[Feedback] WiZ bulbs, a product to avoid to use with Matter

Hardware
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1

Hi everyone,

I would like to share my feedback regarding WiZ light bulbs, specifically around Matter.

For context, I’m from Europe and since WiZ bulbs are one of the few that are RGBW, are CRI 90, on Gu10 format and Matter compatible, I decided to give a try.
Since then, I’ve also purchased a Nous P8 and a Ledvance (Zigbee though).

The WiZ bulbs are a bit of a nightmare to understand what model they are, but on the box, the bulbs are WiZ Wi-Fi BLE 50" Gu10 922-65 RGB (WiZ 9290024484AW).

In summary, my experience with the WiZ bulbs was:

  • When powered for the first time, it went into pairing mode automatically.
  • It honors the Power Off/On 3 times to put it into pairing mode again.
  • The paring with Google app was very spotty, due to Google creating keys and such in the cloud, which would often bug out and require me to wait 24h.
  • Pairing directly to Home Assist with the usage of a Bluetooth adapter, was flawless and very fast.
  • Under Home Assistant, these bulbs will have:
    • Bulb reports “Firmware: V1.0” and “Hardware: V1.0” even though this is incorrect, it’s just hard coded values, as the bulbs are on Firmware 1.33.0 (had to use their app to see this).
    • A Light Entity with the generic RGB CCT controls and no effects. (On the App, the bulb supports over 20 or 30 effects, the same can be see with the WiZ integration)
    • Configurations:
      • “Off transition time” = 0.0
      • “On level” = 254
      • “On transition time” = 0.0
      • “On/Off transition time” = 0.0
      • "Power-on behavior on Startup

The issues started when I noticed that not everything works.
For example, the bulbs came from the factory with a turn off transition set to around 4 seconds, which was annoying.
Than to make matters worse, NONE of the configurations work, I mean not a single one, with the worst offender being “Power-on behavior on Startup”, as such, if you have a power outage, get ready to have all your bulbs on in max brightness.

From some research, I found that these bulbs are actually Matter 1.0 certified, so I decided to give them a chance and reach out to support.
I’ve been in talks with them since August 22nd and after around 20 emails back and forth I give up as the results are not good.
Key points from WiZ support:

  • They have no clue what Matter is or how it works.
  • They insist on your having the bulbs paired to their App (which grants them remote control, even if you don’t have an account. The App generates a “Home ID”, which allows it to work without an account and being controlled over the internet.).
  • They refused into reporting the issue to their engineering team and have the issue fixed.
  • They failed to understand that you don’t need their App to pair a Matter device.

Here is the last claim by them:
image

All this to say, that I even though WiZ color quality is pretty good, their Matter is integration is clearly a rushed mess just to have the badge on the box and not taken seriously.
As such, I can’t recommend them at all.

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2

Hello!

You say you are also using Nous P8 (with Matter I suppose)? I have three of those and I am able to fairly easy pair them with my HAOS using Matter. However, after a couple of hours or days, the lamps functions are greyed out and I cannot interact with them at all. When I go on the lamp, I can ping it and I get on the IPv4 green, on the IPv6 address sometimes red, sometimes green.

Do you experience that as well or have an idea how to deal with it? They never seem to come back alive again and I see no possibility to “reinterview” them or heal the connection, like I can on Z-Wave for instance.

3

Hi!

I have previously only had Zigbee lights through Z2M on HAOS, but I found a Wiz White Smart Bulb E27 for 3,99€ (Hypermarket clearing out storage) and I decided I’d give it a try. I didn’t by more than 1, as I hadn’t even tried installing the Matter Add-on yet.

I found the set-up quite easy. First when powering up the light bulb, Google informed me that it found a device and wanted to add it to Home, but I denied it. Then when I got both the Matter Add-on server and Integration set up, I got it paired easilly. I also changed the power on behaviour to “On” and it works.

I instantly was thinking of buying some more lights, as I noticed that I would need at least two to use the Spacesense. Anyhow I read on Reddit, that many say this works inconsistently, so maybe I’ll stick with the PIR-sensors.

Reading this I’m thinking I should wait with buying more bulbs to see if there are any issues. I wouldn’t like to use the app.

Hope this might help someone, who’s not sure if they should invest or not. I can try to fill in future experiences.

4

I agree with you that their Matter integration is useless. I can confirm all your findings.

The only saving grace for me is that once setup, it is possible to use these bulbs with the Wiz integration, without connecting them to the Internet.

I spent some time in the last week modifying my pfSense setup to selectively block IP and public DNS access from certain devices. That includes my 220 Wiz bulbs, that were already setup using the Wiz app using cloud access. All of them continued to work identically in Home assistant with the Wiz integration.

When the bulbs are firewalled, but the phone isn’t, the Wiz app on the phone malfunctions in the following ways :
a. It refreshes all 220 bulbs every 2 seconds, making it very hard to click on anything .
b. it can onboard new bulbs that are firewalled, but is unable to change the fade-in timeout on any bulbs, whether Internet connected or not
c. the delete device function fails. It deletes the bulb from the cloud account, but does not reset the Wifi credentials. The bulb stays on the network indefinitey, unless powered off.

All 3 issues have a common single workaround : temporarily unblock all Wiz bulbs from Internet access - not just the new bulbs. Then, the app functions as expected. You can onboard new bulbs. you can set the fade-in timeout. And you can reset them. Afterwards, you can block them back, and use them only in Home assistant.

I reported these issues to Wiz support yesterday, but don’t have much hope that they will even understand what I’m talking about, given their initial response. I will follow up, though.

I wish it was possible to set the fade-in timeout without having to use the Wiz app. It might be possible to reverse engineer that setting and do it on local Wifi. At least, I hope so.

Also, it may be possible to use Matter to provision/unprovision the bulbs, without having to unblock them from Internet at all, but then subsequently use the Wiz integration to discover them locally, and get near full functionality.

Only a small percentage of my 220 Wiz bulbs support Matter, and even if Wiz worked out all the Matter bugs, I would still be using the Wiz integration that can work with all my bulbs, especially groups of bulbs, and do things like set the color effects on those groups.

This is only my 3rd brand experience with Matter devices. I have about 80 Yolink devices, and am using them through Matter with a Yolink local hub. There are several bugs and limitations in their Matter implementation as well, which I also reported. The other one is GE lighting/Cync reveal, which I bought this week. That is the best of 3 brands in terms of Matter support. Everything works, except the light show feature, which is missing in the Cync Matter integration. Setting non-animated colors works, though. I am able to set the same color on both my Wiz bulbs (using Wiz integration) and the GE Cync undercabinet lights in one group in Home assistant, and it works well. For white CCT colors, they even match very well. Not close for other colors. Even different models of Wiz bulbs that I use, like R20 and A19, don’t have identical colors.

The common trend for all 3 Matter integrations is that some features are missing in Matter that are available through the other integrations, whether cloud-based for Yolink and Cync, or local for Wiz.

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