Just buy Hue, maybe Aqara sensors, use zigbee2mqtt with Home Assistant and be happy while observing the shitshow that is this market from a safe distance.
Sticking to pure zigbee devices with zigbee2mqtt and slae.sh's excellent USB coordinator. A couple weeks ago I bought a bunch of spare IKEA zigbee devices before they go out of stock. Around 2030 I'll take a look if thread/matter is anywhere near mature and has settled.
https://www.ikea.com/global/en/newsroom/retail/the-new-smart...
I like them because they can use rechargeable AAA batteries but if I still have to touch them every few weeks to repair, I’d rather switch to a different brand that is more reliable and uses less ideal battery formats.
That said, the newish Inspelling plugs in the EU market are fantastic. They report reliably, can handle larger loads, and cost about €10. For that price, it’s hard to complain that they are a bit larger than other options.
https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/
Then get a coordinator recommended for zigbee2mqtt:
https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/adapters/
Then install and start the following add-ons in Home Assistant:
- Mosquitto - zigbee2mqtt: https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/installation/03_ha_addon.ht... - MQTT
And that's pretty much it, you can add devices through the MQTT add-on page. They will also become available as entities in the rest of Home Assistant, and you can make graphs, dashboards, actions, etc.
You can also run + install zigbee2mqtt and Mosquitto on a Linux machine, but HAOS give you more of an integrated solution with dashboards, graphs, backups, cloud access, etc.
The only worry is if manufacturers stop developing Zigbee products. Ikea for example made cheap and good Zigbee devices but they've said they're moving away from Zigbee.