Apple’s announcement of a big pile of LG- and- Schneider-developed smart home gear—alongside its new HomePod mini 2 and HomeView smart display gadgets—carries a bonus for non-Apple users. With the exception of LG’s new cameras, each of the new devices supports Matter, meaning although the company presents them primarily as Apple Home devices, you can use them with any old ecosystem you like.
For those who may not know, Apple is a major contributor to Matter, and the protocol is partly based on Apple’s HomeKit tech. It’s encouraging that the new LG smart lock and LG and Schneider thermostats and temperature sensors will work in other smart home ecosystems. (The company hasn’t yet updated its system to the version of the protocol that works with cameras.) Before I settled on Apple Home, I switched between all three of the major platforms and had to leave behind some devices I liked because, back then, the smart home was walled gardens as far as the eye could see.
Other companies that participate in the Matter effort include Google, Samsung, and Amazon. Yet of these four big companies, only Google has actually produced Matter-compatible accessories: two of its Nest thermostat devices. Devices made by Amazon and its subsidiaries, Ring and Blink, don’t work outside of the Amazon software umbrella. And Samsung’s smart home appliances tend to have per-platform third-party ecosystem support rather than Matter compatibility. All three companies do at least sell Matter hubs, so they’ll gladly control your third-party Matter accessories.
Bully for Apple, right? Well, there’s one potential wrinkle in that you might still need to pair the new Matter products with an Apple Home hub first to bridge them to another ecosystem. The fine print at the bottom of LG’s version of the announcement today says using these new devices “requires an Apple home hub.” I’ve reached out to LG and Apple to ask whether you can add these devices to other ecosystems without an Apple Home hub as an intermediary.
Being more open than the likes of Google and Amazon doesn’t really let Apple off the hook completely. After all, smaller smart home companies that have their own smart hubs, like Aqara and Anker, still sell Matter accessories (such as the Aqara Smart Lock U400 or Anker-owned Eufy’s Robot Vacuum Omni E35) that freely work inside other platforms out of the box. But hey, when it comes to Apple, I’ll take all the cross-compatibility I can get.
