The smart home world is continually moving toward Matter, and Aqara is one of the companies driving this transition forward at a steady pace with its new products this year. Their latest hub, the Aqara Hub M200, replaces their older hubs and features a cleaner design, along with support for Matter. For HomeKit users, this means another step toward a future where more Aqara accessories can integrate seamlessly with the Home app, while still leveraging the benefits of Zigbee behind the scenes.
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What the Aqara Hub M200 does for HomeKit
The Aqara Hub M200 serves as the new entry point into the Aqara ecosystem, unlocking numerous low-cost accessory options. At its core, it is a Zigbee 3.0 hub that supports Matter and therefore HomeKit. That means accessories paired to the M200 can be shared with HomeKit through Matter, giving Apple users an easy path to bring switches, sensors, buttons, and other Aqara gear into the Home app. This is very similar to how the Hub M3 works, but in a more compact design.
Matter is the piece Apple and HomeKit fans will care about, though if you are using HomeKit as your primary smart home platform, the M200 serves as a hub that easily brings supported Aqara accessories into HomeKit. There is no need to manage multiple ecosystems. As the Matter specification changes, upgrades and adds new functionality, more Aqara products will be compatible with the M200 and automatically appear in HomeKit to function alongside your other gear.
Why Aqara is still important in a Matter world
Even with Matter rolling out across the industry, Zigbee remains a rock-solid protocol with low-cost devices that people still love. Aqara sensors are known for their speed, power efficiency, and reliability. The Aqara Hub M200 allows you to leverage all the benefits of Zigbee while also participating in the Matter ecosystem as well. For Apple users, this means you can build out your smart home with Aqara sensors that cost significantly less than Wi-Fi-only options, while still enjoying full HomeKit access through Matter. One nice feature of the Wi-Fi is that it supports both 2.4 and 5 GHz connections.
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The Hub M200 also supports the new Aqara Mobile Scenes feature, which enables you to trigger multi-device scenes by long pressing your iPhone or iPad. It is not a HomeKit feature, but it is a nice convenience add-on if you want fast access to a routine without opening the Home app. It will really depend on whether you do much with the Aqara ecosystem outside of HomeKit support.
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