Smart Things vs WINK

Devices & Integrations
1

I know this is not that best place to ask this as the answers might be a little biased, but I will ask any way.

I currently have a Smart Thing V2 and have a couple of major thing that it doesn’t do for me. I doesn’t work my MYQ and it doesn’t allow multiple hubs to extend range. So for them reasons I am looking at getting a WINK, has any one had both that can compare them for me?

2
  1. What kind of MyQ system do you have? I know there are some workarounds available.
  2. What kind of range are you looking to extend? Powered zWave devices act as repeaters and there are Zigbee device repeaters as well such as the Lowe’s Iris Outlets, which I use to extend my zigbee network. I have a 3,000 square foot house with a half acre of land and am able to successfully connect to devices from my shed in my backyard which is a good 400 feet away from my hub.
1 Like
3

Wink’s MyQ integration is not the best one. I personally do not own one, but I have read people complaining about it in the Wink forum. If you want more information about it, I suggest you join the Wink Users Group on Facebook, and ask over there. People are very likely to help you get your answer.

Wink will not allow for another hub to extend the network itself. You can add more than one hub to the same location and pair devices to either hub, but not to both of them. I believe they will show on the app on the same page, regardless of the hub, though. But don’t quote me on that.

As @Mbhforum stated, you can extend your mesh network, both Zigbee and/or Z-wave, on both ST and Wink. That way the range increases to cover a full house. It would help to know how much space you want to cover with your devices. If your devices are not Zigbee or Z-wave, but instead WiFi, then you’ll have to rely on extending or meshing your WiFi, then.

As always, @JDRoberts can probably explain how far you can actually extend your mesh network better than almost anyone here.

4

I can’t get a signal into my detached shed since the metal siding was put on, before that was on it worked great. The hub is in a window that look directly at the shed, right at the door that the light switches are by. It is about 80 feet from the hub to the switches in the shed, only thing in the way is the pole barn steel on the outside of the wall. Like I said it worked perfect before the steel went on.

I do have an outlet on the exterior of the wall that is about 6’ from the switches. If I plug a GE outdoor switch into that out let it will repeat to the switches and it works. But I don’t want that outdoor switch hanging their all the time. So I put a Leviton Z-Wave outlet in place of the outlet that was their thinking it should do exactly the same thing and relay the signal to the switches, but it doesn’t work.

So my understanding of the WINK is I can put one hub in the shed and another in the house and they will work together.

5

Just my two cents…I have been using insteon & zwave products for a while and wanted to wait till the second gen hubs from ST and Wink came out.

Wink
I received the Wink 2 hub early this fall and started trying to integrate my zwave devices. Although the Wink 2 hub appear to have a good promotion from Wink many of my devices did not work. After attaching a number of devices, I attached one which was not fully supported and found it locked the app on my iOS devices to a blank white screen. When trying to exclude a door sensor the only way recommended by Wink support was to reset the zwave protocol which caused all the attached devices to be lost. Attaching devices were about as laborious as excluding. Most required I stand with the hub about a foot away to include them.

I am holding on to the hub just to see if anything changes from Wink, but not keeping my hopes up. Most devices are add-on devices bulbs or plug in units which I see as eye sores for any real smart home.

SmartThings
On the other hand my ST hub has had no issues with any of the devices I have. Additionally there are a number of volunteer coders willing to create unsupported interfaces on the open source ST which added to the devices available. I have found the ST seems to have a good range, my pole barn is 75’ from my back door and signals reach it without issue.

MyQ
Last I too have a. MyQ and wish there was full support on the ST as there was earlier this year. From what I see, they are working on it, although I wonder just how true this is. Wink does suppprt MyQ but only as an extension and I have not seen anyone be able integrate it directly or with Wink to other components as GOogle HOME, Alexa, Harmony, Yonomi, Stringify… although I could be incorrect here. The forum has a few options for MyQ with the ST hub, MyQ Lite, which can give you a simple fix if this is something that is a have to have.

Good luck M_M

6

In the Wink vs SmartThings comparison, it’s seems to be a tie. The newly-released Wink 2 is quite good and offers a lot of features and flexibility. The only reason why I prefer SmartThings is the community forum.