Will SmartThings work with Matter?

Samsung SmartThings is one of the largest smartphone platforms, since it comes baked into Samsung TVs, appliances, and mobile devices. Some devices have a "Works With Samsung SmartThings" label. As for those that come with a "Matter" label—will those work with SmartThings as well?

Yes, SmartThings works with Matter devices!

Matter is a platform-agnostic standard that enables smart home devices to work with your smart home platform of choice. SmartThings has Matter compatibility. So does Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Home, and Home Assistant. 

Matter-compatible devices will not only work with SmartThings, but if you decide to switch some day, you can migrate all of your Matter products over to the new ecosystem. This provides enough peace of mind to build a smart home without worrying about your investment quickly growing obsolete.

Samsung SmartThings is a very accessible ecosystem, since you don't need to think about purchasing a separate dedicated hub device to connect all of your smart products to. Chances are, you've bought a Samsung TV, and it happens to have built-in Matter compatibility, allowing it to function as a Matter hub. Your Matter devices all connect to your TV, sending information about their current status. You then send commands out from your TV, telling those devices what to do. You can get an idea how well this works in our SmartThings review.

While your TV serves as the hub of your Matter network, that doesn't mean you have to interact with your TV in order to control your home. You can rely on a phone app, your watch, or a voice assistant for that. I personally switch between these four ways to control my smart home.

Samsung has among the best Matter support

While Matter is designed to work across all of the smart home platforms, that doesn't mean you will have an identical experience across all of them. This is because the Matter protocol supports more hardware categories and sets of features with time, and it's up to the smart home platforms to support newer versions of the protocol.

At the time of writing, Samsung supports the current version of Matter, which is Matter 1.4. Meanwhile, Google Home is stuck on Matter 1.0. Matter 1.4 introduced a host of energy management features, adding support for solar power, batters, heat pumps, and more. If you have a Matter-compatible solar inverter, you can see information about the power its generating if you're using SmartThings, but you would not be able to see this information using Google Home.

Matter 1.3 added support for a range of kitchen appliance, giving you control over the likes of microwave ovens, cooktops, and hoods. These appliances will appear in Samsung's platform, but they're the kind of appliance you can't yet use on Apple HomeKit or through Amazon, in addition to Google.

Matter is one of several standards

Matter is seeing widespread adoption across the industry, but not everything uses Matter. Some products that predate Matter were designed around older standards, such as Philips Hue lights, which use the Zigbee protocol.

Philips Hue Bridge

The Philips Hue Bridge, a gateway device by Signify, uses Zigbee for instant light response and enables Matter, a universal smart home standard, allowing seamless integration with other smart home brands and ensuring your lighting and accessories are always connected, even when Wi-Fi is down.

Buy at Amazon US for $42.00

Many Samsung TVs that support Matter out-of-the-box don't support Zigbee. You instead either need a bridge device that connects Zigbee devices to your Matter network, or you need a product like the SmartThings Hub Dongle that adds Zigbee support to your TV or Samsung Family Hub fridge.

How to Get Started

The SmartThings app is available in the Play Store for Android devices. iPhone owners can grab the app in the Apple App Store. Once set up, the app will often automatically detect new Matter devices and prompt you to scan their QR code, or you can do the process manually.

Alternatively, you can control your Matter devices entirely from your Samsung SmartThings TV. Whichever route you prefer, SmartThings does a good job of holding your hand.