What is Matter and Why Does it Matter?

What is Matter and Why Does it Matter?

Matter is a new way to connect all of your smart home products seamlessly.

In the past few years, the market for smart home products has grown beyond Google Home and Amazon Alexa. We’re still speaking to the technology in our home, but for more than just “Alexa, play Despacito”. Lighting, security, cleaning and fridges are all staples in our smart homes, but they usually requires several different apps and connections to get them working. With a variety of brands stepping into the smart home space, the market has become fragmented in a way that is now more of a chore than the automated magic we originally signed up for.

This is where Matter comes in. A collaboration in 2019 between Amazon, Apple, Google and other brands in the smart home market resulted in Matter, an open-source platform that reliably unifies these products.

Matter Smart Home
Image: Google

While Matter’s biggest drawing card is the way it connects different devices in the home, the fact that it can connect these devices locally — without an internet connection — is even more appealing.

What do you need to use Matter?

In order to use Matter, you’ll need a controller to network your individual smart devices into one glorious smart home. The great news is, most hub devices like Amazon Echo, Google Nest and Apple HomePod are already compatible with Matter and can be used as your smart home controller without purchasing any additional hardware. A variety of smart speakers and apps can also work as Matter controllers. Matter is an open-source standard so it doesn’t have it’s own Controller. This means you will need to own something that can be used as a Controller.

As for Matter devices, most of them are already in your home. Smart devices from Apple, Samsung, Amazon and Google are all compatible with Matter and more are on the way.

Matter products began being released in late 2022, so look out for more compatible products to add to your smart home setup.


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.