WiZ, the smart lighting company owned by Signify, who also owns Philips Hue, has issued an update for its smart bulbs, lamps, and plugs – as long as they were manufactured in Q2 of 2021 or later – to make them compatible with Matter. With the updated WiZ app, users can migrate any compatible product to Matter directly in the app and add them to any Matter-compatible platform, including, you guessed it, Apple Home, so you’ll no longer have to rely on workaround like HomeBridge or even Siri Shortcuts to get your WiZ lights working alongside other HomeKit/Matter devices.
The app will generate a brand new Matter code on a ‘per-device’ basis, which you will then need to add to your Matter ecosystem of choice. Note that this also means you might have to remove them from your preferred platform first to possibly avoid duplicate devices.
Even though these products will now work natively with Apple Home, WiZ products already work with Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings. However, with the Matter update you no longer have to connect a WiZ account to these platforms, which also means all connectivity does away with cloud-based control and becomes totally local.
Whilst WiZ offers a wide range of smart lighting options, like their sister company, Philips Hue, WiZ products work utilise Wi-Fi which means you could easily start to overwhelm an underpowered router, whilst Hue products use Zigbee, and therefore use the company’s Hue Bridge which takes a lot of the strain from your network. Hue does plan on making their Hue Bridge officially Matter compatible too, although this will only apply to the bridge, not individual lights, which will retain the use of Zigbee.
It should also be noted that this update currently seems to only apply to North American users, so WiZ users in Europe and elsewhere will have to wait a while longer for the update to appear in the WiZ app. You can view the WiZ lineup of products on Amazon.com.