Why I'm Ditching Samsung SmartThings (And Redoing My Smart Home)

That's it. I'm done. Samsung SmartThings just isn't good enough anymore. I don't think I can use this smart home and home automation system in my home anymore. I'll be explaining why, and how I'll be evaluating a number of other smart home systems in 2024.

Timecodes for today's video:
00:00 - Samsung SmartThings is Dead To Me
1:09 - How SmartThings Failed Me This Year
3:39 - Broken Promises
6:50 - The Community Problem
8:46 - Why You Won't Get New Custom Features in SmartThings
11:00 - It's Samsung Only Now
12:40 - What This Means for Us
14:57 - What Smart Home System I Will Use Now

Hubs I'm considering:

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Thanks for watching, and Don't Hate, Automate.

Brian

[DIYSmartHomeGuy]

HOMEY PRO, BABY!!! I absolutely love this hub and we're integrating it more and more into our channel as well. They are the first hub that seems to actually care about the user experience, which is so refreshing. If they can convince people to spend $400 on a hub, the world is their oyster (whatever that means). Home assistant shall remain king for tinkerers and total connectivity. Everyone else is just falling behind.

[EddieFields]

Wow Brian is on a terror. I’m here for it, for years Samsung was able to do whatever they wanted because of their name. Take the edge driver migration, this was a 3 + years process. Promises made were never kept. Way to go Brian 💥💥💥

[THEGEG]

Home assistant is all you need. I finally got mine setup for years I’ve been avoiding it but I’m so impressed

[AAtta-]

FINALLY Brian! It took awhile but you finally saw the light. You concentrated so much on Smartthings you were blinded to their direction and more notably the direction of other smart home platforms. I personally love Habitat. I find their community one of the best. They have so many programmers join the community AND lend a helping hand to ANYONE. I don't tunnel my views and keep an open mind and I'm glad you too have done the same. I feel this will make your channel much more appealing to everyone no matter what platform we use. All the best in the New Year.

[tombradley]

Interesting video and I’m glad to hear it’s not just me having problems with it! I’ve spent years building up my setup, making sure every device I bought would work with ST, then last year they just completely flattened the whole setup. I’ve only just now got the motivation to essentially start again and re-add the vast majority of my devices - some of which aren’t even supported anymore!
The issues with the Hue integration are driving me mad as well. They won’t update status at all meaning that half my automations don’t work properly. Also don’t even get me started on trying to use action tiles without virtual switches!!!

I think I might make the switch to home assistant…

[IamPat]

Man, I've been thinking about some of these issues recently, and this video is very timely and really hits home with me. I'm also taking some time to weigh my options right now. I would really like to see this smart home rebuilding series idea you floated.

[Chaybee]

Absolutely interested in a series on rebuilding your smart home. As someone who has been heavily invested in the Google Ecosystem since it's inception, I would love to see what Google products you still have that you are able to incorporate into these other platforms, especially Homey.

[kevinjackson]

Looking forward to seeing a deep dive into Homey Pro and head to head comparison with Hubitat. Currently running Smartthings, Hubitat with Alexa voice control. My new Homey Pro arrives today! Definitely want to maintain local control. Keep up the good work Brian!

[alwaysright]

To be honest every platform has disappearing smart home products, at least one a month I have to fix one of my 50+ automations for no known reason... smart homes are still for geeks only as the average person could not possibly manage one!

[sengle]

I agree completely with your assessment of Samsung. Apparently I'm not as patient as you because I dropped SmartThings a couple of years ago because of devices suddenly disappearing, automations just stopping working and other issues that you mentioned. The final straw for me was when I contacted "Support". No response at all for a month and then what I got was clearly boiler plate with only a peripheral relationship to the problem I was having. After three back and forths with "Support" (which took four months!) I just said to Hell with it and got rid of SmartThings. It simply was not worth the hassle. Unfortunately one of the things I got to go with Samsung automations was a TV. I've about decided to junk it too because it has "quirks" that sometimes, not always, cause Routines to just not work and then mysteriously start working again.

Really looking forward to seeing what course you take in re-automating your home.

[michaelratcliffe]

First time I’ve seen you and you channel and I’m impressed by your honesty. I have some smart plugs and echo devices so that I can light my way in the morning and make sure everything automated is off when I’m ready to sleep but that works out to about 6 strategic lights and my TV. What i don’t like about smart homes and actually believe is really dumb - is the use of them to create routines where certain lights come on and off at certain hours or your system wakes you with the news or something at the same time every day. It all feels very “Stepford” to me and like I’m now allowing the “smart” tech to control when and what - possibly even how I do things. I don’t live my life “exactly” the same way every day and I’m not giving up manual control of my decision making process to automation just because I can or it’s “cool” that tech can automate lights on or off, up or down, music or news etc. when my “routine” shuts off all the lights and music in my home at 9 because that’s my programmed routine and I have a house full of party guests and can’t find where I left my phone to fix that - its a problem. One I created when I dumbly decided to automate my life and let tech tell me what to do and when to do it. I’m not saying it’s all bad - but it’s a very long way from being all good. 🤷‍♂️

[kevinball]

Amen to everything you’ve said. I’ve spent endless hours developing a ST home and the unreliability and unmet promises has me looking to switch soon.

[VictorNapolillo]

For me it's always been about the broken promises and missed dates. I just wish they would come even close to delivering what they have promised. Great content as always, I'm really looking forward to watching your journey!

[norcobf]

I don't blame you Brian! As a long term android user, but currently not a Samsung phone user (but I was previously), I was disappointed that Samsung Smart tags were not available and that some of their newer Samsung devices required users to have a Galaxy phone to unlock all their features. I'm still on my V2 hub and I was hopeful that a new version (v4?) might someday fix my Phillips problems, resetting dropped Z-Wave devices problem and double Smarthings/Google device issues.

As you are to us, many of your followers are the "techy friends" that others look for our advice on smart homes or other techy things etc.

As per our previous conversations, I've never been an iPhone/Mac fan boy, because of their "locked in" Eco system strategy. I'm seeing Samsung going down that same hole. I'll be looking carefully on buying future Samsung devices in general.

I'll be following your progress, with an eye to moving myself to a new platform in the future. Thanks for your bravery in posting this video!

[olivercole]

Great stuff Brian. I had the exact problems you were describing with smart things. Most notably the broken promises (and the impact this was having on the community!). A lot was promised from the switch to edge drivers but it just created more problems and delays- eventually I took the plunge with home assistant and am incredibly happy with my smart home now.

[frofa]

Brian, thanks so much for the honest video. I have many of the same problems you describe. Especially the frequent self-disabling of routines drives me crazy. I don't know how often I have changed batteries of Zigbee devices that stopped working, only to find out that the real problem was a disabled routine. There is simply no excuse for that! Devices "falling off" the network for no comprehensible reason is another thing I constantly fight. These are local Zigbee devices, and they just go offline anyway. I would like to switch over to Home Assistant, but I am afraid this takes too much time to set up. I sure am a nerd that wouldn't have problems with it, but I also have a full-time job and a family (both of which the typical HA freak apparently doesn't have, so he can invest all of his time on HA...).

[PeloquinDavid]

Well this is a surprise, Brian!

I have indeed noticed some mysteriously disappearing automations in recent months (I thought it might have been due to all sorts of Matter-related software updates) and I do mostly use Smartthings for some (mostly WiFi) devices while using Hubitat for others (mostly Zigbee devices). (I have no Z-wave devices.)

I've been busy with two major home renovations this year (NOT relating to my smart home) but will be going back in the new year to managing my automations (including those in my new kitchen and backyard deck).

I generally like my Samsumg galaxy phone and have a few other Samsung products in the house, so I'm not planning to ditch Smartthings just yet.

My household is also what seems to be in the small minority that makes no use at all of smart speakers ("No spies in the house!", my wife insists...).

All of our automations and interfaces are done using a screen (on phones, tablets, computers) with room-by-room controls.

Most of my automations, etc. use SharpTools (and their Rules Engine that mostly works well for me). They currently integrate Smartthings, Hubitat and Home Assistant, I believe, so if - in the end - I do need to move my old WiFi and new Matter-over-thread devices to an alternative platform, it's likely to be HA.

But do keep us informed about Homey Pro (and any potential alternatives by way of more or less "one stop" interfaces that can help span multiple hubs while we wait and see if the promises of Matter ever get realized). I'm especially keen to see if I'll be able to incorporate all my new Govee products (and also my new TP-Link Kasa/Tapo Matter devices) into a single interface.

[stuartberman]

Excellent. I agree with you 100%. I would love to dump Smartthings for all the reasons you say plus a few more. I think they have NO IDEA what a terrible customer experience we have. Its like living with pre beta solutions. The unreliability is terrible and the customer support has deteriorated dramatically. I will watch your transition with interest as I cant wait to dump Smartthings in the trash. Samsung have treated their customers terribly the last 2 years and they don't deserve our loyalty. Gradually migrating a live customer base who had paid for and set up a stable smarthome was a decision which showed utter contempt for their customer base. Withdrawal of features, random device disconnections, buggy software and no viable presence sensing make Smartthings unusable now. I cant wait for this next series from you Brian.

[gnospanker]

Hey Brian, great video. I left smartthings back in January because of a lot of the same issues you mentioned. The mishandling of the Edge driver program was a huge turn off for me. Also taking away the IDE, and the lack of functionality of the Windows app/ browser. Even going back to the classic app vs the "new" app, the classic app was better in my opinion. You had the best Smartthings tutorials and news. Speaking of news, it makes sense to hear you say it was lacking. There seemed to be no voice from Samsung ever giving any news on new features or anything. I made the switch to Home Assistant and it's been great. Way more options to tinker and ways to troubleshoot if an automation isn't working. I wouldn't be concerned about the time commitment. The GUI of Home Assistant has gotten really good and you'll be able to do everything that smartthings can do within the HA GUI. Also a great thing about HA is that if your smart home gets too big for your HA Green you can easily move your configure to more capable hardware. Best of luck to you and your channel. I think your upcoming content will have more viewers because it won't be smartthings focused 😀

[ryanvarga]

I had never heard of Homey until this video. I look forward to seeing more of what it can do. Having one hub that can work with everything is a dream and if the automations are stronger and more stable that SmartThings just another win.