On October 4, 2022, the first version of Matter, a smart home standard, was made available to users and businesses worldwide. Two years later, it is everywhere.
Thanks to the Connectivity Standards AllianceMatter, a consortium of more than 500 companies, is a way to make all your smart home devices work in harmony and in one place, without the hassle of using a flood of apps to manage them all.
Matter can be found in smart light bulbs, sensors, blinds and more. So much so, that we have a guide listing some of them to make it easier for you to find Matter-compatible devices. However, we’ve put together a few answers for you below to help you understand what Matter means and how it can benefit you, especially if you’re on the fence about buying a smart home appliance for the first time.
What is matter?
The promise of smart home tech is that your gadgets can talk to each other to create a system that’s greater than the sum of its parts. An example of an ideal world might be unlocking your front door smart lock after coming home from a long day at work, and having your Amazon Echo Dot (2020) smart speaker instantly play your favorite music while a smart coffee machine brews you a relaxing beverage.
Unfortunately, to achieve something like this, you have to spend a lot of time researching whether a device is compatible with the gadgets you already have. And if it isn’t, there may not be an alternative that is compatible.
That’s where Matter comes in. Rather than having lots of smaller micro-ecosystems, Matter-enabled devices can all interact as part of one big smart home setup. When you buy a new Matter-compatible product, you don’t have to worry about whether it will interact with your existing Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, or Apple HomeKit-powered setup;
How will Matter work?
Using Matter shouldn’t change how you currently interact with your smart home setup. Once the update rolls out to your devices and their smartphone apps, you should be able to continue using everything as you do now, you’ll just have more options for the gadgets you can add to your home. The only thing to be aware of is that different brands don’t integrate their products with Matter in the same way.
Some, like Phillips Hue, will make nearly all of their existing devices (and new ones, too) Matter-compatible. Like Phillips, the companies will do this via a software update—which for the Hue Bridge is slated to happen in “Q1, 2023,” or January, February, or March—that will then bring devices into the fold of the new standard.
There may be some hiccups here and there—Philips will have to ditch the Philips Hue Play HDMI sync box and the Philips Hue Tap Dial Switch dial for the time being, and some settings may reset in the change. But overall, the transition to Matter should be quick and painless.
Unfortunately, this full-scale adoption of Matter won’t be possible for every existing smart home device. For some brands – like Amazon and Google – very old models will be left behind.
If you have the latest smart device, such as the new Echo Dot (5th generation), the Google Nets Hub Max, or the Echo Show 10 (among others), then they should get the Matter update. However, models that are more than a few years old don’t necessarily offer the same support. In those cases, you’ll either need to upgrade your smart speakers or miss out on the benefits that Matter brings.
Furthermore, even some fairly recent models won’t be able to update to Matter, as support for the new standard is only available on newly released smart home gadgets from certain brands. Such is the case with Nanoleaf’s smart lighting – only the new Matter-compatible additions to the Essentials line will adopt the Matter standard.
That said, even if your older gadgets don’t get the update, your existing smart home setup should still work just as well. So, unless you were already planning on upgrading, you don’t need to replace everything right away.
However, if you want to buy upgrades, you need to make sure that the upgrades you buy support Matter. Otherwise, your new purchases could quickly become outdated.
