Eero co-founder and CEO Nick Weaver confirmed at a Verge event that the company’s wifi routers will be ready for the smart home future.
Eero has long been an adopter of the Thread standard, which operates on a 2.4 GHz band and offers mesh networking-like benefits for connecting and controlling smart home devices. Since Thread is one of the requirements of the forthcoming Matter smart home standard, along with Bluetooth and wifi, Eero will upgrade its equipped routers to support Matter once it’s available in 2022. Eero confirmed to Gizmodo that the Eero Pro, Eero Beacon, Eero 6, and Eero Pro 6 would all support the Matter standard over Thread once it’s available.
Eero has long supported the Thread protocol, but Weaver said “it does feel different this time.”
Thread has for years been used across various connected devices, including Google’s Nest Hub Max, Belkin’s popular Wemo smart plug, and several of Nanoleaf’s lighting products, including its smart bulb and light strip. (It’s also baked into the HomePod Mini.) But Thread hasn’t become the great smart home unifier despite its perceived upsides, likely because of slow adoption. Over the last few years, it failed to catch on as Zigbee and Z-wave did.
That’s all going to change once Matter comes into the picture. The new standard has the support of all the major players, including Google, which just last week announced it’s doubling down and working to help third-party smart home developers add Matter support to their gadgets, as well as Apple.
Eero’s parent company, Amazon, has also declared support for Matter, though the software development kit is geared toward Alexa-compatible devices.
Weaver also mentioned at the event that Eero was considering the idea of a cellular backup system for its Eero routers. This is similar to how security systems like Amazon’s Ring use cellular backup if the home internet goes out and it can’t reach back to base. If Eero routers were to have a SIM baked in, it could help keep your smart home online so that your lights and fans work even in a network outage.
It’s always good news when another company or device maker comes on board with support for something that could help unite the connected ecosystems we’ve built at home. But the fact remains that there is no globally set launch date for Matter, and these announcements benefit developers prepping their product lineups for the launch rather than those of us spending the money. Until Matter officially rolls out, we’ll just be over here waiting.