Not the way it works. Same spectrum, but not exactly the same anything else. They can interfere with each other, but not broadcast each other’s messages. And if the Almond is broadcasting on Wi-Fi, it can still interfere with zigbee messages coming back from the end devices.
Previous generations of Almond got very high ratings as a Wi-Fi router, and generally very low ratings for home automation. This tends to confuse the Amazon rankings, for example. A lot of people used it only as a Wi-Fi router and rated it very high.
On the home automation side, lots of reports of failed promises and missed timelines.
I assume they dropped Z wave to cut costs and avoid some of the things they still don’t have working in the previous generation. I wouldn’t expect it back anytime soon.
We’ll see what actually gets delivered, when it actually gets delivered, but I wouldn’t be first in line for this one. 