I saw that when announced - I'm super happy I managed to score 2 zigbee modules recently at a decent price. They work awesome and are welcomingly less fussy than the current S0-only z-wave modules.
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Strange - my experience was the opposite. My z-wave locks were hit or miss for the 6 years I had them, while my zigbee Yales have been perfect for the last 2 years.
I guess it comes down to the vagaries of individual mesh networks ...
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Zigbee in my area has to contend with over saturated 2.4Ghz mesh Wi-Fi systems - so it's not a surprise to me that Zigbee is problematic in my house.
PS, that was despite having 18 Mains Powered Zigbee devices acting as repeaters.
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Wow.. yeah I have had the exact same experience as @aaiyar - Zigbee much more reliable and faster. Am running on Channel 15.. Have also have had this experience with my clients. 
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Bizarre.
FWIW, I'm really selective with what I use, my house has only ~5 brands of Z-wave gear, all from quality OEM's (Eg Aeotec & Fibaro). I have no ZooZ or Innovelli or any of the other US market stuff I see folk complaining about here in the forums.
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Thats the smart way to do it - go with known good companies. Although I have had very few issues with Zooz and they are one of my go to Z-Wave companies along with GE/Jasco. Am also installing a bunch of the new Inovelli Zigbee Blue switches for a client in Texas. We'll see how that works.
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This is the WiFi environment in and around my townhouse. The Y-axis is signal in dBm. Yet, my two zigbee networks on channels 15 and 25 don't miss a beat .....
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Yeah my wifi looks similar - the bizarre thing for me was that ch15 was the only one I could get to behave reliably with battery powered devices (thermostats and locks). The mains devices didn't care at all.
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Well sheeeeeeeeeet - that is a mess. I don't know how you get anything done in that jungle. Wow. Do you and family also glow in the dark? 
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So interesting. There are essentially 2 markets. One cheap, one expensive.
Hubitat is a steal at $100. That's the price of 1-2 dimmers. Hubitat's automation capabilities capabilities out of the box probably exceed Control4's. I'd call the integrations available comparison about equal overall.
The new (early 2022) lowest end Control4 controller is about $900 MSRP. (Higher end controllers are only necessary for higher-end AV requirements.) Add $500-$900 for a late 2022 remote control (hard button vs touch screen) and it is essentially a Hubitat hub plus a more capable Harmony remote. (You can get used pre-2022 stuff on eBay that will save a lot of $.) Control4 is a larger company and comes with a significant support infrastructure. The dealer aspect is real, but dealers are only needed to add new devices and there are online dealers that do it for a reasonable rate. Once devices are added the end user can pay 1 time fee and have programming access.
My house came with a Control4 system. I use Hubitat for 90%+ of non-AV automation even though my Lutron & Hue lighting system is part of both. I'm planning on upgrading my Control4 remotes as the new ones have voice control for Xfinity and Apple TV.
There's space for multiple business models, but my guess is that competition will re-shape a lot of the market as it matures.
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Wow...you and @dJOS deserve medals for fighting through that. One of the benefits of living in a SFH that I don't think about often is that it provides a somewhat quieter environment.
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My approach was to put in loads of really good quality zigbee 3.0 repeaters. I have a repeater to sleepy end-device ratio of 1:4.
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Interesting to see WiFi module be about the radio and Thread/Matter module be about the protocol. Many to most people, including those part of this community, don't have a good understanding of the delineation. Most people just want stuff to work and don't care about radio vs. protocol. Imagine if they told their customers they could (theoretically) get Matter protocol to work on the WiFi cards.
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I'm in a similar situation with townhouses all around.
I've got Home Assistant running on 15, Hubitat on 20, and SmartThings on 25, no idea what channel the zigbee hub in my Echo 4 is on.
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One of the big advantages of Matter / OpenThread is there is likely more information about its privacy features than for other home control standards. The code is fully open-sourced and IPv6 based (with known security standards) and on Github. Internet connectivity is enabled through border router devices.
One point that I think is relevant, from a "control your data" perspective, is you can get the border router (again, based on open published code) from a number of sources -- including building your own. Here's an example that let's one build the Boarder Router on a Raspberry Pi: https://openthread.io/guides/border-router/build. Can one envision scenarios where a company still snoops your data? Sure, but that risk would likely be greater through devices we all "forget" about (routers, modems, smart TVs, Hubitat itself, etc. etc.).
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That's interesting... I'm curious about how a company like Philips maintains "control" over their Hue hardware - once you open your network to every bulb/switch you lose part of your business model.
There are (older) reports of Hue supporting matter but not thread. This means that, yes, devices paired with the Hue Bridge will still be able to communicate with other devices outside the bridge but you won't be able to pair your thread device with the Hue Bridge itself. You would need to rely on a separate thread network with a border router OR sans thread another Matter enabled hub (I guess?) to communicate/expose functionality.
Apple right now supposedly supports thread but (for now?) only for other homekit devices - the fact that they can even do this seems incongruent with the ideals/hype about the benefits of Thread/Matter.
Again I need to see this in action because I have no idea how things are really going to work. This smacks of the Zigbee alliance all over again.
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I guess at the end of the day and if I'm understanding things correctly the Matter standard might actually be the most useful thing out of the gate as it allows for standardized inter-hub communications which is sorely needed although MQTT was/is supposed to do this as well.
I am starting to see the thread/matter definition merging similar to the wifi/internet one. Sloppy technical journalism doesn't help either.
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"Matter" is the new "Cloud" of home automation buzzwords. 
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