Samsung SmartThings Wifi review: A sensible choice for smart homes, but far from the best router - warfieldtonts1978

Michael Brunette / IDG

At a Glance

Skilful's Rating

Pros

A top-shelf smart home hub blended with a competent mesh WI-Fi router
Will blanket your home with Wi-Fi, Z-Wave, and Zigbee reporting
Supremely well-situated to settled up and use

Cons

With-it internal functions are highly obscure symbiotic
Zero dedicated network for radio receiver data backhaul
Non a great option for home certificate (no more LTE energy to fall back on)

Our Verdict

Samsung SmartThings Wireless fidelity is a much improve smart home hub than it is a router or a habitation security measure. But that doesn't entail information technology's not a good value for the right purchaser.

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Mesh tech is as beneficial to fast home devices as it is to interior networking, so it makes sense to deploy a unary product that can handle both missions—provided that exclusive device offers best-in-course of instruction execution in both areas. While the second-generation Samsung SmartThings Wifi interlocking router is a bully smart home plate hub, it's far from being a state-of-the-art router. Simply if you don't need a top-shelf router, and not everyone does, the SmartThings Wifi's price tag and its performance as a smart home hub renders it a good value.

SmartThings WiF as a smart home hub

In a way, the Samsung SmartThings WLAN ternary-tamp down reviewed Hera is an even bettor smart home hub than our top pick in that category—the thirdly-generation Samsung SmartThings Hub—simply because information technology has three nodes to the Hub's one. That said, we're sticking with our recommendation of the SmartThings Hub atomic number 3 the primo smart plate organization for most citizenry because the SmartThings WiF router simply isn't the best interlocking router you can buy. You won't want to supervene upon a superior router with this one just to get a wise home hub.

Like the SmartThings Hub, the SmartThings Wifi router is outfitted with Z-Wave, Zigbee, and Bluetooth radios, so it can control some any smart home device on the market (although you'll allay need a Philips Hue Bridge to control that brand of lighting; ditto mark for Lutron ironware). Adding Wi-Fi expands SmartThings' hit to smart home devices that don't rely on Z-Waving, Zigbee, or Bluetooth (e.g., LIFX smart bulbs). If your abode operating theatre apartment is small and you don't pauperism the range that this $280 three-pack promises, you can buoy buy a single SmartThings Wifi for $120—that should be enough to cover 1,500 square feet. As wel, if your interior is larger than 4,500 square feet, you backside buy more satellites to expand the meshing's turn over. I tested the three-node system in my own 2,800-square-foot smart home.

smartthings wifi smart home devices — SmartThings supports just about all smart home twist you could possibly want.

Z-Brandish and Zigbee are mesh networks, too, sol all smart home device equipped with one of those radios butt act as some a guest and a repeater. As such, the more compatible devices you deploy around your home, the greater the range of the two networks.

A Z-Wave radio, however, can't have and duplicate Zigbee traffic, and vice versa. Spreadhead the three SmartThings WLAN nodes close to your home, and you'll effectively blanket it with coverage for every trinity networks: Z-Moving ridge, Zigbee, and Wi-Fi.

Three downsides you'll want to be aware of: First, both the SmartThings Wifi and the SmartThings Hub are very much cloud dependent. Numerous of their smart home features won't work if you drop off your connection to the internet—in the event of a power failure, for instance.

Second, SmartThings isn't a great habitation security system because Samsung doesn't offer a professional monitoring service. If there's a break-in or a sens detector goes off in the event of a fire, you'll need to shout the authorities yourself.

Ultimately, neither SmartThings device includes an LTE module for computer backup. If an intruder is automatic plenty to cut your phone or cable describe before tripping a sensor, SmartThings won't be able to alert you.

If you find the net two features important, you might consider a Ring Warning device as an alternative to SmartThings. To be clear, Ring Alarm does not stimulate an integrated router. And like SmartThings, it is also dependent on the overcast, but signing dormy for an optional-but-inexpensive professional monitoring service ($10 per month) activates an LTE module for cellular reliever. If you sign up for that service and someone breaks in while the system is armed, a Closed chain representative dismiss dispatch the police to your home (they'll attempt to tangency you first, to avoid coverage a false alarm).

On the new give, the Encircle ecosystem includes a fraction of the compatible smart home devices that you'll find with SmartThings. Click here to see a list of Kit and caboodle with Halo devices, and click present to see a list Works with SmartThings components. In other words, SmartThings is the better smart-home arrangement, only Ring is a amended home security system system that also has smart home features.

SmartThings WiF as router

SmartThings Wifi is much little awing as a router. It's an AC1300-class, twofold-isthmus twist, meaning it's based on the 802.11ac protocol (Wi-Fi 5) and that information technology operates one network on the 5GHz frequency band delivering up to 866Mbps of bandwidth, and a second net on the 2.4GHz bandwidth oblation adequate to 400Mbps (summate the two numbers and you engender 1,266, but Samsung—like all other router producer—rounds upwards).

smartthings wifi ports — Like many mesh Wi-Fi routers, the SmartThings WiF has just a mate of gigabit ethernet ports.

Unlike high-end mesh routers, such as the Linksys Velop ($385 on Amazon for a three-node system) or Netgear Orbi RBK50 ($295 on Amazon for a deuce-node system), SmartThings Wireless fidelity does non operate a third meshing that's holy to information backhaul from the satellites to the router. Then, in add-on to delivering to a lesser extent bandwidth than more expensive routers, some of that bandwidth is consumed by information backhaul. TP-Link's Deco M9 Plus net router also dedicates a one-third wireless network to information backhaul, and it has an integrated smart home hub. But the Art deco M9 Plus supports only Zigbee and non Z-Wave.

All the nodes in the SmartThings Wifi three-tamp down are identical until you set the system up, at which point the first device that you hardwire to your broadband gateway becomes the router and the unusual two become satellites when you add together them. Installation is handled through a mobile app, and the system is quick and unchaste to set upbound.

Each device has a two 1Gbps ethernet ports, then if you have the base to support it, you can hardwire the satellites directly to your router for tense backhaul that will be much faster than relying on Wi-Fi. This leave also render the absence of a dedicated network for wireless backhaul moot, but near homes assume't have ethernet in the walls. (Mine does, but I didn't benchmark the organization that way.) If you have more than one device that you want to hardwire to the router, you'll need to bribe a switch.

samsung smartthings wifi performance — Compared to most of the new meshing routers we've benchmarked, the SmartThings Wifi is a slowpoke.

One feature that those more-expensive routers get into't possess is Plume's Adaptive WiFi technology, which Plume says will analyze your network traffic and optimise its performance so that each guest connects to the node that testament deliver optimal bandwidth for its of necessity. So, Plume might help make the all but of the bandwidth that the SmartThings Wireless local area network can offer, simply that doesn't change the fact that the SmartThings Wifi offers less bandwidth to begin with compared to some other routers.

samsung smartthings wifi plume app — The three dots on this screenshot of the Plume app represent the SmartThings WiF router (green) and its deuce satellites. The dots orbiting each node represent the intended clients.

Samsung likewise relies on Plume for parental controls and anti-malware protective cover, which means you'll need to switch back and forth between that and the SmartThings app, depending on what you need to do. (Clicking happening the Advanced Settings tab in the SmartThings app launches the Plume app.)

You can assign each device along the meshing to a menag member's visibility, so you can control when that device can access the internet and what it's allowed to do while online. That type of parental control is more and more table bet for consumer routers these days.

Bottom rail line

Viewed as a smart home hub, SmartThings Wifi is an fantabulous solution unless you targe to its dependence happening the cloud, surgery you'rhenium looking for a home security system that bum personify professionally monitored. Given that you can deploy information technology in multiples as part of a operate meshing, it's an yet better impertinent dwelling house hub than the latest stand-alone SmartThings Hub. But don't give up a superior router you might already have just to get a shrewd home hub. Buy the SmarThings Hub, instead.

SmartThings WLAN is less impressive when viewed as a mesh router, because information technology doesn't offer nearly equally much bandwidth as umpteen other mesh routers we've tried. If you need a smart-home hub and a high-performance home electronic network, you're better off buying discrete components for each job. If you want to physique stunned a smart home, but you have just a couple of devices that penury WI-Fi access simultaneously, SmartThings WiF will save you hard cash and be easier to manage. After all, there's no mother wit in paying for router performance you don't need.

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Michael is TechHive's lead editor and covers the voguish home and nursing home entertainment markets. He stacked his own smart zero in 2007, which atomic number 2 uses as a real-world test science lab when reviewing new products. Michael also reviews routers and networking products for TechHive and PCWorld.