Samsung's SmartThings Station Is A Minimal Way To Add Matter To Your Smart Home
The Samsung SmartThings Station is a Matter compatible phone hub and charger!
It's been a great week for Samsung. The company has launched its latest range of smartphones including the Galaxy S23 Ultra, which features a 200MP primary camera. It's also a reminder that it's selling an ecosystem of devices, first with the announcement of the Windows-powered Galaxy Book 3 Pro range, which promises seamless integration with Samsung phones. Then with SmartThings to remind you that you're in the smart home that Samsung continues to use.
The company has been giving away the SmartThings station as a "gift" to core members. And since I was in San Francisco for an event, I brought one home. Last month at CES, Samsung announced the Matter-powered smart hub. It has a programmable button and wireless charging capabilities for your phone. The iPhone app also received an update to make it compatible with iOS 16.
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I have yet to purchase the Matter-compatible accessories to pair with the SmartThings station. There are a few options on the market so far, though there will be more this year. But I installed the SmartThings terminal to see what all the fuss was about. At just $80, it's a pretty cheap way to build a smart home if you haven't already, though I don't plan on giving up my current setup anytime soon.
Setting up the Samsung SmartThings Station is easy
The station has two indicators for SmartThings connectivity and wireless charging.
The SmartThings Station looks like any other charging pad, but it has two status indicators on the side: one for the hub and one for wireless charging. The station is compatible with Matter, Thread, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It can connect to all kinds of smart devices, including light bulbs, plugs, thermostats, and televisions. It also serves as a Zigbee controller. If you want additional Z-Wave connectivity, you'll still need to purchase an Aeotec SmartThings hub separately. However, most popular connected devices, such as Philips Hue smart bulbs, use Zigbee, which makes it a very handy protocol to have on hand.
SmartThings Station is not just a smart home hub. It also works with SmartThings Find to help you find any registered Samsung device, including Galaxy Buds and Galaxy Watch, or any device tagged with a Samsung SmartTag Bluetooth tracker. The maximum wireless charging output is 15W. My warning is that it will only charge as advertised if I plug it into an adapter with the proper power. I've had the best success with a 25 watt transformer. Anything less than 15W and the charge light will flash amber.
You set up your SmartThings station in less than ten minutes. After connecting, I didn't have to ask the app to set it up. When I opened SmartThings on my Pixel 7, it immediately asked me to add it to the network. And after clicking " Add Now " I took care of all the setup.
Samsung thinks it's a mobile device, which is why there's a button on the SmartThings terminal. The buttons are assigned three actions—click, hold, and double-click—and each can be programmed to trigger a specific routine. I've programmed my desk light to turn on and off with every touch, and I like that as an alternative to talking to Google (I don't talk to Bixby).
Where is the Samsung Home Hub?
A little over a year ago, Samsung said it would release the Home Hub, a tablet-like device for controlling SmartThings. A year passed, but he did not come. The SmartThings Station is a possibly more cost-effective alternative to building and maintaining an 8-inch tablet. Google will release the Pixel tablet this year as an addition to its ecosystem, and we wonder if Samsung will follow suit. But a quote from an interview between The Verge and Samsung's SmartThings head Jaeyeon Jung shows that the company will keep things simple in the smart home space:
We dropped the SmartThings brand and decided it would be better for consumers to have smart home capabilities in our products rather than buying separate devices.
It should be noted that the SmartThings Station is one of the few Matter-compatible devices that syncs with an iPhone. This week, Samsung updated the SmartThings iOS app with support for the protocol, which means roommates who use iPhones can set up SmartThings actions (though they can't use it to find your iPhone). It's nice to see another cross-platform alternative for iPhone users, although the SmartThings experience is different from the native integration offered by Apple Home. The Google Home app for iOS does not currently support Matter for iPhone users.
SmartThings Station works with all Samsung and Android devices running Android 8 or later. Sync with any Matter, ZigBee, BLE, and iOS device running iOS 14 or later. It is also compatible with 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi networks. It's available for $80 in black and white.
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