Goodbye Forever

Put it all in a bin. Smart Homes in 2026 are dumber now than they were 5 years ago. A Rant by Paul Hibbert aged 44 and a 1/2 From Thread devices randomly dropping off, Matter failing to properly connect ecosystems, Home Assistant reliability issues, and Alexa Plus being announced, hyped, and still unreliable, to Philips Hue still stuck with 2015-era hub limitations and Google Nest switching off cloud features on perfectly functional hardware — everything feels fragile, opaque, and unfinished. I also explain why Thread isn’t “better Zigbee,” why Zigbee was actually fine, why Matter often delivers the worst version of a device, why local control doesn’t automatically mean reliable control, and how subscriptions and cloud shutdowns have quietly made smart homes worse. If smart homes feel harder, more brittle, and more annoying than they used to — it’s because they are. ============================= 🍻 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL ☕ Buy Me a Beer: http://paypal.me/PaulHibbert 🎭 Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/paulhibbert ============================= ⏳ CHAPTERS ⏳ 0:00 - Intro ⏳ 4:04 - Philips Hue's new hub ⏳ 6:30 - Google Nest Thermostat discontinued ⏳ 8:40 - Alexa+ is NEVER coming to the UK ⏳ 10:55 - Thread vs Zigbee ⏳ 12:05 - Explaining Matter & Thread ⏳ 14:02 - What can you do about it? ⏳ 15:22 - Starting a smart home ============================= 📢 TAGS #SmartHome #SmartHomeProblems #HomeAssistant #Matter #Thread #Zigbee #AmazonAlexa #AlexaPlus #PhilipsHue #GoogleNest #SmartHomeTech #HomeAutomation #SmartLighting #LocalControl #SmartHomeRant