ESPHome is fine, but it's not representative of what people mean by "wifi devices." Most wifi devices require a proprietary app, sweep up your data to some fly

ESPHome is fine, but it's not representative of what people mean by "wifi devices." Most wifi devices require a proprietary app, sweep up your data to some fly-by-night operation, stop working during an internet outage, don't interoperate between vendors, "call home," and yet never receive security updates. Technically, it's 802.11, but by design, ESPHome is closer to Zigbee with a different underlying interface (802.11 rather than 802.15) than it is to most wifi devices. It's 100% open, simple, documented, reliable, etc. I'd be fine with wifi devices if they were ESPHome underneath. Heck, I'd probably set up a separate network for HomeAssistant and IoT. To that point, one major upside of 802.15 over 802.11 is battery life. I don't have any battery-powered 802.11 devices. It is possible to power zigbee devices from mains, and on my to do list at some point is to move a few of them from batteries to external power.