Aeotec Hub vs SmartThings Station vs my sanity
I am new to home automation, but have used Samsung's Modes and Routines extensively for at least a year. Because of this, my goal is to automate things like lights and motion sensors through SmartThings, ideally establishing an ecosystem that can be expanded upon indefinitely in the future.
The options for a smart hub at this point seem to be at best poorly managed, and at worst, intentionally unfair to buyers. One option that seems at least somewhat available in my country is the Aeotec Hub, which will support many older-gen SmartThings devices like ones that use Z-wave and Matter-over-WiFi. However, Samsung appears to be moving in the direction of Matter and Thread protocols, which the Aeotec Hub does not support.
Furthermore, the Samsung SmartThings Station, while including support for Matter and Thread devices, seems to have been scrubbed from the market in my country. It doesn't appear as an item on Samsung's website, and isn't even available used through other retail stores. I wouldn't even know how to get my hands on one of them unless I happened to know someone wanting to give theirs away, or found a way to import one from another country just to hope it will actually work.
The only other option seems to be what Samsung is pushing now: smart hubs embedded within larger appliances. On the SmartThings app, there is a list of items that can function as hubs, and among them is "Samsung Smart TVs released in 2022 or later". I actually purchased a 2026 TV for this reason, but, as it turns out, the information from the app was actually false, and it is only a select subset of smart TVs, refrigerators, or smart monitors that can host hubs. This forces buyers to spend at an order of magnitude more just to have a hub, and to replace any existing appliances with the new ones that have the hub integrated.
While supposedly designing a smart home ecosystem that is centered around being accessible, this decision on the company's part actually keeps most buyers from being able to have any smart home ecosystem, else they pay at minimum 300 USD for the smallest smart monitor with a hub (least expensive product with an integrated hub), whereas the standalone SmartThings Station would have been about one fifth that price at most. I have been a long term customer of Samsung devices, but this decision seems to be lost somewhere between mismanagement and greed.
So, looking at my options:
- Cave and buy an Aeotec Hub, knowing it won't be compatible with future devices
- Attempt to return or sell my TV and buy one twice as expensive
- Attempt to find a used SmartThings station from another country
- Wait until Samsung releases a new kind of separate hub? If that even happens?
All four ways, it seems like I lose. I would not want to abandon SmartThings entirely, but it seems as if my hand is being forced. Any tips?