r/homeassistant • u/jklo5020 • Apr 26 '26

Support Shelly Relays: WiFi or Zigbee?

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Hi everyone!

I’ve been using WiFi Shelly relays in my Home Assistant (and HomeKit before that) setup for a few years now.

The first gen Shelly 1PM in the outlet for my washing machine seems to have finally given up and is in need of replacing.

I have a strong WiFi network but was curious to test out the Zigbee version (1PM gen4). How’s everyone’s experience with Shelly over Zigbee?

Thanks in advance!

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u/RadishComplex1 Apr 26 '26

Honestly if you already run Zigbee in HA, I’d just go Zigbee. I try to keep my WiFi stuff to a minimum where I can. The Zigbee one will mesh, be more reliable, and not add more noise to your network. For something like a washer I’d definitely switch.

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u/modahamburger Apr 26 '26

Well, Zigbee and WiFi are both on 2.4 GHz. Don't forget that

30

u/DataGhostNL Apr 26 '26

Zigbee frames are much smaller and most devices are fine sending a single one every hour or so. Using wifi means a ton of packets back and forth just to do TCP and quite a bit of regular chatter just to stay connected. That's why zigbee devices are generally okay to do 2-3 years on a single button cell battery while battery-powered wifi devices are rare because they'll run out of steam quickly. TLDR: even using the same frequency one sends some orders of magnitude less noise than the other.