What you need to know
- Amazon commits to supporting Matter over Thread in its products.
- The standard will be supported on Eero devices and the fourth-gen Echo next year.
- Additional Echo devices will gain support at a later date.
Amazon is one of the companies involved in the Matter initiative, so it comes as no surprise when the company announced on Wednesday that it's committing to support Matter over Thread in its products.
For the uninitiated, Matter is the smart home alliance consisting of players like Google, Samsung, Apple, Amazon, and more. It will create a standard that will be used across smart home products to simplify the experience for users and ensure that devices will work no matter what ecosystem they're on.
Thread is the wireless protocol that companies are implementing in order for these smart home products to communicate with each other, which Amazon describes as a "low-power, low-bandwidth, and low-latency mesh networking option."
Amazon says that Matter over Thread support is coming next year to its best mesh Wi-Fi routers from its Eero brand like the Eero 6 and more. Additionally, the Amazon Echo (4th Gen) will also receive support, followed by other Echo devices at a later date.
Amazon is just the latest company to affirm its support for the Matter standard over its current products. Samsung recently announced its commitment to Matter with the SmartThings platform and Google did the same earlier this year.
While the first Matter products were expected to be certified by the end of this year, the timeline for the SDK release and product certification was pushed back to the "first half of 2022." This will give companies plenty of time to prepare their devices, although it means it'll be some time before the first products may their way to market.
All-around impressive
If you're immersed in Amazon's smart home ecosystem, you can't be without an Echo (4th Gen). Not only does it offer a simple design, but it features excellent sound thanks to its 3" woofer and two front-firing 0.8" tweeters. It also costs roughly the same or less than other smart speakers, making it an easy buy.
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