Samsung’s SmartThings Station is a smart home hub worth plugging in

SmartThings is an automation platform that can connect devices from different manufacturers and let you use them in scenes and automations. You can use the SmartThings app without a hub to control many devices through cloud connections, including Ring cameras, Philips Hue lights, and Google Nest thermostats and cameras. But those devices need to work over Wi-Fi or through a bridge that connects to Wi-Fi, which rules out a lot of smart door locks, smart sensors, and smart lighting solutions.

Adding a hub allows you to connect SmartThings-certified Zigbee devices and Thread devices directly to SmartThings locally. The Station is both a hub and a Matter controller, so you can also onboard any Matter device to your smart home network. There, you can control it with the SmartThings app or pair it with any other Matter-enabled app — such as Apple Home, Google Home, or Amazon Alexa — through the SmartThings app. Matter should bring more locally-controlled devices to the platform and open it to some manufacturers that didn’t work with it before (including Eve, Aqara, and Thread devices from Nanoleaf).

One protocol the Station doesn’t support that is a big part of SmartThings is Z-Wave. For that, you’d need the Aeotec Smart Home Hub for SmartThings ($135), which is a SmartThings-compatible hub that supports all the protocols (but it’s not going to charge your smartphone). The SmartThings Hub Dongle has the same radio capabilities as the Station and is only $35. It will get an update to Matter / Thread later this year, but it has to be plugged into a Samsung TV or fridge. (Yes, you can control your smart home with a refrigerator.)

The good news is that you can run multiple SmartThings hubs, so if you started with the Station and then decided you did want to add Z-Wave, you could integrate an Aeotec hub into your setup. But Samsung told me that for entirely local automations, all devices involved must be on the same hub. If your devices are on different hubs, the automations on them will run in the cloud.

Setting up and using the Station with Matter

Setting up the Station is straightforward; you just need the SmartThings app on either iOS or Android. It’s one of the first Matter controllers that works with both platforms (Samsung updated its iOS app to support Matter earlier last month; Google and Amazon have yet to release their iOS Matter apps). Open the app, tap the plus symbol in the top-right corner, select “add device,” select Samsung under brands, select Smart Home Hub, choose SmartThings Station, and follow the steps.

Once connected, you can onboard devices to the hub in a similar way. Tap “add device” and either scan the device’s QR code or choose from the other options. SmartThings can also auto-scan for devices using its Matter Easy Pair feature. This only works with Galaxy phones, which detect any Matter device broadcasting a BLE beacon and send a pop-up notification to your phone asking if you want to add it.

I set up a Matter-enabled Eve Motion sensor using the Station, and it worked smoothly. A notification appeared on the Galaxy S22 I was testing with, and it prompted me to scan the device’s Matter QR code. Then, once it had been added, I chose which room it was in and named it. From there, I set up a routine using the motion sensor to turn on some Philips Hue lights connected to SmartThings via the Hue bridge.

The automation ran promptly and reliably, with the bulbs turning on smoothly a second or so after motion was detected. However, when I added some Nanoleaf light panels and Lutron smart switches to the automation (both of which are connected through the cloud), there was noticeable lag, and the lights popped on in a random sequence.

SmartThings is easily the most powerful mainstream smart home system you can choose, short of setting up your own Home Assistant server — and it’s a lot easier to use. It works with IFTTT-style automation and allows for conditions and multiple actions. This means you can create more intricate and specific automations than those offered by Apple Home and Amazon’s Alexa platform. And it blows Google Home’s paltry options out of the water.

For example, I set an automation to turn on a smart plug connected to a fan in the chicken coop when it’s over 80 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny — but only if I’m at home and the chicken coop door is closed. SmartThings is able to tie automations to a specific time period, presence, device state, weather, and mode.

The mode feature is particularly helpful for me. You can choose from Home, Away, or Night and tailor automations around them. My husband works 24-hour shifts, so if I add the “Only if location is in Home mode” condition to my automations, I can activate the Night mode while he’s sleeping during the day to make sure nothing accidentally runs and wakes him up.

SmartThings Station as a smart home button

The button on the Station can be a remote control for any scenes or automation you create. For example, I set the Night mode scene to turn on with a single press. This way, when my husband comes home and needs to sleep, he can just press it once and know that he won’t get disturbed. I haven’t found a solution to that problem as simple as this on the other platforms I’ve tested.

The button can be configured to run up to three scenes or automations or just control a single device. In addition to single press, there’s also the option to double press or long press. When you first set up the Station, it prompts you to set the double press action to ring your Samsung phone (it only works with Samsung phones), so you can find it if it’s in your house. Interestingly, if you turn this on, you can still use the double press to trigger a smart home device. I set it to turn on a light in the hallway, and it did both simultaneously.