I am thinking about Qubino Zwave switches or Shelly1 Wifi MQTT to control lights.
Which is better, faster and more reliable with Home Assistant?
As with all things the answer is, it depends…
MQTT is generally reliable and fairly easy to integrate. especially as you say you are going to use the Shelly1. I literally just got a couple from Amazon yesterday and, since they don’t need to be flashed with a different firmware anymore, I had them on my system in about 10 minutes. And they are usually cheaper than z wave. But if there is a problem with your network/router then you lose any functionality from HA.
Z wave works pretty reliably also. And they don’t rely on your network to run. As long as your HA computer is running then z wave should work too. As far as adding them to your HA it can be a little tricky for some devices because of vague documentation and not all devices are supported but I’ve only ever run across one device I couldn’t get to pair (Linear/GoControl Garage Door Opener). Generally most things you would want aren’t going to be an issue tho. But they are more expensive.
I have both and at least that’s my experience with them.
I have found sonoff switches flashed with Tasmota (mqtt) far more reliable and responsive than Aeotec smart switches (zwave). My Zwave mesh is pretty good it’s just not a high speed network and Open Zwave leaves a lot to be desired.
One thing to watch out for if going down the path of mqtt and wifi, all wifi routers will have a practical limit to the number of devices you can connect. e.g. The Ubiquiti Unify APs claim hundreds of clients however in practice it has been found that any more than 40 clients per AP is asking for trouble.
A little late to the party here, but I use Zwave and MQTT devices.
ZWave, using OpenZWave (Home Assistant uses OpenZwave) can be slow to respond once you get more than 10 to 15 nodes, especially if using security enabled devices.
MQTT, while fast, is very much Access Point dependent.
If you go down the MQTT route, I would strongly recommend getting a dedicated WiFi Access Point for your home automation stuff and keep it separate from your normal data access point. This will help prevent crashes and keep it cleaner and faster.
Using WiFi when it is shared with your computer’s is a bit of a recipe for disaster unless you are careful and have high end wifi equipment.
Switches and dimmers need very little bandwidth, but they do need low latency. A quick, low bandwidth network is better than a high bandwidth network with high latency.
For me, I keep all my automation stuff on its own network. An older, but rock solid 802.11G Linksys access point seems to work well. With that said, I have little 2.4GHz interference here. If you are in a congested area with lots of WiFi networks, your WiFi devices may suffer as majority of then use the ESP8266 Chip which is only single band so you are stuck on 2.4GHz.
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