Bit of an overstatement I think. I have both Zwave and Zigbee devices (via Wiser heating systems) Zigbee seems to be more sensitive to range issues and some devices will occasionally lose contact despite being within 5 or 6 metres of a mains powered Zigbee device. However the current lack of clarity on when Zwave will be available with the latest version on HA (and the considerable cost difference) means that, at least for a while I will continue with a mixed set up and will increase the number of Zigbee devices.
I think you should figure out what you want to use the Zigbee Devices for. I have both zigbee and zwave devices for door and motion sensors. These are battery powered and often do not show an accurate status. I just bought a Sonoff contact and motion because they were cheap but the motion sensor became unresponsive.
Where I can I have moved over to ESPHOME and installed proper contacts on doors as I find with both Zigbee and Zwave you spend allot of time replacing batteries, charging devices or generally trying to debug them.
I got a Aqara Cube for the cool factor and that works well no problems. Also thinking about getting some IKEA bulbs so I think these protocols do have a place and give more options.
But, I am one who feels they don’t make good security devices if security is a key concern.
I echo these comments.
Up until recently I have been happy with my Zigbee kit however recently I have had a few problems with Ikea lamps not working reliably, a couple of Aqara sensors going unavailable, and button batteries on an Ikea remote running down in a couple of weeks. The problems seem to have occurred since I started using the Ikea kit so it may be a compatibility issue.
By contrast my Zwave kit has been rock solid, I have 5 of the Neo Coolcam PIRs which are only around $20 each. These have been running for well over a year without missing a beat and on one of these the battery has just dipped to 75% (the rest are still at 100%).
If you determine that the IKEA bulbs are causing your issue please let us know. Rather not bring another variable into it.
I have 4 x Ikea lamps and 1 x Ikea remote, just looked at my logs and there are a huge number of errors:
Logger: homeassistant
Source: /usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/runner.py:99
First occurred: 04:02:40 (6977 occurrences)
Last logged: 14:45:15
Error doing job: Exception in callback ThreadsafeProxy.__getattr__.<locals>.func_wrapper.<locals>.check_result_wrapper() at /usr/local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/bellows/thread.py:97
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.8/asyncio/events.py", line 81, in _run
self._context.run(self._callback, *self._args)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/bellows/thread.py", line 98, in check_result_wrapper
result = call()
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/bellows/ezsp/__init__.py", line 254, in frame_received
self._protocol(data)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/bellows/ezsp/protocol.py", line 102, in __call__
frame_name = self.COMMANDS_BY_ID[frame_id][0]
KeyError: 255
When I get some time I think I need to remove all the Ikea stuff and see if the errors go away.
Can you provide a few examples of major smart home manufacturers who have done this?
FWIW, Home Assistant’s ZigBee integration is more mature than its zwave integration which is currently undergoing a complete change of direction.
Wow, that is quite a thread to read, I did not realize the flux that going on in zwave with HA. Frustrating as the zwave hardware seems to be moving forward in a more unified and open direction.
This is exactly why I purged all Zwave. Most of mine was older, so I just shut down what I was using, and tossed everything else. If it’s not Zigbee, it’ll be Wifi.
Tough call. I am not sure I agree with you that it is realistic and useful to say Zigbee and Wifi only. As a smart person once told me … ‘Life sucks and then we die.’ 
For example, I have found that inexpensive bluetooth BLE temperature/humidly sensors are the best way to monitor these attributes through out houses and within refrigerators and freezers.
I found Zwave operating on sub gigahertz to be very helpful to reliably go through thick walls, even when it was a very closed garden. And, I would challenge you to say that they do not have a vibrant product universe.
The coming LoRa technologies (as well as Amazon’s Sidewalk) is very useful. What dog, cat child herder does not want a GPS fencing product that works over multiple 10,000 meter ranges at a reasonable cost???
Raise a 
and back to work integrating 
No one is arguing that there aren’t uses for all of these technologies. But all of these technologies come at a price (added complexity). I’d be interested to hear how you’re monitoring all of your BLE devices around the house? Yet another server installed nearby reporting back to HA?
As for Sidewalk, I’ve turned it off, I’d rather not trust Amazon to manage who has access to my wireless network. Doesn’t mean there isn’t a use for it. But you’re trading security for convenience.
I’m using an esp32 flashed with OpenMQTTGateway to monitor my Xiaomi LYWSD03MMC Temp & Humidity sensors. And I prefer Zigbee over Zwave. With over 100 Wifi devices and 40 Zigbee devices in the house, can’t say I have drop-offs.
You are correct, there is another dimension that has to be factored in… move to a single server/hub or have multiple server/sub-server and hubs.
To my joke and reality ‘Life sucks and then we die.’
Yes, I struggled with bluetooth low energy for a month. Bottom line, it’s implementation on Linux SUCKS!!! I have a solution that seems to run for multiple months (hoping for years, which is what I expect from Unix/Linux) as a raspberry pi/linux collector ‘hub’, but was it hard, yes. But have a found a better sensor end device than the BLE units, NO. So in balance… are they Linux python solutions, yes, are there ESP32 solutions yes. But I can tell you, based on experience, Wifi and Zigbee temperature / humidity solutions SUCK SUCK!!! So I have a bluetooth with a raspberry pi in my mix, will it play out as a long term solution, TBD. But it filled a price/performance/quality gap that I was unable to fill with any other tech mentioned, so it was add it to my toolbox. Growing…
Sidewalk, I am not going to debate, yes a whole corporate / privacy issue. But, you did not mention LoRa, which seems to be a positive ‘pretty open’ technology that addressed the use cases I mentioned. Of which, bluetooth, wifi, zigbee, zwave (maybe??) cannot address. And if Amazon increases the universe of hardware for LoRo, by pushing their own proprietary software on top of the same hardware I can use for LoRa, should I complain?
Okay we can open the whole LTE, 4G, 5G can of SPAM now too
Life sucks and then back to work integrating
@netregha] You do not need to flash Zigbee devices other that updating firmware on them if available.
Suggest that you try out ZHA first and if it does not fit your needs then try out Zigbee2MQTT later. This as ZHA is super easy to get started with but it is not stand-alone so not as flexible as Zigbee2MQTT.
I do however not recommend starting out with Tuya and Xiaomi/Aqara devices as they do not quite follow the standard Zigbee specifications and as such can be less stable than Zigbee devices from example IKEA and Sonoff.
Also research before buying a Zigbee coordinator, as some are compatible with more integration software than others and some are more powerful, regardless make it a USB dongle and not a bridge:
Recommend read advice on Zigbee range extending as well as it uses network mesh technology:
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Excecutive Summary
No. But choose your coordinator hardware wisely.
No. But take a look the the supported devices before you buy.
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Curious why you recommend a USB dongle over a bridge solution. Other than the pain to flash the Sonoff Zigbee bridge with Tasmota, in my testing I have found it to work pretty well with ZHA. Silicon Labs, the maker of the zigbee module in the Sonoff bridge seem to be leading in terms of function and market share. Getting a good USB stick with the Silicon Labs hardware would solve the Tasmota flashing step and perhaps better communication between the zigbee processor and host software. But so far, the wifi serial connection between my HA server and the Sonoff bridge is working well. The added benefit of this model is that it allows you to place the Sonoff Zigbee bridge in a location where you can optimize coverage of the coordinator module. And to that point, if you do go down the USB dongle route, I think using a USB extension cable to get the zigbee device away from noise generated by you host computer is a must. I sense a number of folks have had an unsuccessful start to their zigbee experience because they USB dongle was plugged directly into a noisy host computer. Especially, a host with USB 3.0, as someone the forums recently experienced.
On your point about noncompliant devices and the frustration this can cause, I completely agree. Unfortunately, based on my experience and reading some others, I think the problem is far greater than Tuya and Xiaomi/Aqara, though they may be some of the worst. However for example in my own testing, two items I have found, and believe there are more:
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Ikea switch will not stay online (and visible, this is the key part, it totally disappears from network, and will not comeback without a re-add) when connected via LEDVANCE wall socket module. Ikea switch works fine when connected directly to coordinator.
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Sonoff SNZB-02 EwElink temperature and humidity module, when added via a CentraLight RZHAC appliance plug, reports temperature, humidity and battery levels fine. But as far as the ZHA coordinator is concerned, the SNZB-02 has no network links paired with ANY device on the network, it floats out there in isolation in the network diagram. But as I said, has been reporting data just fine since day one.
Zigbee is a very useful technology for home automation, but even with it’s long history(in tech years) it still suffers from ‘walled garden’ syndrome (aka Hue devices with Hue hub, Ikea devices with Ikea hub, Aqara devices with Aqara hub, work better and grudgingly, at best, support adding other vendor devices to the garden). And even though it was offered as an open standard, it seems there are far more cases of ‘this device will not connect with that device’, than say bluetooth or wifi. Not to say those don’t have same issues, just IMHO, zigbee comes in third in this race.
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I now see you post on this new dongle, interesting. Other than the flash, I still think there are pluses and minuses for both bridge and dongle. An ethernet connected bridge would be another interesting option, and I see some folks are working this. To the bridge connection options, based on my ownership the following info, in my LAN both wired and wireless bridges have worked fine:
Phillips Hub - ethernet connected but has wifi option that I think was never turned on (which is interesting)
Aqara Hub - wireless only
Ikea Hub - ethernet only
Samsung hub - both ethernet and wifi option (perhaps it is not fair 2 call this device a ‘hub’ but rather a host with direct connect zigbee coordnator processor)
Lutron hub - ethernet (but totally different wireless frequencies for devices)
I run around 60 IKEA bulbs, 8;remotes and 4 IKEA motion sensors. All are reliable and after 2 years I’m only just changing batteries in some of the remotes.
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Just created a setup from scratch, using Raspee II and Zigbee2mqtt. Currently 41 devices of various brands (IKEA, Innr, Osram, Philips).
The mesh took about 1-2 days to optimize routing, since then it‘s running flawlessly.
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My one take away w/ zigbee is its worth it to start out with a strong coordinator adaptor and not the CC2531. See Supported adapters | zigbee2mqtt.io. I got the one from Slaesh and its great!
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The main reason is that especially the EmberZNet serial protocol that Silicon Labs based products uses does not do a good job at handling the loss of serial packages (serial communication faults) which could be caused by WiFi interference if network packages are lost or if WiFi goes down.
bellows library for zigpy which ZHA uses has posted this warning about using Zigbee to WiFi bridges.
https://github.com/zigpy/bellows#warning-about-zigbee-to-wifi-bridges
Warning about Zigbee to WiFi bridges
zigpy requires a robust connection between the zigpy radio library and the serial port of the Zigbee radio. With solutions such as ITEAD Sonoff ZBBridge or a Ser2Net serial proxy connection over a WiFi network it is expected to see NCP entered failed state. Requesting APP controller restart in the logs. This is a normal part of the operation and indicates there was a drop in communication which caused packet loss to occurred between the zigpy radio library and the Zigbee radio. The use of serial network proxies/bridges/servers over WiFi is therefore not recommended when wanting a stable Zigbee environment with zigpy.