Amazon brings Matter support to several smart home devices

By Keyan Riddick January 5, 2022

At CES 2022, Amazon announced that it is adding Frustration-Free Setup to several smart home devices supporting Matter. Last year, Amazon announced that Matter support would be coming to most Echo devices and that the Echo 4th gen and eero devices would work as Matter Thread border routers. The Frustration-Free Setup is part of the matter specification.

Matter is a new smart home protocol that allows for advanced interoperability between different manufacturers. Think of Matter as a way for your Amazon Echo device to communicate with your Google Nest device, all the while talking to your Homepod Mini fast and efficiently. Once Matter starts becoming more widely available, there will be less pressure on your smart home to be ruled by one manufacturer and it will allow you to customize your smart devices for your unique needs. With companies such as Google, Apple, and Amazon behind the movement, you can be sure that this protocol will become a staple in smart home tech.

Amazon Echo (4th Gen) on a kitchen shelf. — Amazon

With Matter, you won’t have to do anything super technical to get the protocol; a software update will take care of everything for you. Once the update rolls out to your device, it will start communicating with other brands in a better and faster way.

Frustration-Free Setup is an experience that Amazon launched in 2018 to help simplify customers’ device setup experience. Once receiving a device with Frustration-Free Setup, all you would have to do is unbox it and power it on. It will then automatically connect to your Wi-Fi and smart home without inputting passwords and codes or any other tedious setup method.

Today, Amazon is giving the documentation on adding Frustration-Free Setup to other manufacturers’ Matter devices to widen the ecosystem that gets to use the experience. Some of those brands already working with Amazon include eWeLink, Ledvance, Sengled, TP-Link, Tuya, and Lifx.

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Keyan Riddick is a freelance writer based in the mountains on North Carolina. When he isn't writing you can find him behind…

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