My two cents: thread and matter has the potential to be more reliable than WiFi. The biggest blocker is that thread border routers have no vendor interoperability (you have to buy a bridge for every vendor)
I guess a loophole might be to make the border router matter compatible but none of the actual devices. At which point you really shouldn't be buying them anyway.
Matter is an interoperability standard so that devices expose a common API. It works over WiFi, Bluetooth or Thread currently.
Thread is a network protocol like WiFi or Bluetooth.
The QR codes are used for pairing devices to a Matter controller.
The controller could talk to the border router if needed but that should be it.
Zigbee relies solely on noone being able to MITM the pairing process, where the security lies in the short window of opportunity and short range.
But Matter (and thus the Thread devices we talk about here) has an out of band mechanism for sending keys, since it requires QR + BLE.
I guess your point is that you typically can't form a Thread mesh between different border routers of different vendors. Which is unfortunate, but solvable. Don't buy/use border routers from such vendors. Because that problem is not the same as not being able to use a device from vendor X on a non-X border router.
Big advantage of Matter/Thread is that don't need a hub with its software. It is IP-based protocol. On Wifi or Bluetooth, your phone talks directly to the devices. On Thread, you need a gateway to translate from Wifi to Thread. Your phone only needs to know about Matter.
I don't think Matter devices talk over the Internet, I think they use non-routable IPv6 addresses. You can use HA to control over Internet but that uses the HA app. I don't know what other apps do, probably the same custom thing as with Zigbee.
Matter works similarly to HomeKit, with direct access to devices, but Matter adds the low-power Thread. It is also standardized so that could have generic Matter app instead of every device being its own app. And can add support to HA instead of custom Wifi and Bluetooth devices.
Some Google Home devices can be Thread hub, and Google Home can do Matter directly. iOS 16 has Matter support but not sure what that means. That may be the advantage that don't need to download app for each device but will be builtin to OS.
It's possible you've been scammed. I suspect there's a big market in selling knock off Hue bulbs because they can mark up the price so much more.
Why? They all work ~fine on zigbee which is pretty much the exact same thing just with even less oversight.
I haven't bought into matter/thread because I haven't found a single device I want yet.
And with that in mind IPv6 feels like a decent choice.
If vendors don't respect that foundation then the whole point of Matter+Thread is just gone.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Hue/comments/cpbu9w/ikea_tradfri_bu...
There certainly are issues with the zigbee devices, but that is not it.
I’m a firm believer in matter and threads future, but ipv6s home network mess is going to hamper it for years imho.
ICMPv6 (type 133) Router Solicitation (RS)
ICMPv6 (type 134) Routing Advertisement (RA)
Which my xfinity provided router does not. I spent weeks with support emails between xfinity and eve trying to get it sorted out before eve declared it an unsupported router and refunded me the purchase.
But for 90% of the population home automation is as elusive and as prohibitive as quality home espresso - expensive, delicate, and requires all the attention of a niche hobby. Not that most people aren't smart enough to figure it out, but for most people the juice isn’t with the squeeze. All the COTS hardware for easy implementation is a closed cul-de-sac and rather mediocre, and is condemned to be a neat gimmick that quickly loses its luster.