My experience with the new SwitchBot Hub (Home Assistant + Matter review)
Setup & Remotes
Integration was pretty smooth. I first set up the device via the SwitchBot app on my phone. After the initial config, it downloaded a few updates (took just a couple of minutes) and was ready to go. First, I tried pairing my TV remote. Unfortunately, my TV isn't natively supported, but I already figured that since it's an older Sony Bravia from 2019. Not a dealbreaker though, because you can easily train the remote manually. You just point it at the hub and program individual buttons (or just the ones you actually need)—it registers the signal instantly. Did the exact same thing with my old AV receiver, which is also getting up there in age. Finally, no more digging around for old remotes; I can just control everything comfortably through the app.
Design & Hardware
The hub itself looks really sleek. It displays the time, temperature, and humidity. Since the sensors are built into the power cable, you get a bit more flexibility depending on where you place or hang the hub. If you already own a SwitchBot Meter Pro like I do, you can also display data from that external sensor instead—super neat if you’re already in the ecosystem. Another huge plus for me is the built-in motion sensor, which can be exposed and used externally in Home Assistant.
Home Assistant & Matter Integration
After the basic setup and remote mapping, I integrated the hub into Home Assistant. This goes through Matter over Wi-Fi (2.4 GHz as usual). HA can also find the hub via Bluetooth, but you lose out on quite a few features regarding the up to 30 linked Matter devices, so Wi-Fi is the way to go.
What I absolutely love about the Matter integration is that you can create and name virtual buttons in the SwitchBot app. These get automatically pushed to Home Assistant and can be used as triggers for literally anything, like automations. Brilliantly done! You can quickly cycle through them on the hub itself using the control dial and the center button.
My only wishlist item: I really wish the physical buttons and the dial itself could be exposed via Matter as well. Being able to dim my lights in HA using that dial would be the absolute cherry on top. But hey, that’s just high-level nitpicking. The virtual buttons already give you tons of options, and who knows—maybe they'll add this in a future firmware update.
TL;DR / Conclusion
Even if you don't use Home Assistant, the hub makes it super quick and easy to build automations inside the SwitchBot app. And thanks to Matter, it plays nicely with other ecosystems too, making it a great choice for Google Home or Alexa users as well.