expiredEragorn | Staff posted Jan 14, 2025 03:02 AM
Item 1 of 4
Item 1 of 4
expiredEragorn | Staff posted Jan 14, 2025 03:02 AM
The Smartest House Home Automation: Toggle Dimmer $20, Smart Plug $16, Q Sensor
& More + Free Shipping on $99+$22
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45% offThe Smartest House
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In the US it uses 908.42 or 916 MHz and in Europe it uses 868.42 MHz. Generally speaking that means it is less likely to get interfered with by all of your microwaves, wifi devices, and airtags.
Personally I have found the Z-Wave devices in my home inside a dense neighborhood to be more reliable but most devices that are Zigbee work fine as well. All in I have 57 z-wave devices on my network and rarely have issues with them and I have 17 Zigbee devices which are generally fine but I previously had some ultra cheap battery sensors that were flaky. I only have 3 bluetooth switchbot devices, about 3 wifi smart plugs, and 1 wifi ecobee because those tend to be the most problematic for me when scaled out.
If you plan on having a lot of smart devices you will very likely want to avoid Wifi devices for low bandwidth devices like smart switches and basic motion or temperature sensors so you can save the bandwidth and limited number of connections for devices like security cameras, laptops, tvs, speakers, and other such things.
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In the US it uses 908.42 or 916 MHz and in Europe it uses 868.42 MHz. Generally speaking that means it is less likely to get interfered with by all of your microwaves, wifi devices, and airtags.
Personally I have found the Z-Wave devices in my home inside a dense neighborhood to be more reliable but most devices that are Zigbee work fine as well. All in I have 57 z-wave devices on my network and rarely have issues with them and I have 17 Zigbee devices which are generally fine but I previously had some ultra cheap battery sensors that were flaky. I only have 3 bluetooth switchbot devices, about 3 wifi smart plugs, and 1 wifi ecobee because those tend to be the most problematic for me when scaled out.
If you plan on having a lot of smart devices you will very likely want to avoid Wifi devices for low bandwidth devices like smart switches and basic motion or temperature sensors so you can save the bandwidth and limited number of connections for devices like security cameras, laptops, tvs, speakers, and other such things.
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If you have a really large space or multiple levels separated by concrete or any of the other conditions where WiFi can struggle, Z-Wave might make sense.
However, it's quickly being outpaced by Matter, both in performance and variety of devices that support it.
Matter operates on WiFi, but isn't constrained by your router or a cloud service. Everything runs locally and many devices can act as range extenders. It's also way cheaper to implement than RF protocols like Z-Wave.
But, if you have a Home Assistant server or Hubitat, you can always mix and match protocols.
If you have a really large space or multiple levels separated by concrete or any of the other conditions where WiFi can struggle, Z-Wave might make sense.
However, it's quickly being outpaced by Matter, both in performance and variety of devices that support it.
Matter operates on WiFi, but isn't constrained by your router or a cloud service. Everything runs locally and many devices can act as range extenders. It's also way cheaper to implement than RF protocols like Z-Wave.
But, if you have a Home Assistant server or Hubitat, you can always mix and match protocols.
I love the idea of switching to matter, and have provisioned a strong backing of thread border routers to be ready, but haven't seen enough devices yet to warrant switching from my z Wave devices. Or even to stop buying new z Wave devices
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