Matter vs ZigBee vs WiFi vs Bluetooth vs Thread vs ZWave – Which is the BEST Smart Home Network?

If you’re looking for a straightforward specs comparison, here’s the table on screen showing you the key differences between the various smart home networks. I’m not entirely sure why you clicked on a video to see this, an article would probably have been a better shout, but the YouTube retention graph says you lot are here so let me at least provide you with some value for the 7 seconds you’ll watch this video. For the rest of you, let me give you the facts, the nuance, and a healthy dose of my experience and opinion. I’ll still be as straightforward as I can, so let’s get into it. 

Let’s run through your options one by one, then do some comparisons, starting with WiFi. WiFi is ubiquitous – you almost certainly have a WiFi network already so that’s a tick for wide compatibility – but that’s likely a downside too. The more WiFi devices, the more WiFi traffic, and the more your actually important devices will struggle. Want to stream to your TV over WiFi? Adding 50 WiFi smart home devices and that might get unreliable. While newer WiFi standards do help with that and for most people it won’t be a huge deal, it’s a downside for sure. The other downside is that the devices inherently have, and generally require, internet access. Again while you can mitigate that, to me, having my doorbell, light bulbs and light switches connected directly to the internet just seems like one hell of a bad idea. I personally hate the idea that to turn my lights on I need to send a request to someone else’s server (likely in China too, at least depending on the manufacturer). That sounds like a real bad idea to me. But I understand why people buy WiFi devices. It’s simple, requires no extra hardware, no hubs, no dongles. It just works (™). But ‘it just works’ is dangerous. 

In terms of hard facts, WiFi can have up to 255 devices on a single network and subnet – while you definitely can set up and connect more devices than that, it isn’t quite as simple so let’s stick with 255 for now. Although I should mention that a lot of ISP supplied routers – think BT or Comcast provided units – actually artificially cap that to 100 or 150, and unless you know to go into the admin settings and change the DHCP rules, you’ll be capped there. Then consider you already likely have a couple of phones, tablets, computers, TVs and things like smart speakers already connected and you’ll quickly find you have a lot fewer slots free for light bulbs and other smart home tech. WiFi is also not a mesh network (even if you have a ‘mesh’ router, that just means your router and satellites talk to each other in a mesh network), so devices have to just be within range of the access point (often the router itself). While theoretically range should be up to 20 metres indoors, that’s often a very optimistic value, and without it being a mesh network itself you will have to get WiFi range extenders or change to a mesh router setup to be able to connect those devices reliably. WiFi devices also require more power to connect (and stay connected) to the network, so you are less likely to find battery powered devices, and even if they are you need larger batteries that need changing out more frequently. Controlling WiFi devices generally means using the manufacturer’s app, although you can use Home Assistant to control most WiFi smart devices. That doesn’t give you much more privacy, but it’s at least an option.

Next, Bluetooth. There are actually two forms of Bluetooth control – direct and mesh. Direct is exactly what you expect, you have to be pretty damn close to the device to connect and control it, but it’s fully local control, so at least there’s that. Direct means controlling each device separately, usually through their dedicated apps, and technically if something like Home Assistant can see it, you often can control it via HA, but that’s a big if. Bluetooth Mesh on the other hand acts as a mesh network letting BLE mesh devices talk to each other to find the hub. That means range is much better, although depending on the configuration it may require a hub to actually control that network of devices. It’s also worth noting that just because it’s connected to a mesh network, that doesn’t mean you have a standardised control protocol – as in mixed manufacturer devices, even if they connect to the mesh network, may not be able to be controlled as one group. 

One thing that’s common among all the mesh networks we’re covering here is that there are two types of devices. End devices – often battery powered devices that just connect and talk to the network, but don’t pass on messages or act as a router or node, and routing devices. Those, as the name implies, route traffic around the network. These are usually mains powered devices that can stay awake the whole time, rather than battery powered devices that sleep and wake intermittently. These are what actually extend the mesh network. A battery powered temperature sensor – no matter where it connects on the network – will not pass on messages from other devices. It connects to its neighbours to send its data, then goes back to sleep. That’s something you’ll want to keep in mind when planning where to put your smart devices.

Bluetooth mesh isn’t all that common, nor is it ubiquitous, so at least for me this isn’t a great option. It’s not a proper standard compared to the other mesh networks, and basically just sits on top of regular Bluetooth which is fine for one-off, basic devices, but isn’t great for properly smart tech without a fancy ecosystem – like Philips Hue (and even then that’s normally Zigbee anyway), so this one isn’t for me either.

Speaking of Zigbee, considering I’m now making Zigbee devices I’m incentivised to say it’s the best – although that itself is a catch 22, because I am mostly making Zigbee devices because I think it’s great. Zigbee is a fully separated, non-internet connected 2.4GHz network. Being a 2.4GHz network it does potentially suffer from 2.4GHz interference, although in my three or so years of using Zigbee devices with plenty of wireless tech in my house (and my neighbours’) I’ve never had problems with interference. Zigbee has no practical device limit, and assuming you have enough router devices (mains powered devices, think light bulbs, thermostats, smart plugs), there’s no practical range limit either. Zigbee is considerably lower power to run than WiFi, so battery powered devices can run from coin cells for years at a time. Zigbee, at least these days, is very interoperable, meaning a Philips Hue bulb can be controlled from a Samsung SmartThings hub no problem – and almost all of it can be controlled from Home Assistant too. That’s what I use, and it means my heating and lighting is all controlled from a single locally-hosted server and app, keeping it simple, easy to use, and private. If you’re interested in setting that up for yourself, I’ve got a full playlist on how to do just that. Zigbee is, I think, the most common smart home network behind WiFi, which is no mean feat. Considering the Connectivity Standards Alliance that makes and manages Zigbee is made up of the biggest players in the game, like Samsung, Philips and Apple, it’s no wonder it all works well together. 

You do need a hub for Zigbee, be that a Zigbee dongle like the ones I use, or from Philips, Samsung, or even an Amazon Echo, you need something to control the network. While I highly recommend Home Assistant and a Zigbee dongle to have full local control over your smart tech, I understand that isn’t for everyone, but at least if it’s only the hub that’s connected to the internet, that’s only one device to be compromised, not the 50 light bulbs, switches and plugs, right? Zigbee does have some advanced features like device binding, so a switch can be bound to a bulb directly so pressing a switch wirelessly controls the bulb with no further setup or automations, and a new presence detection feature if you have three or more mains powered devices in a room. Zigbee’s big technical limitation is data rate. You get up to 250 kilobytes per second – that’s not exactly much, WiFi is up to GIGAbytes per second, although most IoT devices are maybe a couple hundred MEGAbytes which is still 1000x or more faster than Zigbee – that’s why video doorbells are WiFi (although Zigbee doorbells do exist, thanks to me, video in the cards above).  

Zigbee’s contemporary competitor is ZWave, a proprietary (closed) standard that I think it a lot more popular in the states than it is basically anywhere else. ZWave is a pretty comparable mesh network, although the key difference – besides it being a closed standard rather than an open standard like Zigbee – is that ZWave uses a lower frequency (868MHz in Europe or 912MHz in north america) meaning it should have less interference, especially with WiFi. It isn’t perfect as the limited free frequency bands, 2.4GHz and 868/912MHz being prime examples) are always pretty crowded with all-things-RF, but still. ZWave also doesn’t have much of a problem with device limits, and again being a mesh network makes it pretty reliable and great for range, assuming you have enough repeaters in the network. 

There has actually been some fairly recent changes to ZWave, considering it has existed since the mid 2000’s, which is that Silicon Labs bought out ZWave and in 2019 announced they’d be opening the standard up just like Zigbee. In 2022 though researchers found a whole bunch of pretty serious security vulnerabilities with basically all ZWave devices – including new-for-2019 devices with the 700 series ZWave chips. 800 series chips from 2021 should be fine, and to be fair the attacker has to be within radio range to do anything, but if you have, say, a ZWave door lock or alarm (think door and window sensors), that might be a concern.  If you’re in the USA this might be a viable option, but at least here in the UK you can’t really get ZWave devices – Amazon only has a single ZWave light bulb available, for example. Personally I’d also argue that since ZWave has been for the most part a closed standard you’re less likely to have further development when there are no less than TWO competing open standards available. 

And speaking of competitor standards, Matter is the latest option – made by the Connectivity Standards Alliance, the same people that manage Zigbee – to hit the market. Matter is actually a bit different to Zigbee and ZWave though, because Matter isn’t a radio protocol. In simple terms, you need two parts to make a network like Zigbee or Matter work, a radio protocol and an application layer – that’s how the devices talk to each other, and what they talk about. Zigbee and ZWave are a full stack protocol, so they contain the radio protocol AND the application layer. Matter is JUST the application layer, and needs a radio protocol under it to work. That’s why you’ll see “Matter over Thread” or “Matter over WiFi”, versus just “Zigbee”. Matter is an attempt to unify the smart home space, as a WiFi Matter switch can tell a Thread Matter light bulb what to do directly, meaning it can all be controlled from a single app or system. Matter is actually more complicated to deal with, as Matter itself is made by the Connectivity Standards Alliance, but if you want to make a Matter over Thread device, that’s another $7,500 a year to sign up to the OpenThread group, on top of the $7,500 you need to pay to CSA. Matter devices are commissioned with a QR code, versus Zigbee which just automatically detects any devices in pairing mode, which in my experience has been much easier than with Matter over Thread devices. Because Matter isn’t a radio protocol, there’s no range or device limits, as that is down to the radio protocol that Matter sits on top of. What I can tell you is that Matter is still pretty new and the number of available devices is still very much growing. You probably can go all-Matter now if you want to, although I still prefer Zigbee personally.

It’s worth talking about Thread too, as that is one of the key radio protocols Matter uses. Thread, unlike Zigbee, is purely a radio protocol. What is said over that network is up to the application layer, be that HomeKit or Matter. Thread is actually very similar to Zigbee though, using the same IEEE 802.15.4 standard to talk over 2.4GHz bands, although the big difference is each Thread device has its own IPv6 address, so unlike Zigbee where messages are broadcast to every device, and then the devices work out who it’s addressed to, Thread can route traffic directly to a device using that IP address. Interestingly, there is a bit more of a limit on devices with Thread. Theoretically you can have up to 16,000 devices, but you can only have a max of 64 router nodes, and only 32 of them can be active at a time. You can have 511 end devices per router, so realistically there isn’t much of a real word limit. Thread is very much a mesh network, like Zigbee, so as long as you have enough routers range isn’t much of a problem, and since it uses the same underlying standard performance is likely to be the same as Zigbee too. Thread devices come in two flavours, Matter, or HomeKit. Matter devices are generally more accessible to any platform (including Home Assistant), but since HomeKit was first, if you just search for “Thread” devices, there’s a good chance you’ll find them first. They are a lot more hit and miss to get working without an Apple HomeKit network already running. Interestingly though a couple of phones including Apple’s recent iPhones and the Google Pixel 9s have Thread onboard, meaning they can directly interact with the network. That’s pretty cool – although you do still need a network controller (normally found in a hub like the Home Pod). 

Personally, I’ve got both Zigbee and Matter over Thread devices. I prefer Zigbee due to the simpler usage experience, the wider availability of devices and the fact I can now make my own devices too, although I still see Matter as likely the longer term future standard, so having a couple of Matter devices already is handy. The most important thing I hope you take away from this video though is for god’s sake please stop using WiFi smart home tech. You light bulbs do not need to be connected to the damn internet. I mean a cursory search of “Tapo”, TP-Link’s WiFi connected smart device brand, shows there are plenty of internet-exposed TP-Link WiFi smart devices like light strips that anyone can mess with worldwide. Don’t be that person. Please.