I'll always pay more for Zigbee smart home gear, and my Home Assistant setup proves why

I've spent a lot of time and effort building out my smart home. Between Philips Hue lights, Zigbee relays, smart switches, and Home Assistant, a lot of thought and consideration went into the setup. But if there's one thing I was sure of right from the beginning, it was the fact that I would build my smart home around the Zigbee standard. Yes, I know Z-Wave exists, but Z-Wave devices simply don't exist in my market.

I know Wi-Fi smart home devices are convenient and generally inexpensive, but I was willing to pay the premium for Zigbee to keep smart home devices isolated from my regular wireless network. Not just that, I wanted a setup that would be easier to automate and would let me mix and match products from different manufacturers. Two years into building my smart home, this was perhaps the best decision I made, because it lets me work with my existing setup instead of spending on another Wi-Fi-based device that needs its own app and configuration.

Wi-Fi is fine for one or a few devices, but Zigbee is more scalable

Zigbee creates a mesh network that grows with your smart home

Look, when you're setting up your first smart home, Wi-Fi seems like the obvious choice. The market is flooded with affordable smart home accessories and devices that promise ease of use. Elsewhere, Wi-Fi is ubiquitous, so there's no real need to spend on additional hardware. All you're expected to do is connect a smart bulb or plug to the network, install an accompanying app, log in, and you're good to go. For some people, that works. I'd even say that this solution is fine if you just need to automate one-off things.

However, when you're automating an entire home, you need to plan for the future. Your smart home is expected to grow with you. Like most, you'll likely start with a bulb or a few, maybe a smart light strip, and end up with a wall-mounted control center screen like mine. All these devices need to speak to each other, or you'll just be juggling apps all day long.

That's where Zigbee comes in. Instead of connecting directly to my router, compatible devices speak to each other over a separate low-power network that is managed by a Zigbee coordinator. Unlike Wi-Fi-powered devices that all coordinate through your router, individual mains-powered Zigbee devices can even act like a repeater or range extender. This means that the bulb sitting at the far end of your home doesn't have to speak to the coordinator in your home office. Instead, it only has to reach the next Zigbee-powered device. This allows you to grow your smart home network nearly indefinitely without having to worry about placement and wireless access points.

My Philips Hue setup is perhaps the best example of this. I have a Hue Bridge connected to my router that coordinates with the lights in my study over Zigbee. But the entirety of my setup sits well beyond the range of the Hue Hub. Instead, it is the individual bulbs that do the job of relaying commands between each other, allowing for instantaneous control.

Zigbee saves power and plugs right into Home Assistant

Low-power devices can last years on a single battery

As a low-power protocol, Zigbee is also an excellent choice for battery-powered accessories such as motion sensors and door sensors. Most Wi-Fi-powered sensors tend to have a low polling rate to ensure that they don't burn through battery life. In fact, more often than not, these devices tend to have battery life measured in days at best. Zigbee-based devices, on the other hand, don't need to maintain a high-bandwidth connection.

For example, the remote for my Zigbee lights runs on a standard CR2032 coin cell and offers battery life measured in years. That's mostly because Zigbee-based sensors tend to wait for an event to happen and communicate it only when something happens. That helps keep power consumption low and extends battery life.

The other part of building on top of Zigbee is that you're not locked into ecosystems. I've previously experimented with third-party Zigbee coordinators to tap into my Hue lights, relays, sensors, and more. All of these were plugged into Home Assistant using the ZHA integration. This allowed every single Zigbee device in my home to show up as an entity that could be controlled remotely or even automated. As my needs changed, I've fallen back to the Hue Hub, but this time around, my Zigbee relays are registered as light switches within Hue.

If you want, you can skip first-party apps altogether and build a setup using your choice of coordinator and apps. That gives you the choice to make as complex or as easy a setup as you prefer, and you can pick up devices from whatever brand or manufacturer you want and place them within the same group. You can even add a third-party Matter hub to expose your Zigbee devices. Basically, the sky is the limit here.

Wi-Fi is fine for basic automations, but Zigbee is where it's at for the whole home

For all my love for Zigbee devices, it bears mentioning that Wi-Fi-based devices aren't inherently bad. In fact, the Govee light strip in my shower is Wi-Fi-enabled and not really integrated with the rest of the setup for a simple reason. I don't need it to do anything beyond switching on a timer. There was no benefit to splurging out on a Zigbee-based setup here. If your needs are one-off automations or just basic controls, a Wi-Fi-based setup will be perfectly fine for you.

As for me, between a plethora of sensors, over 70 Hue lights, and relays, there's no going back to Wi-Fi-based smart home devices. The reliability gains have been spectacular, and not once have I had to worry about range or batteries running out on me. In fact, Zigbee is low-powered enough that even when a sensor notifies you of a low-power state, it usually has enough juice in the tank to keep running for another month. There's peace of mind in knowing that my security sensor isn't going to stop working while I'm on vacation.

And all of these put together mean that when I'm out shopping to expand my smart home gear, I know Zigbee will be my first choice. Saving a little money on a Wi-Fi device isn't worth it if it means adding another app, cloud dependency, or another device to manage separately.