Smartthings Hub: Key Takeaways
- Samsung TVs Q60 and above (2022+) include a built-in SmartThings hub supporting Matter, Zigbee, and Thread at no extra cost.
- Activating the SmartThings hub requires the same Samsung account on both TV and phone, plus enabling network standby so the hub stays reachable when the screen is off.
- Samsung’s “hub everywhere” approach means Smart Monitors, Family Hub refrigerators, and SmartThings Station can create overlapping SmartThings hub instances that may need manual deactivation in the app.
- A dedicated hub like the Aeotec Smart Home Hub 2 remains useful for extending range to distant devices or households without a qualifying Samsung TV.
The Aeotec Smart Home Hub 2, Samsung’s own current dedicated SmartThings hub, sells for around $130. A lot of people shopping for one already own the same underlying hardware, sitting unused inside a TV they bought for something else entirely. Samsung has built a SmartThings Hub directly into its Q60-and-above TVs since 2022, and turning it on costs nothing and takes about two minutes, if the TV qualifies.
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Which TVs Qualify, and Which Don’t
The built-in hub applies to Samsung TVs from the Q60 series and above, released in 2022 or later, which covers most of the mid-range and premium lineup from that point forward but not budget models or anything older. The 2026 flagship R95H, for example, ships with the hub built in and Matter support confirmed directly by Samsung.
Anyone with an older Samsung TV, or a Samsung TV below the Q60 tier, doesn’t have this feature regardless of how recently it was purchased, so it’s worth checking the specific model and year rather than assuming “it’s a Samsung TV” is enough.
What the Hub Can Control
The built-in hub isn’t a stripped-down version of a real hub; it supports all three of the major low-power smart home protocols: Matter, Zigbee, and Thread. That’s the same protocol support a dedicated hub like the Aeotec Smart Home Hub 2 offers, which means the TV can directly control Zigbee smart bulbs, Matter-certified plugs and sensors, and Thread-based devices without needing a separate bridge for any of them.
It’s a meaningful detail worth noting given Aeotec’s newer Hub 2 actually dropped Z-Wave support in favor of deeper Matter integration; the TV-based hub is following the same newer-protocol-first direction rather than lagging behind it.
What That Looks Like With Real Devices
In practice, that protocol support means a Zigbee smart bulb from a brand like Sengled or Samsung’s own SmartThings line, a Matter-certified smart plug, or one of IKEA’s Matter-over-Thread devices (many priced under $10, part of a deliberate mass-market push into the Matter standard) can all pair directly to the TV’s hub the same way they’d pair to a standalone hub, showing up in the SmartThings app as devices the TV itself is now responsible for relaying commands to.
Multi-sensor devices, contact sensors, motion sensors, water leak detectors, work the same way. Nothing about the underlying device pairing process changes because the hub happens to be inside a TV instead of a dedicated puck; the app doesn’t distinguish where the actual radio hardware lives.
Turning It On
Activation works two ways, and both take a couple of minutes. From a phone: open the SmartThings app (signed into the same Samsung account as the TV), go to Devices, select the TV, tap the Featured icon, and choose SmartThings Hub to activate it. From the TV itself: press Home, go to Connected Devices, open the SmartThings app, go into Settings, select SmartThings Hub, and toggle it on.
Either method requires the TV to be connected to Wi-Fi and needs no additional hardware purchase or subscription.
If the Hub Option Never Shows Up
A qualifying model doesn’t always mean the option appears immediately. The TV and phone both need to be signed into the identical Samsung account, not just two accounts belonging to the same person, since a mismatch (a TV still signed into an old account after a household move, for example) is a common, easy-to-miss cause of the SmartThings Hub toggle simply not being there.
Regional availability can also lag behind a feature’s initial rollout, so a model confirmed to support the hub in the US market isn’t automatically guaranteed to have the feature live in every region on the same timeline.
If the option is still missing after confirming the account match and Wi-Fi connection, checking the TV’s specific model number against Samsung’s own support pages for that region is a more reliable next step than assuming the feature simply isn’t coming.
The Standby Setting Most Setup Guides Skip
This is the part that trips people up after activation looks successful: the hub needs to keep working even when the TV screen itself is off, since most smart home activity, lights turning on at sunset, a sensor triggering an automation, happens when nobody’s actively watching TV. That requires the TV to keep a small part of its network connection alive during standby, and if the TV’s power-saving settings are left at their most aggressive default, that network interface can go fully to sleep, making the hub unreachable until the TV is turned back on.
The fix is enabling the TV’s “Power On with Mobile” or IP/network standby setting (the exact menu wording varies by model year), which keeps that minimal network connection active. Skipping this step is the most common reason someone activates the hub, sees it work fine while testing, and then finds automations silently failing once the TV’s screen has been off for a while.
Samsung’s “Hub Everywhere” Strategy Can Get Confusing Fast
The TV isn’t the only Samsung product quietly doubling as a SmartThings hub. Samsung has been building the same hub functionality into Smart Monitors, Family Hub refrigerators, and the standalone SmartThings Station across its recent lineup, a deliberate “hub everywhere” approach rather than a single flagship hub product. That’s convenient in the sense that almost any recent Samsung device purchase might come with hub capability included, but it also means a household with more than one of these devices can end up with two or three overlapping hubs active at once, with no obvious signal about which one is actually handling a given automation or responding fastest to a Zigbee device’s request.
If automations start behaving inconsistently in a multi-hub household, checking the SmartThings app for duplicate active hubs is a reasonable first troubleshooting step before assuming a device itself is malfunctioning. The SmartThings app lists every active hub under its own Devices entry, so a household with a TV, a Family Hub refrigerator, and a separate Station can check for more than one hub showing as “Online” at once and deliberately deactivate the ones not meant to be doing the work, rather than leaving all of them running and hoping they coordinate cleanly on their own.
When a Dedicated Hub Is Still the Right Purchase
None of this makes a standalone hub pointless. A TV-based hub is physically tied to wherever the TV lives, which is a real limitation if most smart home devices, a garage sensor, a shed lock, a detached-room thermostat, sit far enough from the TV’s Zigbee or Thread radio range to connect reliably. A dedicated hub can be positioned centrally regardless of where the entertainment setup is, and it keeps working through a TV replacement, a TV that gets moved to a different room, or a household that doesn’t own a qualifying Samsung TV at all.
For anyone without a Q60-or-above Samsung TV already in the house, or with a range problem a differently-placed hub would solve, the $130 for something like the Aeotec Smart Home Hub 2 is still a reasonable purchase. The point isn’t that dedicated hubs are unnecessary; it’s that checking what’s already sitting under the TV is worth two minutes before assuming one needs to be bought at all.
For anyone who was about to add a Station or a third-party hub to a cart specifically to get started with Matter or Zigbee devices, and already owns a qualifying Samsung TV in the same room as most of those planned devices, that’s $130 that can go toward the devices themselves instead.
Bottom Line
Check if your Samsung TV qualifies for the built-in SmartThings hub and enable network standby to keep it active. If range is an issue or you lack a qualifying TV, consider a dedicated hub placed centrally.
Further reading: Original reporting: blog.smartthings.com.
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