Whilst Matter has yet to make an appearance, there are signs that its arrival is finally within sight, with more and more companies making announcements for the future of their products. Some of these could be seen as non-committal, merely serving as a way to make some organisations appear relevant without actually appearing to do much. It’s a different story with Aqara however, who have already stated that their two flagship hubs, the Aqara Hub M2, and the Aqara Hub M1S, will both be receiving OTA updates to make them Matter compliant, and by extension the child devices that connect to them (in theory).
The even better news revealed via the company’s recent live stream – ostensibly about their Amazon Prime Day deals – is that they’ll also be including additional hubs to receive this all-important Matter update. The hubs that will get the Matter ‘bump’ are the USB Hub E1, which many contemplated would not be powerful enough of a device for such an update, along with the Camera Hub G3, and the Camera Hub G2H Pro. To be clear on the latter two, the Matter update is only for the hub portion of these devices, not the camera functionality, as Matter will not support security cameras in its initial release stage.
The M2 & M1S are slated for the update a short time after Matter begins to be released, in Q4 of 2022. The G3, G2H Pro, and E1 will reportedly get the Matter update sometime in 2023, with no more definitive date than that.
This leaves out the original M1, which is no surprise, given it doesn’t even have Zigbee 3.0, but also kicks the original Camera Hub G2H to the curb, despite it actually containing a Zigbee 3.0 hub. This also doesn’t come as a massive surprise given the lack of love shown this device in terms of spotty support for newer child devices from Aqara.
All in all, this is a very good sign for the forthcoming Smart Home Standard in general, and a clear commitment from Aqara going forward.