Review: Samsung SmartThings Hub

Today I'm going to take a look at the Samsung SmartThings hub.  As the smart home market has heated up over the last couple of years, companies have all been trying to get a piece of the market.  This has led to a bunch of different wireless communication protocols being used.  With a smart hub you can have pretty much a one stop shop for connecting all your devices in one place.  The Samsung SmartThings hub happens to be one of the more popular choices for smart hubs.  I have been wanting to pick up a hub for some time now and was waiting for the right price.  Well happened to walk into Best Buy last week and see them on sale for $49.99 down from the normal $99.99 price.

So before I talk about set up let talk about what was in the box:

• The SmartThings Hub
• An Ethernet cable
• The Power Cord
• Some Manuals
• 4 Double A batteries

Initial set up was a breeze, but one thing that still strikes me as odd is the fact that the hub can use 4 double A batteries.  I assume this is a back up feature to maintain power in the event of a power failure, but if that is the case the internet would be knocked out and pretty much all your devices would not work.  My other thought would be that maybe the hub is in a spot that doesn't have a close electrical outlet, but again since it needs to be connected to the router I can't see it not being close to an outlet.  Okay enough with the batteries, let talk about the rest of the set up.  You will go ahead and plug one end of the Ethernet cable in to the router and the other end in to the hub.  Then connect the power.  That is it for the physical set up process.

Next it's time to finish the configuration of the hub and get some devices connected.  Start by downloading the Samsung SmartThings app for the Google Play or iOS App Store.  Once downloaded if you don't have an account, go ahead and sign up for a free account so you can complete the set up.  Once your account is created you will be directed to enter the Welcome Code that was on the documentation package in the box.  Enter the 6 character code and tap Next.  At this point it will prompt you to connect the hub to the internet and plug in the power cable which may already be done.  Once connected to the internet the hub may automatically download updates to the firmware.  Just wait for the light on the front of the hub to be solid green and then click Continue.  Now you will be prompted to enter your location so it knows where your home location is.

Once the location is set that will complete the initial setup and take you into the app.  From here you can Add a Thing and if you already have devices it will try to find them.  In my case it found most of my devices, but it was not able to find my iHome control devices.  In order to add those I had to connect my iHome Control account with the SmartThings hub.  Once your devices are discovered you can then create rooms to assign them to.  Adding devices to room allows you to quickly turn on and off all devices in a room.  

Of course the main reason that you get one of these hubs is so you can try and automate things like automatically turning lights on when you arrive home or making sure all the lights turn off when you leave.  So to set things like this up take a look at the Routines.  This will provide a lot of options to create automated processes.  I also found linking the hub to Google Assistant was very easy and quickly gave me voice control of my devices. 

My overall thoughts on the Samsung SmartThings hub is it seems like a great product that connects to a lot of different devices and gives you a centralized location to control them all.  The initial set up is a breeze and should allow just about anyone to be able to set this hub up.  Setting up routines is a little more advanced, but still not something that the average user should not be able to figure out.  I didn't see anything that currently stands out as a con for me aside from the regular price, but if you can find the hub on sale then this is not really an issue.