When I first got my Hubitat my only devices were Zwave. They were more reliable on Hubitat than on my previous Vera but were still pretty flaky even with a reasonable sized mesh. Then I got my first few Zigbee devices - a handful of Ikea Tradfri outlets just to try out. I had read that Zigbee range was generally less than Zwave but from the first install of the Tradfri, Zigbee has always performed better than Zwave for me. Since then I have gradually replaced my Zwave devices with Zigbee ones, selling off my old gear on Ebay as I go, and as of last week, I am now completely Zwave free and have turned off the Zwave radio and removed my Zwave stick (I'm in the UK running a C4, so my Zwave was separate)
These are my main reasons for this:
If you do need to re-pair a device you don't have to remove it completely and start again with all of your rules like you do with Zwave. Just put it in pairing mode and the hub finds it again, it already has it's details and no rules need changing.
My Zigbee motion sensors are way quicker than Zwave which makes Motion Lighting virtually instant. With Zwave you walked into a room there was always a noticeable delay before the lights came on.
Routing and signal strength info is available for Zigbee. You can see any devices that might have a signal problem and where you might need another repeater. With Zwave you are flying completely blind and don't know if a device is playing up because it's faulty, isn't in a good place in the mesh, or just because it's Zwave.
As my system gets bigger I'm thinking more and more about Disaster recovery. This will be much easier with Zigbee devices as their data is stored internally within the backup database whereas all Zwave device data is on the stick so if that fails you have to start again from scratch.
I genuinely can't think of a single advantage Zwave has over Zigbee.
I have a mix of Tradfri outlets, Hue motion sensors and dimmers (directly connected to HE), generic Zigbee relays, and some Aqara temperature sensors and motion sensors. I read all the caveats about Aqara devices but they have been rock solid for me using the community drivers.
I have now also decided to bin my Hue bridge and bulbs and go Zigbee on those too. The Hue integration has been OK but I continue to have the occasional random "bulb on at 1%" error that support could never get to the bottom of. So I figure now I've got a strong Zigbee mesh on Hubitat I might as well use it and so have just had a delivery of a bunch of Sengled Element bulbs to replace my Hues. All bar 2 (that I'd forgotten were ES fittings) are now replaced with the Sengleds which are working well. They come on fractionally quicker than the Hue bulbs but I think that is simply that they ramp up faster rather than any transmission speed benefit. Once the last 2 ES bulbs arrive I can switch them over and get rid of the Hue integration completely too.
So instead of Zigbee, Zwave and Hue for my devices I will now be all-in Zigbee. I feel cleansed!
The only one I can think of is device availability. I have a very few z-wave devices because they just don't have a zigbee equivalent. For example, my Aeotec Doorbell 6. There is no Zigbee doorbell that I've been able to find. Hopefully zigbee will catch on more and that will change. But I agree with you 100%. I have a total of 5 z-wave devices and I don't intend on buying any more. Zigbee has been so much more reliable for me for all the reasons you pointed out. Couldn't agree more.
I could almost say the opposite in my situation. All my devices were Zwave. I have a split between inside and outside. It took a lot to extend my mesh outdoors but in the 5 or 6 years I have had it up it has never fallen down.
Since having the HE hub and seeing all the enthusiasm for Zigbee, I started adding Zigbee sensors. I really don't like using plug in devices as repeaters. With Zwave, I have no dedicated plug in repeaters. I have wall switches, dimmers, fan controllers etc.
When I added Zigbee, I had no open switch locations for functional repeaters so I had to use plug in devices. Extending outdoors was a real problem. There just weren't convenient locations for plug in devices and there are very few wired in devices that provided functionality for my use cases. I do have a reasonably solid Zigbee mesh but I have had things fail when I removed a single plug in device by mistake.
The Zigbee sensors I did add, mostly Smartthings devices, worked well outdoors during the warm weather, are showing their weakness during the cold. While small and inconspicuous, the batteries aren't going to last long in the cold. Batteries in my outdoor Zwave devices last at least a couple of years. I might have looked for devices with larger batteries to avoid that problem.
Had I started with Zigbee, I would probably have considered them for everything. At this point, at least in the US, there just aren't Zigbee devices for all the things you might want to automate. That was my reason for starting with Zwave and why I should have chosen Zwave sensors rather than Zigbee. Considering how many Zigbee devices I have, whose sole job is repeating, I could have gotten twice as many sensors.
Had I had the same choice and breadth of device classes, I might have chosen Zigbee for it's ease of migration. I think if you can choose a protocol that satisfies all your needs, I would stick with it. Mixing protocols can take extra work and more devices to fill in holes in the mesh.
Really good wisdom in that post, @zarthan, thanks.
I came to Hubitat as a 100% ZWave consumer. I had nothing against Zigbee, no bad experience. But I had been using multiple hubs joined to one ZWave network to gain features. That doesn't work with Zigbee,
Recently I chose to give up on waiting for a ZWave Fan Controller and bought 4 of the Hampton Bay Zigbee Fan Controllers PLUS additional wall wart outlets to build out the mesh. I don't like those wall warts only because they get unplugged by the family, Then I can't figure out why the Fan isn't working.. Hubitat says it sent the command.. oh, the plug in is in the drawer closest to the wall outlet.
I then decided to just buy some Zigbee in-wall outlets to go in the same place as the wall warts. Well no wonder everyone uses wall warts, there's near zero in-wall Zigbee devices for sale. So I bought a Zigbee In-wall Dimmer to swap with a perfectly good ZWave dimmer, just to get the repeater action. LOL..
Horrible repeater. Works fine at doing the dimming job the perfectly good ZWave dimmer was doing. Horrible repeater.. maybe I said that once.
So.. a lot of $$ spent to accommodate Zigbee without much gain along the way... frequency matters. The BEST devices in the Home Automation space are the Lutron with ClearConnect running at 433mhz. Goes through walls like a knife, apparently. Then comes ZWave at ~900mhz and makes it through my california walls no problem. Zigbee needs repeaters and if placed "on display" ( visible, wall wart repeaters ) it can work well. Hide them in the wall and that's just more attenuation to fight.
I came from Vera so I started with all Z-Wave and during the Vera time I got the impression that ZigBee was far behind Z-Wave.
Now with Hubitat I've picked up some ZigBee, for me they work great. Perhaps it is the structure of my house or the small size of my system (only ~ 40 devices).
The down side I see for Zigbee is the frequency. At this time I'm only supposing as I have no actual experience to support my position.
In theory, the shorter the wavelength the more difficult it is for the signal to get around field obstructions. My home has grounded steel wall boxes, with Z-wave I've had no issues. When I finally install a Zigbee in one of these boxes my concern is it will be more of an issue.
Being in the WiFi frequency range, one has to deal with interference from other devices. I read many posts suggesting the poster change the Zigbee channel.
So I agree with the points @Geoff_T, but I believe there are other considerations as well.
Mine are hidden behind furniture so they won’t get unplugged. I read here that some have had success changing the antenna of the HB canopy module and now don’t need a plugin repeater. Might be worth investigating.
Yes, I read that and have had the antenna's in my Amazon Cart for many months... just that the effort to climb up into the canopies has it in the 'maybe tomorrow..' bucket.
Amen, brother. I got rid of all my z-wave devices a while back and I now avoid them like the plague. I found all z-wave (V2) devices I tried to be slow, unreliable, and prone to suddenly developing unexplained issues. Then you have to do the little unpair/re-pair dance and hope for the best.
I now use Lutron and Zigbee exclusively and I couldn’t be happier. Honestly, I have no idea why Z-wave is still being used in the industry. Zigbee is better at literally everything (except theoretically range which is moot if you use repeaters).
I know that this isn't available until January, but, I've already ordered a few. A Canadian company no less. I will tell you soon, how/if these guys work:
Are the Iris motion sensors the V1 or V2 devices? I had to segregate the V1 sensors to a separate hub from my V2 Iris and other Zigbee HA 1.2 and higher and my Z-Wave devices as I was experiencing problems before I put the V1 devices on a C5 HE hub. Everything else is on a C4 HE hub.
One other thing that could be causing issues is conflicts with a WiFi signal I have my network configured to use channel 1 for 2.4 GHz and my C4 and C5 hubs use Zigbee channels 20 and 25, respectively.
I have Iris V1 Outlets and Contact Sensors, V2 Contact Sensor and Motion Sensors, and V3 Motion Sensor all on the same Zigbee Hub with the rest of my Zigbee Devices and haven't experienced any issues.
A big part of my reasons for getting into HA was for the learning experience. So my house so far has a mix of both technologies. In my experience so far there's no difference in reliability or speed between the two. I'm buying devices based on what I want out of them (design, functions) rather than what platform they are. I like having a physical switch as backup for lights, so have gone mostly ZW for them as there's more/better options for in-wall switches. I also never seem to have enough outlets in the places I need them so prefer to use as few plug-in repeaters as I can get away with. In my house the light switches are an important part of that.
I have to disagree here. I've tested a few Z-wave motion sensors and the Zigbees I'm using now are considerably faster.
I completely agree. But all of my bulbs and most of motion sensors are now Zigbee (I have a couple Z-wave grouped with Zigbee sensors) because speed is more of a factor for them as most of my lights are setup for motion activation. On anything else, I'm looking for the best product to meet my needs rather than if it's Zigbee or Z-wave.
I'm not sure what there is to disagree about. Two different setups perform differently. Doesn't make either of our experiences incorrect. They just are.
