Matter has gone from a handful of devices to more than 750 listed products in three years, yet the people who actually buy smart home gear still hit walls that the standard was supposed to remove.
The Connectivity Standards Alliance's cross-vendor protocol was pitched as the thing that would end the era of buying a smart bulb and hoping it works with your hub. In 2026 that promise is half-kept. Hardware is plentiful and cheap, with Ikea shipping Matter-certified devices for under ten dollars and Aqara, Bosch, Philips Hue, Yale, and others adding Thread radios to new products. The software layer, controlled by Amazon, Apple, Google, and Samsung, has not kept pace.
That gap is the story this year. Thread 1.4, published in fall 2024 by the Thread Group, standardizes credential sharing between border routers so a new router joins an existing mesh instead of spinning up its own. Since January 1, 2026, newly certified border routers must meet Thread 1.4, and the CSA's Matter 1.4.2 spec requires border routers and network infrastructure managers to be certified for it. SmartThings implemented the feature first, Ikea followed. The rest of the market is still catching up.
Thread 1.4 Fixes the Mesh, If Platforms Actually Ship It
Parallel Thread networks are a common cause of connection problems in everyday use. A house with two border routers from different brands often ends up with two separate meshes, and devices hop between them or drop off entirely. Thread 1.4's credential sharing is meant to stop that by letting a new border router request access to the existing network.
The catch is that the feature only works if both sides implement it. Ann Olivo, head of marketing at the Thread Group, told The Verge that new border routers can now only be certified with Thread 1.4. But certification of hardware is not the same as ecosystem support. Many platforms are still on Matter 1.2 or 1.3, and Amazon claims Matter 1.4 SDK support while offering only a selection of the features it contains. As the matter-smarthome review put it, time is on the side of the standard, but whether Thread 1.4 becomes the norm across all platforms by the end of 2026 remains to be seen.
Battery life is the other Thread problem. Zigbee has had two decades of optimization behind it, with longer sleep cycles, less encryption overhead, and no IPv6 protocol weight. Thread is newer and carries more overhead, and Aqara's FP300 multi-sensor illustrates the gap: up to three years on Zigbee, roughly two years on Thread. Real-world numbers can be worse when the mesh is unstable and devices wake repeatedly to search for a connection.
The Big Ecosystems Are the Bottleneck
Hardware makers have done their part. Ikea alone added more than 20 new Thread products, and the company has stopped printing "Works with" logos on packaging, using only the Matter logo instead. That is a bet on the standard itself, but it also shifts the burden of figuring out compatibility onto buyers.
The platforms form a layer between devices and the standard, and they decide which functions actually reach the user. Google Home has not made the generic switches from the first Matter release available to its users, and the Ikea Bilresa remote control does not work in the Google ecosystem. The Klippbok water detector fails to integrate with Amazon because Alexa does not yet support leak sensors. These are not edge cases. They are basic device types that the standard already defines.
Even when a device is recognized, its feature set varies by platform. Matter 1.4 allows robot vacuums to clean a specific area of the home through the Service Area Cluster, but only if both the vacuum and the platform support it. Apple Home added that capability in iOS 18.4 for Roborock and SwitchBot vacuums, even though most of Matter 1.4 is still missing from Apple Home. That kind of partial implementation is exactly what confuses buyers, who cannot tell from a logo what a device will actually do in their house.
For buyers, the practical advice is unglamorous. Check which Matter version a device is certified for, check which version your platform supports, and expect gaps. The matter-smarthome.de index lists over 750 products, most available or about to launch, but the Distributed Compliance Ledger that the CSA runs as a blockchain directory often shows devices before they are certified, with little more than a name. There is no single authoritative place to check compatibility, and the colorful "Works with" logos that platforms use do not provide full clarity either.
Cameras and Power Management Round Out the Spec
Matter 1.5 added cameras to the specification, extending the standard beyond switches and sensors into a category that most households already own. The new nRF54 chip series from Nordic Semiconductor targets the power gap, aiming to bring Thread battery life closer to Zigbee levels. Products certified under Matter 1.4 are now reaching shelves with optimized sleep behavior for sensors and wireless buttons, which check in less often without losing their network status.
The honest assessment is that Matter is making real progress at a remarkable pace, but the open issues from last year are still open. The standard now covers more than 750 products according to the matter-smarthome.de index, yet vendor and platform communication about implementation status remains thin. References to Matter are often buried in technical data sheets, and when they appear they rarely specify which version or which features are supported.
It is not clear this will hold. The CSA and the Thread Group have tightened certification rules, which should force convergence over time. But the big ecosystems have their own incentives to steer users toward first-party features, and nothing in the certification process compels Amazon or Google to ship every cluster they claim to support. The grassroots growth is real, and Home Assistant and Homey are building alternatives that could pressure the incumbents. Whether that pressure translates into consistent platform behavior is the question for 2027, and buyers will keep paying the price in the meantime.
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