Matter Residences is located in a desirable location with easy accessibility to various amenities and transport options. It is within walking distance to NTUC Fairprice, schools like Canossa Catholic Primary School, Geylang Methodist Primary School and Macpherson Secondary School as well as many eateries and food centres such as Sims Vista Market & Food Centre and 80 Circuit Road Market & Food Centre.
As a smart home protocol, Matter doesn’t have an app of its own and isn’t a platform. That means the actual user experience will still be up to the platforms, but because the devices all speak the same language, it should work in most apps on any ecosystem.
However, it’s important to note that the first version of Matter doesn’t have a complete feature set. For example, it won’t include more advanced features, such as energy monitoring in smart plugs or complex scene control for smart lights. The hope is that developers and ecosystems will add more functionality to the standard in the future, which should expand its utility.
The other caveat is that because the protocol is so new, there aren’t a lot of products on the market that support it yet. This should change over time as more and more brands start to adopt it. But for now, you’ll need to pick a platform that supports Matter.
If you’re looking to buy a Matter-compatible device, you should know that the controllers play an essential role in your smart home. They onboard the devices to your home’s network, manage communications and enable you to control them and create automations. The controllers also serve as backups, providing failsafes if your Wi-Fi goes down.
Matter controllers are built into the flagship hubs and speakers of the major smart home platforms. This includes the Apple HomePod Mini, HomePod (1st and 2nd generation) and the 4th-gen Apple TV; Google’s Nest Wifi and Nest Hub Max; Amazon Echo and Echo Dot speakers and displays; and Samsung SmartThings hubs.
Other brands have announced plans to integrate Matter into their devices, with a few having already released the hardware. These include Eve Systems, eWelink (Coolkit), Schneider Electric and Aqara.
The smart home industry has long been plagued by the lack of interoperability between devices from different companies, and that’s what Matter hopes to remedy. Its low-power mesh technology, which is backed up by banking-standard security, should make it a more reliable alternative to Wi-Fi.
Despite its limitations, Matter is a step in the right direction and should give consumers more choices as to which platform to use. But until a few more features are added to the standard, and we see some real-world examples of how it’s used in homes, it’s difficult to recommend Matter to buyers. Until then, I recommend sticking with a more established platform, such as Apple’s HomeKit, which offers more advanced features and has the benefit of integrating with its other products, including the iPhone and iPad. The good news is that Apple and others have pledged to add more capabilities to the HomeKit framework in 2022. matter residences