Understanding Smart Home Hubs and Their Importance

I’ve spent 10 years living in a smart home, and I’m here to tell you that if you want yours to be fast and reliable, you need a smart home hub. You might be able to get by without one if you’ve got just a few smart lights or a very simple setup, but if you have more than a handful of connected devices and they’re from multiple manufacturers, you will need a system to manage them. This is where a hub comes in.

Many of the frustrations you may have encountered with a smart home — laggy lights, multiple apps to control your devices, this gadget not working with that gadget — can be solved with a good smart home hub with robust local control.

A smart home hub is a brain for your smart home

A smart home hub is a brain for your smart home. When it isn’t contained within another device (such as an Apple TV or an Echo smart speaker), it usually comes in the form of a small puck that you connect to your internet router. It provides one central place to send commands to multiple devices so that you now only need to use its one app to manage all of your gadgets and routines.

Together, these two features take care of most of the hard work of home automation: getting multiple platforms and devices to work together; creating routines; processing more advanced features; and being a gatekeeper so your gadgets can stay smart while avoiding a direct connection to the internet. In some cases, hubs can facilitate machine learning to make things smarter.

A cat in my hub cupboard — possibly the best way to show off a bunch of hubs and bridges. Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / HindiStatus.in

Most hubs can use a combination of local and cloud control. Local control is a key feature of many smart home hubs. This means your devices and your data stay on your local network, which is more secure and faster than relying solely on the cloud. Local control also means your routines and automations continue to function even if the internet is down (as long as the hub is powered).

A hub can also help incorporate devices that don’t rely on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth into your smart home. These include locks, lights, plugs, and sensors that use low-powered, low-bandwidth protocols like Zigbee, Z-Wave, and a newer option, Thread. (Cameras and streaming devices still need Wi-Fi for high-bandwidth data transfer.) These protocols use mesh networks, so the more devices you have, the stronger the connection between them will be. Additionally, a hub can provide a more stable internet connection for your smart home via ethernet.

What follows is an explanation of the main types of hubs that you can choose to run your smart home and, after that, a rundown of some of the best hubs to get started with.

Two types of hubs

The smart home hub has gone through a few iterations over the last decade, and today, there are (speaking broadly) two types of hubs to choose from: the multi-protocol hub and the platform / ecosystem hub. (There are also bridges and gateways, which serve a slightly different purpose — we’ll touch on those in a minute.)

The biggest difference between the two is that with the multi-protocol hub, your smart home can work with multiple platforms / ecosystems and all the major protocols. On the other hand, with the ecosystem hub, you are largely locked into that ecosystem (usually Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, or Google Home) and the radios that it supports. In other words, a multi-protocol hub can…

Here’s a more complete description of each:

Multi-protocol hubs have been around for a while and are designed to centralize control of the smart home. They use multiple radios (such as Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Thread) and work locally in your home. As mentioned before, many can avoid the cloud entirely if you choose. Early players in this space — including Revolv, Iris, Wink, and the original SmartThings…

You should only consider a hub that is a Matter controller and a Thread border router

Platform / ecosystem hubs are newer entries in the smart home and are based around smart home ecosystems (also known as platforms) such as Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple Home. These all started as software-based systems, relying mainly on your phone, but many are now leaning into hardware hubs — incorporating one or two radios (such as Zigbee and Thread) in their smart speakers (Echo and Echo Shows) and streaming devices (Apple TV) to add local control. Plus, since Matter requires…

A cat in my hub cupboard — possibly the best way to show off a bunch of hubs and bridges. Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / HindiStatus.in

Most hubs can use a combination of local and cloud control. Local control is a key feature of many smart home hubs. This means your devices and your data stay on your local network, which is more secure and faster than relying solely on the cloud. Local control also means your routines and automations continue to function even if the internet is down (as long as the hub is powered).

A hub can also help incorporate devices that don’t rely on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth into your smart home. These include locks, lights, plugs, and sensors that use low-powered, low-bandwidth protocols like Zigbee, Z-Wave, and a newer option, Thread. (Cameras and streaming devices still need Wi-Fi for high-bandwidth data transfer.) These protocols use mesh networks, so the more devices you have, the stronger the connection between them will be. Additionally, a hub can provide a more stable internet…

What follows is an explanation of the main types of hubs that you can choose to run your smart home and, after that, a rundown of some of the best hubs to get started with.

Two types of hubs

The smart home hub has gone through a few iterations over the last decade, and today, there are (speaking broadly) two types of hubs to choose from: the multi-protocol hub and the platform / ecosystem hub. (There are also bridges and gateways, which serve a slightly different purpose — we’ll touch on those in a minute.)

The biggest difference between the two is that with the multi-protocol hub, your smart home can work with multiple platforms / ecosystems and all the major protocols. On the other hand, with the ecosystem hub, you are largely locked into that ecosystem (usually Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, or Google Home) and the radios that it supports. In other words, a multi-protocol hub can…