2023 in the smart home: Matter’s broken promises
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On Thanksgiving weekend, my husband and I finished a big bathroom remodel project we’d worked on for months. The final step was to replace our old toggle light switches with modern, paddle-style ones. As I sat on the bathroom floor with the four TP-Link Tapo Matter smart switches I had bought on a Black Friday deal, my husband eyed them suspiciously. “The first time these turn the lights off on me while I’m in the shower, I’m ripping them out,” he said.
His fear was not unfounded. My previous attempts to smarten our bathroom lighting using smart bulbs and motion sensors had not gone well. But this time would be different, I assured him — because of Matter.
Twelve months in, I do not have one Matter-based device working reliably in my home.
Matter, which officially arrived at the end of 2022, is the biggest smart home story of 2023. It is designed to fix some fundamental problems of the smart home by providing an easy, streamlined setup process for devices, interoperability between platforms so you don’t have to stay in one company’s walled garden, and reliable and secure local connectivity.
This year was the year we started to get actual Matter devices and the year the big smart home platforms (slowly) began to adopt it. Backed by all the big names — Apple, Amazon, Google, Samsung, Ikea, Comcast, Philips Hue, LG, and more — Matter is meant to make the smart home easier.
I’ve been testing Matter devices all year, and it has been the most frustrating year of my decade-plus experience with smart home devices. Twelve months in, I do not have one Matter-based device working reliably in my home. To make matters worse (yeah, I know), the one system that’s always been rock solid, my Philips Hue smart lights, is basically unusable in any of my smart home platforms since I moved it to Matter.
I do believe Matter can fix key issues in the smart home
So, why did I just wire four Matter smart switches into my wall? Because, despite my experiences, I do believe Matter can fix key issues in the smart home. I’m willing to be a guinea pig. But if we don’t see concrete changes soon, there is a real chance it could all fall apart. If I have to rip those smart switches out of my bathroom wall and tell my husband he was right, I will be a very grumpy smart home reviewer.
Matter’s promise of secure, reliable, local connectivity for smart home devices without dependence on proprietary protocols (or setting up your own server) is compelling. That a Matter device can work with all the major smart home platforms — including Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings — is legitimately awesome. And the option to run your smart gadgets without relying on the cloud is critical to consumer trust in the smart home. Not only can you keep your data local, but it should go some way toward solving the problem of companies being able to reach in and remove functions from your smart devices at will.
Matter also has the power to level the smart home playing field. By providing interoperability, Matter is removing platform compatibility as a differentiator. This means smart home devices can become commodities — in other words, cheap. The only reason to pay more for a product like a light switch or door lock will be because it offers better features or a sleeker industrial design — not just because it works with Apple Home.
Matter meant I could choose a switch that fit my aesthetics and budget, not just because it worked with a specific platform.
Case in point: those four Tapo Matter smart switches cost me $12 each, $50 total (granted, they were on sale from $25). Before Matter, if I wanted a paddle-style smart switch that worked locally in my home and with all four platforms, my best option would have cost me between $40 and $60 per switch. Matter meant I could choose a switch that fit my aesthetics and budget, not just because it worked with a specific platform. You know, the way you choose almost everything else you buy.
But so far, giving Apple Home users more and cheaper device options is one of only a couple tangible improvements Matter has brought to the smart home. Here’s a look at Matter’s biggest promises to date, how they’ve been broken or left unkept, and what needs to be done to keep them.
Yes, by and large, you can buy any Matter device, and it will work with any voice assistant or platform. But the big caveat here is that you will only get some of the features of that device on some platforms.
For example, if you connect your Philips Hue smart bulbs to Apple Home via Matter, you can’t use Apple Home’s adaptive lighting features. If you pair an Eve Energy smart plug with Amazon Alexa, you lose its energy monitoring feature. If you add Govee’s Matter light strip to your smart home platform of choice, you can’t play with any of its cool lighting effects. This sets users up for a poor experience and means they need to head back to the manufacturer’s app to get the features they’ve paid for.
It’s not a requirement of Matter that a platform supports all device types. It should be.
Additionally, not all Matter device types are supported by all platforms. When Matter was launched, the promise was if a device had the Matter logo on, it would “just work” in your home and you could set it up with your smart home system of choice. That’s not the case.
The Tuo smart button has a Matter logo and doesn’t work with Google Home or Amazon Alexa — because those platforms don’t support generic switches in Matter yet (which is what a smart button is). This might be a minor example, but there are many more device types coming with no guarantee from the major platforms that they will support them. This is because it’s not a requirement of Matter that a platform supports all device types. It should be.
Beyond just working with any smart home platform, Matter devices should be able to work with every smart home platform simultaneously. This feature of Matter — called multi-admin — is the one I was most excited about. I should be able to set up my bathroom light switches and have them controllable by Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa — heck, even Samsung’s Bixby if I want.