I recently setup Home Assistant and want to bring in everything from my current Apple Home setup (working on the Apple Bridge/Devices stuff later). I just purchased an Aqara M3 Hub (literally yesterday) to connect my existing U50 lock and U200 lock and prepare for additional accessories in the future. However, I’m now starting to think that I don’t have a real need for the M3 hub… The locks were added directly to Apple Home before I got the hub. The U200 has Matter over Thread and was added to HA directly (didn’t come over with the M3 Hub). Right now, it looks like I got the M3 hub just to add the U50 to HA. I have a SLZB-06M Zigbee stick, so I can add Zigbee accessories directly to HA without the M3 Hub. I’m struggling to find a reason to keep the more expensive M3 Hub instead of one of the other Matter hubs. I already have a bunch of Apple TVs, HomePod Minis, and some Eve Thread devices, so I don’t really need a Thread border router either.
Long story short, are there any other reasons I would need to keep the M3 Hub other than being able to bring the U50 lock over to HA? Are there any Aqara accessories that require the M3 Hub (can’t work with the M2 hub or the M100 hub or HA directly)? Do you have any use cases where a M3 Hub would be able to do something I’m not thinking about and can’t be accomplished with another hub? I’m thinking about buying the M100 hub and seeing if I can get the same functionality since it also advertises Matter bridging for a fraction of the price.
The hub situation is very confusing, so any help is much appreciated!