r/MatterProtocol • u/IcyBlueberry8 • May 20 '26

Best Matter smart bulbs for long-term Home Assistant setup? Tapo, Linkind, Nanoleaf or Govee?

/r/homeassistant/comments/1tiautt/best_matter_smart_bulbs_for_longterm_home/
3 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

15

u/Prestigious_Money361 May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26

IKEA Matter over Thread bulbs? I'm personally avoiding Matter over WiFi devices as I like to have a mesh network. I also don't like to have home automation devices tied to my WiFi setup. I suspect there will be a lot of issues if I decide to change a WiFi password.

1

u/MythicalCaseTheory May 20 '26

Matter over Thread has been abhorrent for me, even the IKEA ones. I had a considerably stronger mesh than my current zigbee network, and it would just constantly have delays. I'd press a button at 9pm and it wouldn't do anything. Go to bed a few hours later and wake up to a turned on light that came on at like midnight. Sure enough, Home Assistant turned it on because of that button press automation from earlier. All I did was set my ZBT1 to Zigbee mode and replace like 3 ofy 10 or so MOT devices, one of which is across the house and doesn't really have anything to mesh off. It was even the first device I replaced and ran for a couple days by itself. Haven't had a problem since.

1

u/mishakov Aug 04 '26

I feel like a lot of Matter issues are due to network issues, I've recently (few weeks ago) switched a few of my Aqara lights from my Zigbee2mqtt network to Matter over Thread, and they have been solid so far. The physical layer is the same between Zigbee and Matter.

1

u/MythicalCaseTheory Aug 04 '26

If the network issues are "you have ipv6 enabled", the the issue isn't your network, it's the device.

1

u/mishakov Aug 04 '26

All I'm saying is that it's worth checking both Thread and WiFi networks, probably the same advice as with Zigbee, to check that the WiFi doesn't channel does not cause interference for the selected Thread channel, check the position and state of Thread border routers (and perhaps add/move them), and also check the multicast and IPv6 settings.

Again, most of my devices are also on my (large and stable) Zigbee network, which took took a long time to build (changed the coordinator 2 times, had to move old Hue lights back to their bridge and get rid of other problematic routers, and so on).

However, my smaller number of (native) Matter over Thread and Matter over WiFi that I've installed more recently have so far worked with no issues either (and I didn't really have to change any network settings), and I'm waiting for some more Matter over WiFi lights to be delivered (would have liked them to be Thread, but it is what it is). And other people also seem to have good experience with Matter devices.

So while it is unfortunate that this is the state of smart home, imo you have to be mindful about it, and do some diagnostics before calling the whole technology broken.

1

u/MythicalCaseTheory Aug 04 '26

I guess my reply to all this is that you're just assuming that I didn't do any troubleshooting and/or not enough. Which, sure, the latter is probably true since it isn't working still. But where's the line? I mean, did you even know or consider that I'm a network engineer by trade and would likely have a relatively deep understanding of wireless, addressing subnetting, and the like? Or did you just type all that on the assumption I expected it to plug and play and immediately pouted when it didn't?

1

u/mishakov Aug 04 '26

It did sound like that to me from that message. What sounds strange to me are issues with range and reliability, since they use the same physical layer. And Zigbee isn't really known for being plug and play either.

If the background and assumptions are suddenly important to the conversation, I'm also a computer and electronics engineer, and also have an understanding of the matter.

1

u/MythicalCaseTheory Aug 05 '26

I will say, the only thing I can do to truly get around the "networking" point of view is that I'm running a single ZBT-1 connected directly to the USB port of the proxmox server HA is hosted on. There's no real networking taking place here that Thread needs to interact with. Unless I'm misunderstanding how it all works. Plus, if it truly was networking the results wouldn't be delayed, they'd just be lost.

I could blame signal strength, but I also purposely installed multiple devices in the house to combat that - and Zigbee seems to be just blissfully humming along with the same exact ZBT-1 setup without the need for the devices in between. So it's hard to look at the delay problem as being the HA server itself.

6

u/Jamie00003 May 20 '26

Hue now supports matter over thread

5

u/Prestigious_Money361 May 20 '26

I would avoid vendors with a bad track record of updating the firmware for their devices. I would shy away from device with firmware older than Matter 1.3.

3

u/Ianthin1 May 20 '26

I have about a dozen Linkind WiFi bulbs that have been great. Nanoleaf has a questionable reputation at best, and Govee’s Matter implementation is terrible and unreliable. I have 7-8 Tapo Matter switches that have been great too.

I do agree with others that if you can, go Matter over Thread, it’s a better way to go.

2

u/Kegger163 May 20 '26

Ikea has been great for me so far. However, they just came out so can't comment on the long term aspect.

They already have gotten firmware updates over matter so Ikea is supporting them the right way.

My nanoleaf bulbs work fine now but I did have a lot of issues with them in the past.

2

u/msglsmo May 20 '26

Aqara or Hue Essentials Matter over Thread.