What are Zigbee networks, and should you use them in your smart home?

Smart home connectivity often needs to work between very different devices like lights, sensors, door locks, and thermostats. Making things more complex is the fact that some of these devices are low-power and use batteries, so any wireless connectivity would also need to be low-power and likely, low-range. Several overarching connectivity protocols, such as Matter, Z-Wave, and Zigbee, have been developed to avoid vendor lock-in and platform plays like those of Alexa, Google Home, and HomeKit.