[bioemerl]

In my experience both are dying in favor of iot/wifi stuff.

Zwave is still strong in the commercial space

ZigBee is strong in the consumer space, especially light bulbs that commercial systems do not want to use.

I'm thinking it'll be longer before zwave dies for real vs zigbee, but it will only live on the back of the big slow commercial entities that back it.

[horsawlarway]

I don't really see Zigbee dying right now. Hell - I used it before home automation was really a thing back in college almost 15 years ago now, and it's going strong today.

Hue has always been all-in on Zigbee. (incl the new 3.0 standard - https://developers.meethue.com/zigbee-3-0-support-in-hue-eco...)

Ikea has gone basically all-in on Zigbee (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ikea-smart-home-kit-reviewed...)

Amazon is embedding it their devices (At least 4 different models include a zigbee hub: https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/smarthome/zigb...)

Wifi is basically a non-starter for any real automation since it takes a boat load of power, and requires a non-local server (at least without some serious work on your part). It's a great intro spot for consumers who want to try a color changing bulb they can control with their phone, since the initial buy in cost is lower with no hub - but it's not really the same.

For z-wave on the other hand... I literally cannot find a place to buy a-19 standard socket bulbs that support it right now. Lots of "controller kits" but no bulbs.

Same for thermostats - there's like 3 z-wave thermostats on amazon right now. There are dozens of zigbee models.

Honestly - on Amazon at least, a lot of searches for "z-wave [device]" end up returning mostly zigbee results.

Ex: Go search Amazon for "Z-wave plug": Row 3 starts to return zigbee devices.

Go search again for "Zigbee plug": It's zigbee devices all the way down the page (one early result does both zigbee and z-wave, but otherwise you have scroll waaay down to see any overlap)

Basically - Having both Ikea and Amazon go in on Zigbee has radically shifted the market from where it was 3 years ago (when I would have probably agreed that z-wave was the better pick).

[bioemerl]

It's a very different experience if you go to Walmart and try to find smart devices.

ZigBee devices are still available, but companies I've seen that used to have them almost exclusively swapped to WiFi over time.

Hue is still ZigBee for example, but the old generic bulbs at home Depot? Gone. Liquidated. Nobody understands smart hubs. Everyone understands their app.

Bulbs, plugs, sockets, even thermostats. What do you think is the ratio of nest thermostats vs zigbee?

Big business buys thermostats from big retailers who sell in batches of hundreds. My dad's home, built a year or two ago, is wired up with zwave.

You don't see bulbs because the companies who set up zwave almost exclusively stick the switches in the wall and leave the lights dumb. Built to work for decades without configuration sort of thing.

My thinking is that the wifi stuff is going to eat ZigBees lunch, although your point about battery life is a very good one.

Zwave, in the space it's in, seems more durable to me. One day lights will go out and replaced with wifi bulbs that everyone can use, but the companies using zwave are way more picky and will not want to go wifi.

[bombcar]

The Hue bulbs are now primarily advertised as Bluetooth but apparently still have Zigbee to talk to hubs.

I've found that the color changing is cute for awhile and then I revert to "on/off" (and have actually decommissioned some of my Hues)