Matter

The new Nest Learning Thermostat has arrived after nearly a decade, and with it, another step towards the death of the old Nest app in favor of Google Home. But that’s not your only option.

Eve, formerly a smart home brand almost exclusively focused on HomeKit, is leveraging Matter to launch a new version of its “Smart Weather Station” which will be able to show the current temperature and other data within the Google Home app.

Samsung’s SmartThings is finally bringing Matter 1.2 support to users. The new compatibility will allow more complex devices like refrigerators and vacuums to be controlled via Matter.

The Matter smart home standard is getting another update, with version 1.3 bringing support for more home appliances, EV chargers, and more.

Recently a new update started rolling out to Nest Wifi Pro owners, but it comes with an annoying bug that is breaking some Matter smart home gear for users.

The X2 Omni is hands-down one of the best robot vacuum/mops on the market. To make it even better, Ecovacs has added the two things we’ve been desperate to see – Matter compatibility and a combo stick vacuum to help handle any cleaning job.

Matter has had the reigns of interconnectivity between smart home devices for just about a year, and a new expansion into more complex and useful devices is already taking place with Matter 1.2, which adds a batch of new device types.

The Nest x Yale lock first made its debut in 2018 and, five years later, it’s effectively been ignored for a while in Google’s updated smart home ecosystem. Without a proper sequel on the horizon, we’ve been looking at Yale’s new Matter-enabled smart lock which should be a good stand-in for Google’s overdue sequel, but instead, shows Matter’s limits yet again.

SwitchBot is doing something we’ve been waiting for a company to do ever since robot mops started taking the market by storm. The SwitchBot S10 robot vacuum/mop hooks up directly to a water line, which means that you never have to manually refill or empty a disgusting water basin again.

Matter hasn’t made quite the splash many were hoping, but the smart home standard is making its way to more and more devices. Now, Matter support is live in the Google Home app for iOS.

In theory, Matter is supposed to make smart home devices easier to set up and much more user-friendly. With Matter being a big feature of TP-Link’s new smart plug, that goal is accomplished to a T.

Light strips are more than commonplace. They’re easy to set up and provide some serious color to your space. Govee’s latest light source, the M1 LED strip, provides vibrant colors to your smart home, regardless of its ecosystem, because it’s fully compatible with the Matter standard.

As successful as the release of Matter was and how large the wave of products seeing certification with the new standard is, there’s always room to grow. In Matter’s 1.1 update, newly released devices are easier to onboard, testing is expanding, and the standard hits a big milestone in the number of compatible devices.

Matter has the promise of finally uniting the smart home under one standard, and slowly, that promise is coming to reality. Currently, Google is rolling out an update to its Nest Thermostat that adds support for Matter and allows the thermostat to be linked with Apple HomeKit. Here’s how it works.

After rolling out on Android last year, Google has announced that it will bring Matter support to the Google Home app on iOS soon.

The rollout of Matter across Google’s ecosystem has been relatively quick, and now the company is bringing support to another device. The 2020 Nest Thermostat is adding Matter support, with the rollout starting today.

The smart home is going through a sort of reinvention with the arrival of Matter, and that’s given the market a chance to improve on old ideas and try out new ones too. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been able to use one of those new ideas in Samsung’s SmartThings Station, a Matter hub that can wirelessly charge your phone and control smart home devices with the push of a button.