I own multiple brands of products, some matter, some matter over thread. I primarily use zigbee with my Aqara products.
I’ve tried to switch to matter over thread on Apple Home only to move away from zigbee, and my products are extremely unresponsive. The T2’s were noticeably a problem after switching to thread, like worse than my cheap Linkind bulbs.
Is zigbee just that much better? The difference was pretty major, and I have an ATV 3rd gen with thread hard wired, and 3 HomePods, 1 which is fairly close to my main T2’s.
Zigbee is still a lot more mature than Matter over Thread, especially for lighting. Thread is improving, but some ecosystems like Apple Home can still introduce delays or weird routing when the network gets busy.
If you want the most responsive setup today, I’d keep the T2 on Zigbee through your Aqara hub. Matter is great for sharing devices across ecosystems, but for real-time lighting control Zigbee is usually the smoother option.
If you want, you can also enable local automations v2 on your hub so everything runs even faster. And if you ever see abnormal delays on Thread again, it’s worth checking with Aqara support, since they can look at the device logs and confirm if the issue comes from the Thread network itself or the platform.
Unsure, my FP300 (And seems quiet a few others) is pretty much the same way. My cheap linkind bulbs are more responsive than the T2’s with thread by a mile. Seems to be an Aqara problem for those not using Home Assistant.
Thread can be very reliable and responsive, but it does require a solid underlying network. I’ve seen people struggle with Thread in ways that don’t make sense - so I’d say something is amiss in your set up.
You should make sure your M3 and Apple hubs are sharing the same thread network. You can do this by going to your M3s network settings.
And also be sure you have IPv6 turned on your home network as your thread border routers need it. I think if you didn’t you’d see total failure, but worth double checking.
I have Starlink, 3 XE75’s primary is wired. Also ATV 3rd gen is wired, and so was my M3 before it died after 2 months.
All within 15 feet of the bulbs and FP300. The entire reason I switched to thread was because my hub failed. Nothing Aqara was usable on thread compared to zigbee.
I still have a G410 and a M100 and they share the same thread network. IPv6 is on, iot on and off made no difference.
I’m going to reply this to you, not sure if you’re able to pass info along or not. The FP300 was nearly useless on thread, but I have a vast Aqara system.
Upon removing the M3, the M100, and the G410 hubs, the Thread Network instantly started to work as it needed. It was the Aqara hubs creating the issue. I’m removing them getting ready for my HA green to show up. It was so obvious I felt a reply was necessary.