Hhhmmm…
“(Wink Hub 2) It’s the most reliable, widely supported hub we’ve tested.”
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UK 
PC Mag?
Does US 
PC Mag agree?
Of course, we know that CNET dumped SmartThings quite a long time ago…
And what does a “PC” (personal computer) magazine know about #smarthome?
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The funny part is that Wink doesn’t even work in UK, I think …
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That’s a repost from the US PC mag site. The UK site takes a lot of their articles and just changes the prices to UK currency. Here’s the original article
And PCMag 15 years ago moved on from being just about PCs to also covering smart phones, tablets, home automation, pretty much any consumer tech. They never changed the name, but they have a lot of credibility in the consumer technology space with the exception of a couple of individual celebrity columnists who are Luddites when it comes to 21st-century technology . IMHO, of course. 
Comparison reviews are specific and detailed, and are obviously written by someone who actually used the device rather than just read the press release. Smartthings was their previous hub of choice, but wink 2 has more working radios now (true) and an easier to use app (also true), so they upgraded it in the most recent evaluations.
Granted, the Samsung SmartThings Hub also supports IFTTT and Alexa voice commands, and it has a battery backup, but the Wink Hub 2’s ability to work with a wider range of wireless protocols, coupled with a friendlier interface and dual-band networking abilities, give it an edge. As such, the Wink Hub 2 replaces the SmartThings Hub as our Editors’ Choice for home automation hubs.
They don’t say, but SmartThings remains a much more powerful system for those who are comfortable using a rules engine like webcore. And of course who can figure out how to get that rules engine to install it in the first place.
But for someone looking for a set and forget home automation system using only the official features and who is willing to stick only to devices that have official integration, I think it’s a valid recommendation.
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Does Wink offer local only processing?
Or it’s only cloud based?
Zwave and zigbee??
So many questions
Wink 2 has a mix of cloud based and local processing, and has now moved a lot of the Z wave messaging to local.
It has both Z wave and zigbee home automation, but there is no way for customers to upload their own device type handlers, so you are stuck with the device selection that officially works with Wink. There are many zigbee home automation devices and some multi channel Z wave devices that work with SmartThings but will not work with wink 2.
On the other hand, Wink 2 has an active Bluetooth radio which means it can work with a Switchmate device, which SmartThings cannot. Wink 2 also has a built in Lutron radio so it can handle pico remotes, which The official smartthings cloud to cloud integration cannot. And wink 2 has built-in integration for kidde and Anderson Devices, which SmartThings has no integration with.
Put it all together and I still think there is a larger number of devices that SmartThings can be made to work with if you use custom code. But numbers don’t really matter in home automation, it’s a question of whether the customers can solve the cases that they want to solve.
My own feeling (I haven’t seen any hard data) is that users who are satisfied with fairly simple if/then logic would find that there are an acceptable number of devices available for a wink 2. But that those who want to use complex stacked conditional logic or who want to start shopping for cheap Chinese sensors will feel limited by the wink system in ways that they will not on the SmartThings platform.
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In the Wink 2 and SmartThings battle, I still prefer ST due to its community forum and my personal taste.
As I’ve tested, Wink performs as good as SmartThings but SmartThings is better at completing more complex tasks.
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This forum puts ST ahead in my opinion.
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I know you mentioned that you own SmartThings, but I don’t think the following statement represents the experience of most SmartThings customers, as you can tell from discussions in the forums.
Luckily, the mobile app of SmartThings is wonderful. It never bugs, glitches or freezes. It allows the owner to configure a lot of things and offers fast access features.
Or from most of the professional reviews. The CNET review is typical:
The Good SmartThings’ second-gen hub is outfitted with USB ports and a Bluetooth radio (that hasn’t been activated yet) for all sorts of future integrations. The related app is full of useful automations and alert settings.
.
The Bad The app layout is so confusing that it’s hard to find what you’re looking for.
.
The Bottom Line SmartThings’ impressive performance and wide array of potential applications make it easy to recommend, but its underwhelming app adds a lot of frustration to an otherwise excellent system.
Obviously there’s some subjectivity, and different reviewers like different features, but I’ve never seen anyone else give SmartThings a plus for its app versus Wink before. Just sayin’…
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I’ve used both Wink and ST and obviously prefer ST because it is far more powerful. With that being said, I do think Wink’s hub hardware is very nice and wish ST would release a hub with ClearConnect and more local processing power. With that being said, an article was posted a few minutes ago detailing an alleged Samsung leak about a new ST hub:
Personally it doesn’t excite me in the slightest if true.
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Hard to “leak” something that was posted in 2015. It seemed more likely to just be a draft version of a device that has not been manufactured, like the Samsung sleep sensor which had a similar manual posted on the same site.
Note also that the document references “S voice” which was Samsung’s 2012 voice assistant introduced for the galaxy 5. Anything which was really new would mention Bixby.
It’s also notable that there’s no FCC information on this device. I think it most likely that this is an early version of what later became the current Samsung connect (with many fewer features, obviously). But we’ll see. 
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With Hub V2 being consistently sold at 50% off these days; that’s a pretty strong signal of inventory clearing to make way for “V3” (in whatever form that takes).
Samsung / SmartThings is much better at avoiding pre-launch announcements, since such things just lead to frustrated consumers and an immediate drop in sales.
Thanks JD. I suspected the article was garbage and there was nothing in it which led me to believe there was a v3 around the corner. I’d like to see a new hub, but not without an actual migration tool in place and not a vaporware one.
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That’s exactly the same link that was given in post 10 above, so my comments in post 11 apply. (The forum should have given you a message when you were writing your post that that link had already been posted to the thread, did that not happen? 
)
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Tyler (staff) commented in another thread:
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Too bad Samsung didn’t acquire Wink too and maybe we could actually get a migration tool. 
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Don’t forget wink has a fully functional, well documented api.
It also has local hub interaction as well.
Oh and a snazzy new owner, so can’t wait for those cool alert tones and dance moves.
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