HomeKit Does it Matter to you?

[TVreporter]

Anyone else notice a sudden surge in sales on smart products - not just HomeKit but all of them.

Best Buy and Amazon, in particular, are having significant price reductions on a variety of products such as smart lights and cameras.

Makes me wonder if they’re tying to clear out inventory to prepare for Matter-included stock.

Big question is how many companies will just say their old stuff won’t work with Matter and try to push new merchandise?

Nanoleaf has already said its panels won’t be able to update to use Matter.

So do you buy the items on sale or wait it out and possibly pay more?

 

[Juicy Box]

I am not sure what to do myself.

When I bought my current home 1.5 years ago, I wanted to get a bunch of exterior cameras that were HomeKit compatible.

There were hardly any options then, and not really anymore now, almost two years later.

I am thinking of just getting a major brand now, one without HomeKit support, and hope it gets updated with Matter support sometime in the future.

 

[Itinj24]

If you’re going to continue to use HomeKit and not switch to Alexa or Google or whatever, then it doesn’t matter at all. The benefit of HomeKit users will be that there’s the prospect of being able to get devices in HomeKit that weren’t possible before (w/o HomeBridge). Otherwise, HomeKit will continue to work as always whether the devices are HomeKit or Matter certified.

Also, I’m pretty sure cameras are not part of the first wave of the Matter rollout so we’ll still be stuck with what’s available now.

 

[w5jck]

In the USA retail stores always start putting items on sale in October for Christmas time. We once had to wait until Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), but for the past several years sales start much earlier. Amazon is having their pre-Black Friday sale on Oct 11-12. When one retailer like Amazon has a sale, the others usually follow suit.

As far as home automation devices, it is still hit and miss and I'm not convinced that is going to change any time soon. Alexa is much better than Siri at it, but they both still suck. Too many bugs, too many compatibility issues, et cetera...