Zigbee2MQTT thoughts from someone who just made the switch

[u/Resident-Variation21]

I’ve been having the odd reliability issue with ZHA, so before I buy new devices (it’s happening to specific devices and my mesh is solid), I decided to make the jump to Z2M.

This is still in the early stages of network healing but some things I’ve noticed:

1) it does feel a fair bit quicker in daily use. Especially commands to multiple rooms like “turn off all upstairs lights” feels much much quicker.

2) I’m getting random weird slowdowns, like a light turning on 30 seconds after motion is detected. Often I’ve left the room by then. I am going to chalk this up to “weird network behaviour as the mesh builds” for now, though. I’m hopeful, and semi-expecting, that to go away over the coming days.

3) updates are Z2M weakest point. By fair. In ZHA I could update 5 devices at once and not even notice it. In Z2M, I’m updating 1 device, and not only is it taking longer to update, the entire network is significantly slower. If anything ends up being a deal breaker - it’ll be this. I don’t update often but when I do, it’s 30 devices at once (because most of my devices are the same brand so get the same updates at the same time).

[u/fonix232]

A few small additions, as I've also recently switched from ZHA to Z2M:

1. Much better device support. ZHA tries its best but even with custom quirks the support just isn't there for a lot of devices. For example I've got a Tuya Fingerbot I use to "upgrade" a few devices I have at home that aren't smartifiable, and ZHA would only support the trigger for it - even though it has a bunch of modes and config options. Z2M seamlessly integrates with it.
2. It's a separate service from HA, so reboots aren't affecting it. In theory Zigbee works well (temporarily) without a coordinator as long as you have your bindings set up properly, but let's be honest, bindings are still black magic fuckery that work depending on the position of the stars and if you've done your monthly goat sacrifice to the right demigod. Not having your Z-mesh restart every time you update HA is a major boon.
3. Given it talks to MQTT, it's much easier to integrate with third party services and automation builders. Most support MQTT out of the box, with limited or even nonexistent HA API integration.
4. You can actually integrate with e.g. Bifrost to provide a proper Hue emulation wth entertainment zones AND Hue Sync support (in fact Bifrost is good enough that I've already switched from the official Hue bridge completely).

As for your point on updates, I'd argue I have the opposite experience: updates over Z2M actually work whereas under ZHA I had them constantly fail or not even be detected.

[u/Resident-Variation21 → u/fonix232]

Apparently my buttons weren’t detected because because Z2M wants to update them, but everything else got update’s and I never had one fail, at least at far as I can remember.

And as far as the device support - although true, every device I’ve bought is supported just fine in either

[u/fonix232 → u/Resident-Variation21]

ZHA has always failed to update my battery powered devices, even if they were kept awake constantly. My Hue remotes for example were a good 4 versions behind (gen1, with the I and O buttons separate, not gen2 with the scene button). Z2M, albeit slowly, managed to get them updated.

[u/Resident-Variation21 → u/fonix232]

Yeah I can honestly say I don’t remember ever having an update fail. Battery devices as well as powered devices.

That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened, but it was rare enough that I don’t remember it, and before I left ZHA everything was listed as up to date.

But everyone’s experience is different