After testing Thread, Zigbee, and Matter, here's how I'm building my smart home differently

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If you're a smart home user or on the path to becoming one, you've probably heard the buzzwords of Thread, Zigbee, and Matter thrown around by various manufacturers and even seen all three names printed on boxes for smart home devices or in their product listings. However, how do Thread, Zigbee, and Matter actually work in a smart home?

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After covering smart home devices for the past four years, one of the most common questions I get is about explaining smart home connectivity protocols, like Matter, in ways that non-tech-savvy people can understand.

While Matter is a connectivity protocol that determines which language your smart home devices speak, Zigbee and Thread are wireless protocols that govern how your devices interact.

Unlike Matter, which is a connectivity protocol, Thread and Zigbee are networks. With Thread, you create a mesh network of low-power devices that you can connect to the rest of your smart home using border routers.

Thread is a low-power mesh network built for modern IP-based networking. It delivers fast responses because devices communicate more directly and efficiently. Thread networks are self-healing, helping you experience fewer random disconnects than with older protocols like Zigbee.

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Because it's a single network that will connect to your Wi-Fi instead of multiple individual devices congesting your network, Thread (particularly Matter over Thread) is best for a lot of small, low-power devices. These include motion, presence, and contact sensors, as well as smart locks, lightbulbs, and switches.

Thread doesn't require a dedicated hub. Instead, Thread uses border routers built into devices that together form a self-healing mesh network. In this scenario, if a node on the network drops, traffic is automatically rerouted. A border router is required to bridge a low-power Thread network to the rest of your smart home.

Thread is a key component of Matter, a modern connectivity protocol. Here are only a few examples of devices with Thread border routers:

While Thread is less dependent on a single hub than older networks, Zigbee is intrinsically hub-dependent. Zigbee is also a network, but it relies on a dedicated hub to connect to the internet.