MatterNews

Xiaomi Joins The Matter Party with New Smart Bulb

In what may either be a surprise or an inevitability, Xiaomi has now announced its first Matter-enabled lighting product, a smart colour bulb. Unsurprisingly, the bulb follows a standard path in terms of what is offered; 16 million colours, along with colour temperature, topping out at 806lm and 8.5w, which matches older Philips Hue lights.



8.5w is for Europe and other locations that use the 220~240V standard, whilst places that use 110~120V (like the US, Taiwan or Japan) can expect slightly less power at 7.8W.

As you can guess, Xiaomi has taken the WiFi path towards Matter, so no Thread is used in the new bulb. This, however, does make adoption easier, and keeps prices slightly lower, which Xiaomi is traditionally known for. This in turn means it’ll work with Apple Home, as well as Aqara’s own platform, as long as you have an Aqara Hub M3.

It’s also able to use legacy connectivity with Amazon Alexa and Google Home, if you don’t want to use Matter, although this means you’ll be reliant on a cloud connection, that isn’t required with Matter. The bulb will work in Xiaomi’s own ecosystem using Xiaomi HyperOS as the company don’t yet make a Matter Controller that would facilitate using Matter on that platform.



This move is inevitable perhaps, as pretty much most major brands, alongside even very small startups, have adopted Matter as their standard of choice, so Xiaomi would look a bit behind if it didn’t at least try. All that said, this could be a case of too little too late, as Aqara has now introduced its own smart bulbs that not only offer Matter over Thread, but also give users the option to use Zigbee 3.0 if they prefer. That alone should make the Xiaomi option less appealing to many except for diehard Mi Home app users. Aqara’s bulbs go even further, offering a maximum brightness of 1100lm (for the E26/27 bulbs) as well as making GU10 bulbs for both colour and colour temperature, as well as colour temperature only versions.

There’s no word on whether Xiaomi’s bulbs will support Adaptive Lighting, but given past HomeKit compatible lighting products haven’t supported this standard, it’s unlikely these will either, even if Matter has the option to support it.

You can find out more on these bulbs from Xiaomi’s global website.

The Editor

Editor - Musician, graphic designer and HomeKit aficionado.

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