Samsung’s new SmartThings Station marks the company’s re-entrance into the smart home hardware market after taking a four-year hiatus. The company’s previous smart home hub was the SmartThings Hub 3rd Generation, which launched in late 2018. Samsung’s new hub is a device that directly challenges offerings from names such as Apple, Amazon, Google, and Aeotec.
The Station’s best feature
The strongest appeal for the SmartThings Station will be generated among existing Samsung customers with multiple Galaxy devices. This is because the new hub natively supports SmartThings Find, a feature that allows users to locate all their Galaxy devices, including Galaxy SmartTags and SmartTag+ trackers, that are connected to the SmartThings Find service.
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Drawbacks of the Station
The SmartThings Station does not, however, provide other consumers with a compelling reason to switch from their existing smart home hubs, or even to preference it over rival offerings when upgrading. Almost all the smart home capabilities found within the SmartThings Station are also present in most rival offerings. What rivals offer that Samsung does not, however, is the inclusion of a hands-free voice assistant.
Samsung omitting a voice assistant is a critical mistake
The lack of a voice assistant in Samsung’s hub is a serious omission that will no doubt adversely impact the popularity of the device. The point of a smart home is to automate and make users’ lives easier and a big capability in achieving this is the use of voice commands. It is strange indeed that Samsung would release a smart home hub to challenge the market without a feature which most, if not all, consumers have come to expect.
Instead of a voice assistant, Samsung included a physical button on the hub called the Smart Button. Depending on how the button is pressed, users can trigger up to three routines or locate their Galaxy smartphone via the SmartThings Find Service. While it is positive that the company at least enabled the activation of routines on its hub, it nevertheless seems archaic and a step backwards to require users to press a button against a backdrop of intelligent voice assistants.
The inclusion of the wireless charging capability within the smart home hub, referred to by Samsung as “an ingenious addition,” is anything but. While it is a nice addition that may spark interest among some consumers, it will not be enough to overcome the lack of a voice assistant for the majority of users.
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By GlobalData
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