Different answer from a house, and usually a more favourable one.
What changes in an apartment
You cannot rewire. Most rental switch boxes have no neutral wire, and a landlord will not let you open the wall anyway. That rules out hardwired switches and hardwired doorbell replacements, which are two of the three things people most want.
You will move. Anything that needs drilling, mounting or replacing an existing fitting has to be reversible or you lose the money when the lease ends.
The space is small. A single sensor or switch covers proportionally more of a flat than of a house, so you need fewer devices for the same effect.
What actually works in a rental
Plug-in everything. Smart plugs are the highest-value apartment device, because they make any existing lamp or appliance controllable with zero installation and zero conversation with the landlord.
Battery cameras with adhesive mounts. No drilling, and you take them with you. The tradeoff is charging every few months.
Portable or battery doorbells. Stick-on chimes and battery units avoid the doorbell transformer entirely, which is the part that needs an electrician.
Portable sensors. Door and window sensors on adhesive pads give you the awareness most people actually wanted from a full system.
What I would skip in a flat
Whole-home audio, motorised blinds, and anything that needs a hub mounted to a wall. The first two are nice and expensive to move, the third is pointless at this scale.
The honest version
An apartment is arguably the better place to start, because the constraint forces you to buy only what you will use. Do it with plugs and adhesive, spend a fraction of what a house setup costs, and find out what you actually want before you own a drill.
Full disclosure: I work on the manufacturing side of this, so I am not neutral. Our range is at https://www.xingliaotech.com/ and the retail side at https://www.xingliaoshop.com/
Xingliao Smart Home builds smart switches, video doorbells and security cameras on Tuya WiFi and Tuya ZigBee, and runs OEM/ODM programmes from Shenzhen. Factory and ODM capability.
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