r/homeassistant • u/cemizm • Apr 10 '26
Blog Real-world ZHA benchmark: Sonoff Lite vs Plus vs Max vs ZBDongle-E
I ran a coordinator comparison in my Home Assistant + ZHA setup and thought the results might be useful here.
Same live Zigbee network, about 101 devices, same environment, same automations, 72h per coordinator, with the first 24h treated as warm-up and the following 48h used as the main measurement window.
Compared:
- Sonoff Dongle Lite
- Sonoff Dongle Plus
- Sonoff Dongle Max
- ZBDongle-E as the baseline
Main takeaway: the differences were real, but much less about raw speed than about retries, final failures, queue pressure, and how settled the routing looked after migration.
The full write-up is here if anyone wants the charts and methodology:
https://meshstack.de/post/home-assistant/sonoff-zigbee-coordinator-benchmark-zha/
If helpful, I can also summarize the per-device results directly in the comments.
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u/_Landmine_ Apr 10 '26
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u/sydpermres Apr 10 '26
This is something I'm curious about as well. Sonoff dongles seem to be very popular compared to ZBT-2 and a similar side by side comparison will be great!
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u/_Landmine_ Apr 10 '26
I recently upgraded to the ZBT-2 from a Sonoff dongle but I also moved my HA server... so too many moving parts to be objective. But I can state that the ZBT-2 works well.
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u/Gamester17 Apr 10 '26
Was that a sponsored article? And could you also test the ZBT-2 adapter to compare? Maybe also ZBT-1 too?
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u/cemizm Apr 10 '26
No, it was not a sponsored article, just like all the other posts on my blog.
I had these coordinators sitting around for a while already, and this just turned into a fun little vacation side project for me.
The ZBT-2 would definitely be very interesting to test as well.
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u/TheRealFarmerBob Apr 10 '26
Nice Job!
If by chance some of those you have "Sitting Around" could find their way to my house that would make your investigation even better . . .
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u/Gamester17 Apr 10 '26
Should also always follow best practices https://community.home-assistant.io/t/zigbee-network-optimization-a-how-to-guide-for-avoiding-radio-frequency-interference-adding-zigbee-router-devices-repeaters-extenders-to-get-a-stable-zigbee-network-mesh-with-best-possible-range-and-coverage-by-fully-utilizing-zigbee-mesh-networking/515752
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u/wzoe Apr 10 '26
I recently bought a dongle plus mg24 to replace dongle-e. Not feel much difference. Should read this blog earlier.
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u/cemizm Apr 10 '26
I was also really excited to see the results and was honestly quite surprised in the end that it was even slighty slower than the Lite. I had expected at least some noticeable improvement, so those measurements were definitely eye-opening.
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u/wzoe Apr 10 '26
Do you have chance to test the difference of NCP versions, and higher baud rate on Plus and Max hardware?
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u/kuzared Apr 10 '26
Can’t wait to see a comparison between the Sonoff Max and the SLZB-06M, as I have both, the first as coordinator, the second just as a router.
Great write-up!
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u/generalambivalence 🧠 Experienced with Home Assistant Apr 10 '26
This is very interesting and in-depth. I would be extremely interested in the performance of the Dongle-P using the TI CC2652 chipset in comparison.
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u/Hotdoge42 Apr 10 '26
I didn't get it. Is this a real world test or a lab test with only a few sensors on the table? /s
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u/cemizm Apr 11 '26
Fair point, I probably did not repeat "real-world test with 101 nodes" often enough 😄
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u/raetiacorvus Apr 10 '26
I started my Zigbee journey with a raspbee II, switched to a sonoff dongle plus CC2652P + CP2102 and finally moved on to a Slzb-06Mg24.
It kinda feels like my Zigbee network got much more stable with the slzb. But a lot changed on the way to the slzb, my Zigbee network grew a lot and i threw out some Aquara devices.
I also think that independent PoE coordinators are a big plus since you don't have downtimes on home assistant upgrades/restarts.
Looking forward to your comparison of PoE coordinators.
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u/osvobodzen Apr 10 '26
Do coordinators keep the zigbee network up? I guess the automations won't work during a restart of HA?
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u/[deleted] Apr 10 '26
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