Matter is a smart home connectivity standard that launched with the promise of unifying disparate devices and ecosystems. Backed by tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Google, and others, Matter was heralded as the solution to smart home fragmentation; a single solution that would "just work" locally and securely across brands. In theory, a smart bulb, lock, or sensor with the Matter logo could be controlled from any platform (such as Home Assistant, Apple Home, Google Home, Alexa, and others) without needing separate hubs or cloud services. It was essentially touted as the future of smart homes.

Yet, a couple of years into Matter's journey, it's clear that this vision hasn't really materialized. Early adopters have voiced frustration, unreliable connectivity and behaviors, and features that simply don't live up to the hype. Quoting Jennifer Pattison Tuohy of The Verge from back in 2023 will still likely ring true for many using Matter in their home today.

I’ve been testing Matter devices all year, and it has been the most frustrating year of my decade-plus experience with smart home devices. Twelve months in, I do not have one Matter-based device working reliably in my home.

As a result, many in the smart home community have questioned whether Matter truly delivers a better experience than existing solutions. The idea behind it was great; rather than needing to purchase a smart home device based on the merits of its compatibility, you could just buy whatever you wanted with the best feature set, as thanks to Matter, it would work regardless.

I had my first experience of Matter recently with the Govee Table Lamp 2 Pro, a smart lamp with a built-in speaker by JBL, and it sent me down the rabbit hole of Matter's history and where it came from. What I expected of Matter was not at all the case, and as it turns out, practically every smart home appliance that incorporates Matter appears to deal with the same issues that I outlined in my own experience. It's across the entire smart home industry, and the touted "it just works" interoperability of Matter is currently far from reality.

Matter's humble beginnings

The Connectivity Standards Alliance was formed

Matter's story begins in late 2019, when Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance (now the Connectivity Standards Alliance, or the CSA) formed a working group called "Project Connected Home over IP (Project CHIP)." The goal was to develop a unified, IP-based networking standard for smart home devices to improve interoperability and simplify development, and this project was rebranded in 2021 to "Matter". This is also when the Zigbee Alliance renamed itself to the Connectivity Standards Alliance, in order to reflect a broader scope beyond just Zigbee. It seemed like a hit at first: Matter had immense industry backing, and by 2023, apparently more than 675 companies had signed on as members of the CSA, even if its approach seemed ambitious.

What makes Matter so interesting is that it defines a common application layer that runs on established network transports, such as Wi-Fi or Ethernet for high-bandwidth devices, and Thread for low-power mesh devices. Bluetooth Low Energy also plays a part in initial device commissioning, and Thread itself is in many ways a Zigbee successor, with some Zigbee devices even supporting an upgrade to Thread. By operating at the IP layer, Matter devices can communicate on a local network without cloud dependency, and local control was a key principle of the entire ordeal. It meant promoting privacy and control even without the internet, and Matter aimed to be for smart homes what Bluetooth or Wi-Fi was: a connectivity standard, though specifically for your smart home.

With that said, developing such a standard proved slower and more complex than initially expected. The Matter 1.0 specification, initially slated for release in 2020 (back when it was still Project CHIP), was delayed multiple times. It was first pushed back to 2021, and then to 2022. It actually did arrive in October 2022, but these delays clearly frustrated some of the members who had signed on initially, and some appeared to walk away from the project. One company that walked away was Wemo (owned by Belkin), which walked away from the project in 2023 and stated that it would "take a big step back, regroup, and rethink" its approach to smart home products. With that said, many reported issues with Wemo's few products that supported Thread at the time, so it may well be the case that some of those issues originated with Wemo and not the CSA.

When Matter 1.0 arrived in October 2022, it supported a core set of device types, like lights, plugs, switches, locks, thermostats, sensors, shades, and streaming video devices. It covered many basic smart home products, forming a foundation to build upon. The CSA also committed to a rapid update cadence, planning biannual updates to expand device support and improve the standard. Since then, Matter has, to be fair, evolved significantly.

• Version 1.1 (May 2023) brought bug fixes and minor improvements.
• Version 1.2 (Oct 2023) added nine new device categories like robot vacuums, refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, smoke/carbon monoxide alarms, air quality sensors, air purifiers, fans, and portable AC units.
• Version 1.3 (May 2024) added support for water and energy management devices as well as appliance support for ovens, microwave ovens, cooktops, extractor hoods, laundry dryers, and Matter-casting media players.
• Version 1.4 (November 2024) focused on electricity-related areas, including batteries, solar systems, home routers, water heaters, and heat pumps, while also expanding support for EV chargers and improving Threads devices.
• Version 1.4.1 (May 2025) added NFC onboarding and multi-device setup.

Yet, despite these ongoing improvements, manufacturers have moved cautiously. Matter-certified software updates for existing hubs (like smart speakers and bridges) started appearing in late 2022, and the first Matter devices hit shelves in 2023. Yet, things aren't as seamless today as the CSA would have wanted you to believe they were going to be. While it would have been great to not even need to look for a "Works with Alexa" or "Works with HomeKit" badge on a smart home appliance before purchasing it, unfortunately, it's still necessary to do so.

Slow adoption and fragmentation still exist

Something Matter was supposed to solve

Touted as a "universal" standard, Matter has really struggled to gain a foothold in the market. As of late 2023, the selection of Matter-compatible devices was still quite limited, and things haven't improved much. The initial device categories (like lights, plugs, locks, and more) were covered, but many common smart home gadgets remained absent. For instance, Matter-compatible cameras or video doorbells are still not available, which is a complete failure of the standard given their ubiquity. Even today, Wemo's products support Thread and work with Apple's HomeKit, but notably lack full-fledged Matter support.

Others have struggled to retrofit existing products with Matter as promised. Several brands initially said their older devices or hubs would get Matter updates, only to reverse course. For example, smart lighting company Nanoleaf previewed Matter support for its products but later shifted to releasing new Wi-Fi-based lights after championing Thread. Nanoleaf had promised future-proof products, and many purchasers of its older products asked why its bulbs and lightstrips couldn't be upgraded to Matter. Nanoleaf had this to say:

To keep prices as low as possible for our customers, we selected the chip size predicted to be more than sufficient for Matter’s storage... Matter unexpectedly grew into quite the big boy, and the chips can sadly not hold it.

Nanoleaf isn't the only company to do this; Schlage, a lock maker and access control solution company, also announced that while it had anticipated its $330 Encode Plus would be able to upgrade to Matter, it turned out not to be the case. Matter 1.0's implementation was more complex and memory-intensive than early drafts, forcing some manufacturers to abandon upgrade plans in favor of developing new hardware. This resulted in early adopters not getting what they had thought they paid for, and meant those consumers would have to buy new models to get Matter compatibility, contrary to the backward-compatibility hopes.

Meanwhile, companies that delivered Matter updates often did so slowly. Philips Hue, for instance, announced that its popular Hue Bridge (which connects dozens of Zigbee-based lights and sensors) would receive a Matter update to expose those devices to other ecosystems. That update, originally expected in early 2023, was delayed and only rolled out around the end of 2023. Even when it arrived, users found that connecting Hue via Matter could reduce functionality, as Apple's adaptive lighting feature would not work when connected over Matter instead of HomeKit directly. On top of that, Amazon's Alexa platform did not enable Thread support until May 2023, many months after Matter's launch, and only enabled Matter support for its Echo devices in a limited fashion initially, supporting very few types of devices. Full support for bridging functionalities (like using Alexa's own Zigbee radio to bring devices into Matter) didn't appear until late 2023, and meant that the "seamless" nature of Matter was, at best, patchy in its first year.

Crucially, the big smart home platforms still haven't embraced Matter across all device types. Google Home and Amazon Alexa, for example, do not yet support certain Matter device categories (even some that are in spec). One notable case that sums up the situation is the existence of a Matter-enabled smart button that carries the Matter logo, meaning it's Matter-certified, but does not work with Google Home or Amazon Alexa. According to the company, Arre, it's because "Google Home & Amazon Alexa do support Matter, but at this time they do not support 'Generic Switches'."

So, we have a device that should, in theory, be a "standard Matter" device. Yet, in practice, the platforms haven't even implemented the profile. Matter's core messaging essentially boils down to “look for the Matter logo and it will just work”, but consumers still face fine print about which platforms support which devices. Smart home device maker Eve has a page that illustrates this problem beautifully. Its page, titled "Which hub is right for me?", should not exist. The entire point of Matter is that devices should be interoperable. There shouldn't have to be a specific hub in use; it should just work.

I also touched on the loss of functionality over Matter already when talking about the Hue Bridge and Apple's adaptive lighting, yet that isn't an isolated case. An Eve Energy smart plug paired through Matter to Alexa loses its power monitoring feature because Alexa's Matter integration doesn't support it. The page on Eve's site for the Energy plug states this in an asterisk:

Eve app is available on iPhone and iPad for devices connected through the Apple Home platform, and on Android for devices connected through the Google Home platform. Energy management features currently available on the Samsung SmartThings and Home Assistant platforms.

In other words, not only are you locked into your ecosystem with regard to app connectivity, but energy management only works over SmartThings or Home Assistant. Even in my own experience with the Govee Table Lamp 2 Pro, the advanced lighting controls are only available in the official Govee app, and Matter exposes basic light controls, and that's about it. Partial support like this creates confusion and a poor user experience, and users might not realize why a capability is missing and may end up needing the manufacturer's app anyway.

To sum it up, fragmentation is a big, big problem, and the current state of Matter is held back by the fact that you'll still need multiple apps. Even when it comes to companies jumping on board the Matter train, they're not exactly incentivized to join the movement wholeheartedly. Why would they? It makes total sense that a company would like to keep its best features to its own apps, as a user is more likely to go out and buy a product from the company whose app they already know and use.

When it comes to tech enthusiasts, Matter matters less

Home Assistant fills the gap

The target audience for Matter ranges from average consumers to tech enthusiasts, yet the latter audience has likely already solved the problem (and with better results) that Matter aims to solve. Home Assistant users, for instance, already have a system that can integrate hundreds of brands and protocols, like Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi devices, Bluetooth sensors, and more. For someone running a robust Home Assistant setup, the fragmentation that Matter aims to fix is already a non-issue. As I noted in my Govee Table Lamp 2 Pro review, I can control it from the Govee2MQTT add-on, so why would I even bother with Matter anyway?

Even when it comes to Thread, it's a bit of a non-starter for tech-enthusiasts. Protocols like Zigbee and Z-Wave have been around for over a decade and are very mature in terms of performance and device availability. A user with a Zigbee coordinator stick can easily deploy dozens of sensors and lights that respond quickly and rarely, if ever, drop off. In contrast, Thread (the mesh protocol Matter leans on) is newer and still finding its footing. These existing standards already work, and when paired with the integrations that unify proprietary protocols, the issue Matter tries to solve pales in comparison to what can be done by Home Assistant and some technical know-how.

To be clear, I'm not saying that tech-savvy users should dismiss Matter. Its long-term potential is clearly there, and it's still an industry-wide movement toward an open standard, even if it's moving slowly and seems fragmented at present. The Home Assistant community in general has embraced support for Matter, albeit seemingly with a sense of caution. Plus, both Home Assistant and the Open Home Foundation Matter Server are Matter-certified, with the OHF joining as a participant to "have a front-row seat" and "to defend the Open Home values during the development of the standard." Right now, Home Assistant's own dedicated Matter page draws attention to some limitations, like in the case of Philips Hue.

In some cases, bridging devices into Home Assistant via Matter might not bring you benefits. So far, The Philips Hue bridge, for example, supports Matter. But Matter only support a limited set of features. The native Home Assistant integration of Philips Hue comes with a wide variety of features. It also runs locally. You would not gain anything by adding your Philipps [sic] Hue devices to Home Assistant via Matter bridging. On the contrary, you would lose some of the features.

Matter was meant to be the future of smart homes

It still may be one day

None of this is to disparage Matter as an initiative. It still has colossal industry backing and has made notable strides in a short time (roughly three years from inception to significant deployments), and it aims to address real problems that have plagued smart homes for over a decade. However, the reality in mid-2025 is that Matter hasn't yet lived up to its promise. Plus, the vision of a seamless, one-size-fits-all smart home still feels incredibly out of reach. With missing features, setup problems, flaky connections, and turf-protective ecosystems still being as pervasive as they are, it's no wonder that Matter is largely shunned in many smart home communities.

With all of that said, Matter is still incredibly young. Zigbee and Z-Wave had years of iteration to achieve stability, and Bluetooth was itself notorious for its growing pains in the early 2000s. J. William Gurley, a partner of Benchmark Capital, wrote an obituary in 2001 titled "Bye-bye, Bluetooth", stating that "Bluetooth will fail to be relevant." Others got it right; while analysts predicted that Bluetooth was dead in the water thanks to the advent of Wi-Fi, some companies were packing support for both protocols. "This isn't Betamax versus VHS, where one of them is going to win and one's going to lose," said Steven Andler at the time, who was the vice president of marketing in the computer systems group of Toshiba America Information Systems.

Funnily enough, some of the issues highlighted even sound similar to how some of Matter is playing out today.

But the cascade turned out to be a trickle -- Bluetooth was still not ready for mass production. Chip costs remained high, and devices sometimes refused to talk to each other. [...] Microsoft, a backer of both technologies, dealt a blow to Bluetooth's image in April when it said its new desktop operating system, Windows XP, would initially support Wi-Fi, but not Bluetooth. Microsoft said it would wait to include software support until it saw production-ready Bluetooth products.

Just like Bluetooth, Matter could just need time, and the CSA's leadership loves to state that "Matter is a journey." More devices, meanwhile, have been trickling out, early firmware bugs are getting patched, and multi-admin problems are being worked on. None of the major players have abandoned the initiative, and some companies appear to be working towards solving the friction in the current ecosystem.

Ultimately, the Matter standard still, well, matters, even if it's not in the way that we had hoped it would. The coming years will tell us a lot; either average consumers start to see the benefits of Matter, or it will stagnate and risk joining the graveyard of standards that never quite made it. Companies that are pouring resources into it may start needing to ask (and answer) tough questions, while the skeptics who stuck with proprietary solutions will feel vindicated, leaving us with yet another standard rather than one that unifies them all.