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As a smart home user, you've probably heard multiple mentions of Thread, Zigbee, and Matter from different companies, and seen all three names printed on boxes for smart home devices or in their product listings. However, how do Thread, Zigbee, and Matter work in a smart home?
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After covering smart home devices over the past four years, one of the most common questions I get is to explain smart home connectivity protocols, like Matter, in ways that non-tech-savvy people can understand.
While Matter is a connectivity protocol that determines which language your smart home devices speak, Zigbee and Thread are wireless protocols that govern how your devices interact.
Unlike Matter, which is a connectivity protocol, Thread and Zigbee are networks. With Thread, you create a mesh network of low-power devices that you can connect to the rest of your smart home using border routers.
Thread is a low-power mesh network built for modern IP-based networking. It delivers fast responses because devices communicate more directly and efficiently. Thread networks are self-healing, helping you experience fewer random disconnects than with older protocols like Zigbee.
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Because it's a single network that will connect to your Wi-Fi instead of multiple individual devices congesting your network, Thread (particularly Matter over Thread) is best for a lot of small, low-power devices. These include motion, presence, and contact sensors, as well as smart locks, lightbulbs, and switches.
Thread doesn't require a dedicated hub. Instead, Thread uses border routers built into devices that together form a self-healing mesh network. In this scenario, if a node on the network drops, traffic is automatically rerouted. A border router is required to bridge a low-power Thread network to the rest of your smart home.
Thread is a key component of Matter, a modern connectivity protocol. Here are only a few examples of devices with Thread border routers:
While Thread is less dependent on a single hub than older networks, Zigbee is intrinsically hub-dependent. Zigbee is also a network, but it relies on a dedicated hub to connect to the internet.
For example, Philips Hue lightbulbs can be used on their own with Bluetooth for local control, as long as you stay near them. However, if you want to add them to your Wi-Fi network so you can control them remotely from an app on your phone (no matter how far you are), you'll need a hub.
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Once you set up a Zigbee hub at home and connect it to the internet, it can find compatible Zigbee devices around it and connect to them, centralizing them. Unfortunately, Zigbee isn't IP-based, so it can be slower than Thread.
Compared to the newer Thread protocol, Zigbee users can experience greater setup friction and brand lock-in.
The upside to Zigbee being so much older than Thread is that there are tons of Zigbee-compatible smart bulbs, sensors, and plugs already on the market. There are also a lot of Zigbee hubs, like those for specific brands of devices, and universal ones.
Matter isn't a competitor to Thread or Zigbee; it's more like the language your devices speak. Matter is specifically designed to work over Thread or Wi-Fi, so it's meant to work together, not compete. Where Thread and Zigbee govern how your smart home devices connect, Matter is how your devices understand each other.
As a result, Matter's goal isn't to connect devices; it's to make devices compatible -- to level the playing field -- so that users can have many brands working seamlessly together in a smart home.
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Matter is a software layer that can be added to a device over-the-air. This is why Apple, Amazon, Google, Samsung, and other manufacturers were able to update their existing devices to become Matter-compatible when the connectivity standard launched.
Before Matter, having an Apple HomePod mini would've worked as a smart home hub for Apple HomeKit, which you can use with the Apple Home app. In this scenario, if you decided to add a Google Nest Doorbell to your front door simply because that's the brand you preferred, you wouldn't have been able to see or access that video doorbell in the Apple Home app, since it was incompatible.
Matter makes supported devices work together, even if they never did before. A Google Nest Doorbell can now be controlled with Apple Home, since they both support Matter, and the same is true for thousands of other devices.
Matter over Thread is when intercompatible Matter-certified devices talk over a Thread mesh network built of Thread border routers. The border router then connects that mesh network to your Wi-Fi. Matter over Thread delivers faster, more consistent response times without lag, even when your Wi-Fi is congested.
With Matter over Wi-Fi, Matter-certified smart home devices connect directly to your router without a mesh network. Of course, this means you won't need a border router, and the network will still be pretty fast, but it also means your network will fill up more quickly if you add a lot of devices.
Matter over Thread is best for multiple low-power devices, such as smart home sensors, smart locks, smart bulbs, and smart switches.
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Matter over Wi-Fi is best for devices that require higher bandwidth, such as security cameras, video doorbells, speakers, smart appliances, and air purifiers.
Z-Wave is an older smart home radio that operates at 900 MHz. Zigbee and Thread operate at 2.4GHz. Like Zigbee, Z-Wave devices require a dedicated hub but are very reliable and experience less interference with other devices.
Since it doesn't require a cloud, Z-Wave is popular for fully local smart home setups and to run local automations, especially in the Home Assistant userbase.
However, Matter doesn't run on Z-Wave, and there are fewer new Z-Wave devices compared to Thread and Matter.
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