Samsung SmartThings reviewed: does it Matter to your smart home?

One of the easiest ways to build a Matter smart home is with the hardware you already own. Samsung is one of the world’s biggest tech companies, and over the past few years has been including Matter compatibility with various household gear.

Thanks to its SmartThings smart home platform, Samsung is in a strong position to dominate with Matter. But how is that working out, and if you’re in the market for a smart home solution, is Samsung SmartThings the best option for you?

What is Samsung SmartThings and where can you find it?

Samsung SmartThings is the smart home platform that ships with modern household and white goods from Samsung. Most commonly, it is bundled into Samsung’s line of Frame TVs.

SmartThings launched in 2012, aiming to provide automation solutions for smart home and Internet of Things hardware. Since 2014, it has been a Samsung subsidiary, and moved away from original hardware in 2020 towards software solutions. This timing coincided with supporting Matter, as one of the original Connectivity Standards Alliance members.

Thanks to Samsung’s comparative ubiquity, there is a good chance you already have some SmartThings hardware.

For example, you might have discovered that you can control your smart home via a Samsung TV, and use the SmartThings app on your Samsung phone to onboard devices. This is a great way to get started not just with a smart home, but with Matter.

Setting up Samsung SmartThings for Matter and connecting devices

Indeed, setting up the SmartThings hub to use Matter devices is incredibly straightforward. It can automatically detect Zigbee devices (integrated TV hubs don’t have Zigbee support) as well as Matter, so once you have the SmartThings app on your Android or iPhone, and the hub is detected, enrolling new devices is a cinch.

You simply pull up the app, click the + button, and add a new device, either via the QR code or by scanning the network. I’ve looked at Matter device enrollment through SmartThings in-depth, and I’m generally happy with it.

Remember, SmartThings doesn’t only let you manage Matter and Zigbee hardware. Anything on your network that can be picked up by the SmartThings mobile app can be interacted with.

Using Samsung SmartThings to manage Matter smart home gear

So much so, in fact, that SmartThings is currently my Matter-compatible smart home environment of choice. It’s easy to kick back and open the app to control devices manually or using voice commands. The SmartThings app on the phone also includes support for creating automations, also known as scenes.

For example, I use an automation to switch on a TP-Link Tapo smart plug in my office on a morning. A dumb heater is connected to the smart plug, which only activates if the temperature is under 9 degrees Celsius. That took 30 seconds to set up.

Meanwhile, if you’re using SmartThings through your TV, you can use the remote to manage your smart home. If you’ve previously relied on speaker-based smart assistants to handle everything, let me tell you – the TV interface for a smart home is the future. Bigger than a phone display, and more intuitive than a smart speaker by design, it really helps to bring everything to life. You might need to do some of the fiddly room management tasks on your phone (room names and their relationship to each other can be defined), but otherwise, having it all displayed for you on the TV is brilliant.

Samsung SmartThings reliability is a problem

I realise I’ve been gushing, and this is intentional. I’m a big fan of Samsung SmartThings… to a point. You see, I’ve found that while it is incredibly usable, it is not incredibly stable.

Quick reminder, I’m using Samsung SmartThings with the QE43Q60B 43-inch TV. This is an impressive system, capable not only of smart home support, but also gaming. In fact, you might read what follows and wonder if this QLED HDR display is attempting to do a bit too much.

The TV boasts an integrated SmartThings hub (an external USB dongle, with Zigbee support, can be added), which has proven something of a frenemy over the past few months.

I’d say for the first three months, everything worked fine for Matter support. Then, there was an unexplained outage, in which the TV claims that SmartThings has been disconnected. Power cycling fixed this, but the issue returns from time to time, without warning, and on occasion fixes itself despite a power cycle.

Power matters

It is possible that the TV’s poor power rating is a factor here. Some firmware update aiming at better power efficiency might have knocked things out of kilter. It’s difficult to say… it’s also difficult to expect reliability from this setup.

I’m not the only SmartThings TV owner to experience this. Various posts can be found on Reddit and on the SmartThings support forum detailing similar issues. I had wondered if the addition of a non-Samsung power cable (necessitated by mounting the TV on the wall) might have contributed… but the first two or three outages predated its use. If anything, it has been business as usual. Removing the SmartThings hub (essentially a soft reset) and a complete reset of the TV have also failed to overcome these challenges.

In fact, as I write this, I’m awaiting the completion of a 10 minute power cycle which will hopefully reinstate SmartThings and my Matter smart home. My wife believes it is happening more regularly now, which indicates that time is short for me and Samsung SmartThings.

Does Samsung deliver a smart home?

Incredibly usable, easy to set up, and capable of overseeing a range of useful automations, Samsung SmartThings has everything you need to manage your Matter smart home.

I’m particularly impressed by the TV-based hub (I reviewed SmartThings on the Samsung QE43Q60B 43-inch), but unfortunately I don’t see this as my long-term smart home hub. Its reliability issues are becoming too much of an issue, and the tried-and-tested Samsung SmartThings troubleshooting tips only get you so far.

While I am all-in on Matter’s steady expansion to future proof the smart home space (however long it may take), I feel as though my time with Samsung SmartThings is coming to a close. It’s a pleasant system to use when it works – regrettably, in my experience, this isn’t regularly enough.