I think they did use it. In particular, these comments seem on point:
…And it’s setting up a routine where a techie familiar with “if this, then that” (IFTTT) conditional-statement algorithms will feel right at home—but probably also where less-dogged enthusiasts will drop everything and rebox the SmartThings hub for a return…
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Namely, of all the hubs on the market, the Samsung SmartThings Hub is the most powerful and promising, but is best suited to devout tinkerers and those willing to spend a fair amount of time tweaking and refining their smart-home system…
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…throughout our testing the app remained a major friction point and a source of confusion and frustration…
That all seems to come from someone who has actually used the system rather than just read the spec sheet.
I also give them a bonus star for getting this part exactly right:
Though Echo isn’t technically a hub in and of itself, it can add voice control to existing devices in a system that otherwise wouldn’t support it—as of now, you can pair it with hubs from Wink, SmartThings, Insteon, and Iris, as well as with individual devices from Nest, Hue, and Lutron Caséta Wireless.
It is concerning that they think that the SmartThings hub has both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, but that’s now become such a common error that I always notice it but don’t make a big deal out of it. The hub does interface with the number of Wi-Fi devices, which isn’t the same thing as having a Wi-Fi radio, but the technical difference between “supports integration with many Wi-Fi devices” and “supports Wi-Fi” probably isn’t that big a deal from a consumer standpoint.
I thought it was an interesting article. In my opinion, it gets a lot right that a lot of the other articles miss. It draws a heavy distinction between SmartThings and wink in what I think is an appropriate way.
It was somewhat amusing that they felt they hadn’t had any of the negative reliability experiences that people write about in the forums at the same time that they included the following:
That also includes a few occasions { of receiving a notification} when the hub went offline—which is both useful but also distressing
Because, yes, the hub unexpectedly going off-line would be an indication of reduced reliability. Just sayin’…
Certainly a better researched article than many of the ones out there. It will be interesting to see how they update it after they get hold of a Wink 2.