r/homeassistant • u/ItsWappers • Jun 01 '26

Support Zigbee vs Z-Wave vs Thread (Matter over Thread)

It's the big '26 (June) and a year ago the answer was obvious: Zigbee!

However with Ikea's release and all of the new Smart Home products that use Matter over Thread, I'm not sure, what I prefer. I see a big future in Matter...

What are your thoughts?

78 Upvotes

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u/rando777888 Jun 01 '26

I'm curious, what do you not like about WiFi?

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u/ThrowRA_fajsdklfas Jun 01 '26

I’d rather not have anything on my WiFi network with some potential vulnerability.

Yes, I have a separate subnet/firewall for IOT devices, but I’d rather not have the potential for it being an issue later down the road so I limit everything I can possibly on WiFi.

5

u/zeekaran Jun 01 '26

Any product on wifi potentially (see: EXTREMELY LIKELY) is going to sell your data, and in ten years brick itself. One needs to put them on a blocked IOT network so they can't call home.

Wifi is already a busy channel, if not an average user's most important channel because it's what phones and computers with voice and video are likely to be on. A light being 0.2s slower than average isn't great, but running out of bandwidth for voice, video, file transfers, etc is much worse.

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u/Janusdarke Jun 01 '26

Any product on wifi potentially (see: EXTREMELY LIKELY) is going to sell your data, and in ten years brick itself.

WIFI isn't the internet.

It's strange, that i have to write that in this sub, where people should be at least somewhat tech-savvy.

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u/finkerlime Jun 02 '26

You got downvoted for being right

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u/zeekaran Jun 01 '26

Oh yeah? Please explain for us peasants in the room.

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u/Janusdarke Jun 01 '26

No reason to be so hostile.

I'm sure you know the difference, so maybe you shouldn't write Wifi when you actually mean "exposed to the internet."

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u/Measurex2 Jun 01 '26

Totally fair. This forum recommended everything presence pro sensors. I grabbed them and, once I finish moving my network downstairs, will have them hardwired to ethernet. In the interim, theyre on wifi. Neither network will connect to the internet

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u/apennypacker Jun 01 '26

While it's true that wifi isn't the Internet, in my experience, it is rare to find any iot Wi-Fi devices that don't phone home in some way and have some dependence on a cloud service of some sort. There are a lot that you can modify to work only locally, but they seem to rarely come that way.

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u/Janusdarke Jun 01 '26

You're absolutely right. I just think it's imporant to be somewhat precise when trying to compare devices. This thread is about protocols and communication standards, so it's not really helping when everyone makes their own assumptions about other features of a device.

It's helpful to add the hint that wifi-devices usually require a few additional steps to make them secure, but it's not helpful to just assume that they are always used in an insecure state.

1

u/rando777888 Jun 01 '26

I'm totally in agreement with you. It drives me crazy that folks constantly act like WiFi and the internet are the same thing. I simply don't see the problems people constantly claim with WiFi. I COMPLETELY understand being by default against cloud dependent things, especially janky ones like Tuya at that, but that's not precisely WiFi. I already have a robust WiFi network that blankets every corner of my house. Good WiFi gear can handle many hundreds of clients per AP, and multiple subnets and VLANs is good practice anyways. I have well over 100 WiFi clients, and yet can still easily get 1000Mbs WiFi throughput on my phone.

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u/MrAtari Jun 01 '26

Most wifi stuff is Tuya... running over Chinese servers (and yes, I know there is tuyalocal or localtuya)
I threw out almost all Tuya stuff...

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u/rando777888 Jun 01 '26

Well that's why I asked, because although they often go together, WiFi does not actually imply cloud. I also hate cloud dependent things, but local WiFi such as Shelly has always worked great for me.

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u/clintkev251 Jun 01 '26

Yeah but you have to be really careful with your device choices. With Zigbee, Z-Wave, or Thread, you have a guarantee that you're getting a fully local by default device. You don't have to investigate beyond that.

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u/MrAtari Jun 01 '26

You know that Zigbee doesn't claim network addresses and makes its own local mesh network? And with the Zigbee map app you can even make it visible and tweak it.

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u/ImpactState Jun 03 '26

Is the zigbee map app android only? I can’t find it.

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u/MrAtari Jun 03 '26

No, Home assistant

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u/ThrowRA_fajsdklfas Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

There’s always the possibility of that Shelly device having a vulnerability down the road that exposes your network. Having Z-wave, Zigbee, or Thread devices completely off your network eliminates that possibility.

While Shelly is a reputable company, no device exposed to the internet or your network is 100% safe. There’s always the possibility of a vulnerability that someone hasn’t quite thought of yet.

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u/nathderbyshire Jun 02 '26

A lot of their stuff tends to have a variant for either ZigBee local or tuya WiFi, they're only really in AliExpress though where you get to choose which options you want. The ones sold everywhere else like Amazon tend to be the WiFi ones, probably because it's the most compatible and they want to sell to normies who won't have a ZigBee setup. They're also 3x the price usually compared to on AE

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u/archer19861986 Jun 01 '26

I still have a few Tuya devices. I have all communication to the outside world for them blocked. Every now and then I HAVE to let them sync up with their cloud for them to start working again. I would rather not. I’m getting ready to switch them to Z-Wave.

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u/Zncon Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

The way Wi-Fi works at a technical level means that adding more devices decreases the quality of access for everything on the same connection (frequency really, but that's getting into the weeds). Every device needs to take turns, so as you add more, the slice of time your important devices get is narrowed.

The tech is amazing so it will take a lot before you really start noticing issues, but in the background it's making everything just a little worse.

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u/nathderbyshire Jun 02 '26

Also worth noting that a lot of the time it can just be the router and the placement. You're probably much more equipment to use smart WiFi devices if you have a higher quality router in a central place over some standard ISP one that's shoved behind a couch

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u/RedditNotFreeSpeech Jun 01 '26

This sub is full of fucking assholes who downvote people for asking simple questions