Leviton today announced a major upgrade to its Decora Smart Z-Wave Plus™ portfolio with the introduction of the new 800-Series Switch (ZW15S) and Dimmer (ZW6HD).
“At SmartThings, we are dedicated to providing our users with a wide array of options within our ecosystem for their smart homes. The launch of Leviton’s new 800-series dimmers and switches introduces cutting-edge advancements in mesh wireless technology, security, and reliability, delivering a robust solution for all smart home enthusiasts,” said Mark Benson, Head of SmartThings US.
An odd partner to showcase since, at the time of this posting, SmartThings doesn’t have an 800 series level hub and has already announced that going forward they will be looking at matter and Zigbee, not zwave. In fact, as most people in this forum know, the only current “SmartThings“ branded hub, the very newest model, the station, doesn’t even have a Zwave radio of any kind.
The Aeotec V3 hub model does have Z wave, but it’s generation 500, two generations behind the new Leviton 800 models.
In contrast, Hubitat, Homey, Homeseer, and even Home Assistant all have at least one model zwave controller with the newer generations. (It may be an add-on Zstick, but at least that’s an option with those platforms, but not available with SmartThings. 
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I’m really happy to see the new Leviton series 800 devices and I’m sure many people using hubs with series 700 or 800 support will find them good candidates for their smart homes. But that’s just not the trajectory that SmartThings is on, unless there’s something going on behind-the-scenes that hasn’t been announced yet. 
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Good to see Leviton still commited to z-wave. Are all 800-series z-wave products Long Range capable or does it have to support that specifically?
The good news for SmartThings specifically is z-wave’s backwards compatibility means it should work fine despite the old 500 series hubs.
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It will work fine, but it will miss out on a lot of the new series 800 features. “Backwards compatibility“ means it will drop back to the level of the series 500 hub for many things.
It will have somewhat better range, but in a one-sided way. But no star topology.
The biggest improvement if you have a series 800 end device but not a series 800 hub would be in lower power draw in a batterypowered device, but so far none of the Leviton models announced are batterypowered. 
You won’t be able to use any of the “secure vault“ features like secure boot, secure key management, anti-tamper, differential power analysis (DPA), secure debug, etc, because those all depend on the hub being series 800. But you will get the same S2 level security that you have with series 500.
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Then there is Smartthings Pro that screams for a more powerful hub…
It’s time for a V4.
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There is a “V4” already, in terms of generations: the SmartThings Station, which dropped Zwave altogether.
As far as “SmartThings pro“ that’s primarily for property managers of multi occupancy buildings, and grew out of an initiative for managing Samsung smart appliances and HVAC devices in those buildings. The majority of those customers won’t have hubs at all, certainly won’t be using zwave devices, and probably access SmartThings on a laptop.
SmartThings 'Pro'? - #26 by JDRoberts
So not really much overlap with the people who will be buying Leviton series 800 Z wave light switches.
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