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ZigBee and Zwave? (lemmy.world)

I see a lot of posts about people who like their Zigbee and Z-Wave products. As I'm setting up the hardware in my home, I'm using Wi-Fi products because I already have Wi-Fi. I don't see much difference in price. What is the actual benefit of setting up a separate network for home devices? Is there a reason that I should consider setting up one of these networks?

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[-] realitista@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I run Zwave and love it. Advantages:

  • better range and less interference in 900mhz band with meshing
  • better battery life. WiFi uses up to an order of magnitude more power. Battery in Zwave devices lasts for years, with new ones being even better in this regard
  • more secure as they cannot be hacked by hacking your internet or getting on your WiFi.
  • more feature rich. Zwave devices tend to be geared towards more pro use and tend to have just about every feature you can imagine
  • The Zwave standards body is quite strict in ensuring devices adhere to the standard so it's much harder to get "stinker" devices that don't. This is a bigger problem with zigbee for example.
  • fully local. You can be 100% sure they aren't sending your data off somewhere
  • Generally high quality. I've had quite good luck with pretty much all the Zwave devices I've bought. They last a long time and are reliable if your mesh is working properly (enough powered repeater nodes).
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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