how we test

Every product on this store passed through the same bench before it earned a listing. No exceptions, no paid placements.

The bench

A production Home Assistant instance (HA green, Zigbee2MQTT + ZHA side by side), a hostile Wi-Fi environment, and a pull-the-plug switch on the internet uplink.

The protocol

  1. Pairing — out of box to paired, timed. Flaky pairing fails the device.
  2. Local control verified — internet physically disconnected; every advertised function exercised. Anything that degrades, we document. Anything that breaks, the device fails.
  3. Endurance — two weeks minimum on the bench network. Dropouts, battery drain and mesh behaviour logged.
  4. Integration quality — entities, naming, OTA support, quirks needed. We publish the integration path we recommend.
  5. The verdict — test date and notes go on the product page. If we wouldn't run it in our own house, it doesn't get listed.

That's the whole trick. It's not a big catalogue — it's a trustworthy one.

Honesty note: we are a new store working through the launch catalogue on the bench right now. Products still in the queue say so on their page — "in testing" means listed from verified supplier data while our own test completes. The badge gets a date the moment it earns one.