My experience, and I moved before the C7 hub was introduced, has been very favorable. I moved over in April of 2020. I have around 100 physical devices and around another 100 virtual devices. I have a couple hundred rules controlling the house. It took me about 5 weeks to get everything moved over and working pretty well. I have had some zigbee and zwave issues but, through persistence, have solved them and have a very stable system. Even while I was trying to figure out why some devices did not occasionally work, I still had fewer issues than when I was on ST due to all the outages. Since the move, my system has never been completely down. What’s really nice is that since it’s local, when the internet goes down, which it did this morning, everything but my Google integration works. I wasn’t even aware the web was down until I noticed the purple lights in the kitchen. Purple lights are my signal that the internet is down. I couldn’t be happier.
The introduction of the C7 hub with the new 700 series zwave chip did not go as well as it could have. HE was the first hub to use the chip and there were some issues as the bugs were worked out. They appear to be mostly worked out as of the last firmware update. Also, updates are optional and installed when YOU want them to. You can also roll back if something goes wrong. You can also backup the hub so, if you really screw it up, reinstall the backup.
HE is not perfect. It’s interface is not as polished as ST though you can do everything on a full sized PC which is really nice. I would suggest you visit the HE website, check your devices against the list of devices known to work, read the docs and watch the YouTube videos. Make your own decision.
I should note, older ZWAVE devices that need to be polled are problematic. Also, most zigbee light bulbs (with the exception of Sengled) are poor repeaters and don’t always play well on HE depending on what other ZIGBEE devices you have.
If you have questions, send me a PM.
