Ok… Might come across as a dumb noob here… But hey, ya never learn if you don’t ask.
So I know that all mains powered zwave devices are supposed to all also act as repeaters…
Is there some reason I’m missing that I’d buy a $34 700 series repeater forexample:.
As opposed to a $25 700 series switched outlet… Which doesn’t block my outlet… Even if I never use the zwave switch and just leave it on do I have…ya know… My outlet… For example:
Is it all marketing? Gotta imagine they both have the same SiLabs soc inside like everyone else? Antenna maybe? Any possibly difference there? Would imagine for $25 OR $32 everyone uses the identical SiLabs reference design for a printed PCB antenna too… Because your outsourced Xerox-machine designers probably can’t do much else for even $32 a device.
If I were to buy just a range extender, I’d probably pick up the ring gen 2 range extender. It has a battery backup, and (at least in home assistant and hubitat) can be used to detect power outages at home. Aside from that use-case, I’d just get the plugs.
That’s actually a really handy feature! My home assistant runs on a UPS, as does my networking gear, but there definitely are some battery powered sensors in the house that route through light switches with no backup.
IME dedicated zwave repeaters are pointless if you already have a healthy mesh. I have a Hubitat H7 and was having tons of zwave issues; slow, laggy, etc. It was really bad. I tried adding four Aeotec repeater 7’s. Even after weeks/months in the mesh, none of the 4 repeaters were ever used to route signals. In Hubitat you can see the route all your devices are taking back to the hub. I tried moving them around strategically and nothing changed, they simply weren’t being used and my zwave mesh was still extremely unreliable.
Then I found a thread about soldering uFL connectors to the HE board and using external anternna for zwave and zigbee. I bought the parts and did the antenna upgrade. Night and day difference. ZWave is awsome now. I would go so far as to say that there’s possibly a design flaw in the H7 because this seems to be a mandatory mod if you using zwave. And yes I tried 3 different H7 hubs and many other things first, there’s nothing wrong with my hub, but it may be a design flaw.