. You can't get Alexa to change the LED lights or turn up the speaker with voice commands — you'll need to use the touchscreen on most models to control what you need.

While the Sobro Smart Table may be the most well-known smart coffee table, it isn't the only one around. These can be tables with just LED lights like Bestier's LED Coffee Table for $150, or have a built-in Bluetooth speaker and outlets for charging like this Lift Top Coffee Table from Gyfimoie for $160. While there are also a variety of smart coffee tables with fridge drawers, they are also the most expensive.

If you live in a small rental, you may not have enough space for a normal coffee table, let alone a smart one. You may also have trouble setting up a smart coffee table if your living space is too far from an outlet to plug it in. There are also smart side tables for those looking to take advantage of smart coffee table technology in a smaller and easier-to-set-up form. 

The TooCust Smart End Table for $95 has a built-in Bluetooth speaker, while the Sobro Side Table has the same functionality as their coffee table at a similarly premium price point of $900. In the past, there were smart coffee tables with giant touch screens, but those have fallen out of favor — the new era of smart coffee tables is a bit more practical.

Whether a smart coffee table is right for you depends on your lifestyle and what you want from the gadget. These smart coffee tables are available at a wide range of prices, but if you're the type to host a lot of parties, the main conveniences you'd want from a smart coffee table (such as the fridge drawers and Bluetooth speakers) will set you back from $700 to over $1,000. If you just want some nice LED lighting, you'll only need to pay about $150 to $200, so the price range varies a lot.

In comparison, a normal coffee table built with quality materials costs between $200 and $1,000 — but if you browse online storefronts, you can easily find some for cheaper. So, a smart coffee table will likely be more expensive than a normal table of similar quality. Given that this isn't something like a smart light or smart display that you can easily give away if you don't like it, you'll want to fully research your options before you make your decision.

Also, make sure to look at reviews for the smart coffee table of your choice. For example, the reviews for the Sobro Smart Coffee Table are very mixed, with a few people mentioning that the glass on the table has broken, customer service was hard to reach, and the table was overpriced compared to other brands. This is also alongside reviews stating that the table is still going strong, so you need to determine which reviews appear to be the norm and what possible issues are deal breakers instead of just annoyances.