Google Home and IKEA are suffering from Matter’s disastrous implementation

YouTuber A Smarter Home has done some extensive research on the issues — plural — and compiled them into one video that explains everything that is going wrong with IKEA’s devices over Matter, including all of the Google Home pairing troubles you might come across, as well as what potential solutions users have depending on their setup. If you want a 20-minute guaranteed headache, please watch.

What I love about this video is how detailed it is about every single possible thing that can break — and is breaking — with Matter. This isn’t an IKEA issue, or a Google Home issue, or a Home Assistant / Homey / Alexa / Apple HomeKit issue. It’s a fundamental problem in Matter because that’s the one common thread here. And I love that the popularity of IKEA and its cheap, accessible, mass-market production is finally shining a bright light on the absolute disaster that has been Matter.

Multi-admin, Matter’s flagship feature, is absolutely unreliable. Your device works well with one platform, you pair it with another, and boom, things start disappearing off the network or not responding to commands. That is if your device managed to pair in the first place. This is what IKEA buyers are now experiencing, whether they’re pairing with the official Dirigera hub, Google Home, or any other supposedly compatible Matter controller.

Matter has been built like a black box, with zero troubleshooting, zero error codes, and zero clarity over what’s not working or where. It’s incredibly frustrating when a device suddenly drops off the network, and you have no idea why. It’s maddening when you can’t get a pairing code to show up to add a device to another controller. You may need a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network dedicated to your Matter devices, IPv6 enabled by default, updates to specific firmwares, a combination of random presses to reinitiate pairing, and a bunch of intangible, unknown requirements that are stated nowhere clear, and a tribal sacrificial dance to top it all off.

The “just works” illusion of Matter is nice, until it doesn’t work, and you’re left scratching your head, digging in forums, or watching a 20-minute video from a guy who seems to have a better understanding of Matter than the guys who built Matter, and who has tested these IKEA devices with more platforms and under more scenarios than IKEA themselves.

This video solidified my own experience with Matter devices over the past year or so. My first experience was a disaster: My new Tado X (a reliable European brand) thermostats wouldn’t pair to my Google Nest Hub until I discovered I had to completely turn off 5GHz from my router, reboot it, and use an iPhone to finalize pairing, then share the new Matter code to my Nest Hub. Even after all of that, they paired once and dropped off the network. Tado blamed my network, I returned the products and bought their non-Matter thermostats, which have been rock solid for over a year.

My second Matter experience was even more troublesome. I thought I kind of understood the requirements then, but for the life of me, I couldn’t get a Meross Matter power strip to pair with my Home Assistant hub and remain paired. The moment I added it to Google Home, too, it would start disappearing from both.

The problem, though, was that even though I found similar complaints from other people online, there wasn’t enough noise. IKEA has made noise because it sells so much more than Tado, Meross, and other small companies that started their Matter deployment earlier. There’s hope that Matter might be forced to fix some of its issues because these cheap sensors will finally put a spotlight on them.

So, for now, if you have bought some IKEA Matter devices and they’re not working correctly, you have a few options:

1. Return them.
2. Try one of the many troubleshooting steps provided by A Smarter Home in the video, depending on your current setup.
3. Wait for some updates to all the hubs, devices, and sensors that might stabilize things.