I have Zigbee switches that are 5 hops away in a warehouse and they perform instantly. A Z-wave switch would not. Zigbee performs well, no matter how far away it is as long as it in range of Zigbee repeaters that eventually get to the hub.
It is really nice to have a hub (Hubitat) that has both.
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Personally, I wish I could give up Zigbee and move everything to Zwave. Being off 2.4ghz and having greater range. Have never had issues with Zwave other than older less stable hardware (looking at you Schlage locks).
If I built a house though, and was installing everything from scratch, I’d totally go Caseta/RA2.
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just to get in my two cents here as well.
I have absolutely no zigbee at all and entirely z-wave, and with zwave repeaters spanning two separate buildings. It has always been pretty stable for me, but I'll admit it became alot more stable when I got rid of older GE zwave devices and replaced them with Zwave+
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As an FYI, inovelli is planning to offer ZigBee switches. Still in pre-production/testing.
Not just that. I have found multiple defects in vendors Supervision implementation which leads to problems with S2 security. By way of example, HomeSeer WS100, WD100, WS200, WD200 will return "No Support" codes in SupervisionReport messages, even when the command succeeds and is supported. Inovelli LZW36 devices send "null" SuperVision reports from the root device when an endpoint is commanded (followed by a correct report from the endpoint) which should not have happen. You also have inconsistent implementations - e.g., some dimmer devices send a Report after a command, others require you to do a get. If a device is in transition, some will send a report with a duration = 0 value even though transitioning, others have a duration. Whatever certification process Z-Wave uses is simply inadequate. And, other than perhaps Zooz, don't expect to see any firmware updates.
I'm holding out to see the next generation of Zigbee devices (it looks like Si Labs is releasing chips and protocol stacks with simultaneous Zigbee / openthread). I give that at least another year until devices start coming out - in the meantime, I'm slowly excluding and re-including all my devices (except locks) to remove S2 security and the network seems to be working better.
You do not have greater range because the hops are limited. Zigbee makes up for the higher frequency by having perfect hops. You can have a light 20 hops away and still turn on instantly. You can not have a Z-wave light 4 hops a way without issues.
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That is great. I love their Z-wave switches so I am sure their Zigbee switches will be amazing. I will buy some.
I wish that security stuff did not exist. It has given me issues in the past.
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All Zigbee is encrypted, and doesn't seem to cause any issues... 
Seems like an issue specific to Z-Wave encryption schemes.
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Agreed.
The issue with zigbee used to be vendor-specific profiles (eg. Control4) or vendor-specific ZHA extensions (eg. Xiaomi). Things are a lot better with multiple manufacturer's coalescing around zigbee 3.0.
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Do not buy any devices unless they are Zigbee 3.0.
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I don't have any issues with standard Zigbee HA 1.2 devices either myself (and it's all Hubitat supports at the moment, though compatibility in both directions is expected). I'd guess that they make up the majority of my network given the relative new-ness of 3.0.
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Like @bertabcd1234, I have many ZHA1.2 devices, including those recently purchased that work well with Hubitat. There are also plenty of "zigbee 3.0" devices that are not standard compliant in that they don't fall back to ZHA1.2
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It is my experience that using the same zigbee device manufacturer is a good call. All of my zigbee repeaters are Sylvania outlets made by Ledvance. All of my light bulbs are also Sylvania and they all are repeaters. The Sylvania bulbs work great as repeaters maybe because the outlets are the same brand. I also have Sengled bulbs and they work great with the Sylvania outlets and bulbs, plus all my zigbee sensors work great also. At one point I tried Xaomi products but they would not stay connected to the mesh. So it is my conclusion to stay with one main manufacturer if you can.
That is a good idea. They are more likely to talk to each other. I tend to do just that.
And keep them there! I never touch my zigbee mesh. My ZWave mesh requires attention to keep it healthy.
I noticed that with my Z-wave networks. I am thinking about buy the Aeotec Range Extender 6 (2 units) for my Z-wave networks. Has anyone had any luck with these?
I have a half-dozen of them. They get little or no use. On the other hand, the ring 2 range extenders seem quite active. And they have battery backup! And they make great power outage detectors.
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Thank you. I will buy the Ring ones. They are also cheaper 
