Aqara's IFA lighting range: two radios, 18 zones, no retail prices yet

Aqara used IFA in Berlin to announce five lights: a floor lamp, a recessed downlight, a trimmable strip, outdoor string lights and a run of permanent outdoor lights. Aqara’s own release says every product in the lineup supports both Thread and Zigbee and is Matter-enabled, and it names Home Assistant alongside Apple Home, Alexa, Google Home, SmartThings and Homey. The question I care about is whether a light with two radios and 18 zones changes what a local house should buy.

Short version: there is nothing to do today, because there is nothing to buy at retail. Aqara has published no retail price and no launch date for any of the five in the US or globally, and none of them appeared on Aqara’s US store when I checked on October 14, which listed four lights and no more. One price has since surfaced, but in China and not here: a trade report of October 21 puts a multicolor LED Strip T2 on sale in China at 379 yuan, about $57. The only prices so far are trial prices: on September 24 Aqara’s forum opened a paid trial for three of the five, with prices it says “do not represent the final retail price”. What is worth filing away is the shape of the range. Two radios per light could mean two roads into Home Assistant, and on Aqara’s current dual-radio bulb neither road needs an Aqara hub. The open question is whether the 18 addressable zones survive the trip, because Home Assistant’s own Matter docs say Matter gives you basic light controls.

Updated October 14, 2026: I added Aqara’s September 24 tester programme and its trial prices, which this brief missed when it was first written. Retail prices and dates are still unannounced.

Updated October 30, 2026: a China price for a multicolor LED Strip T2 has appeared in a trade report, so the line below saying I could not find a retail price anywhere is no longer true as written. Nothing has a US or global price or date.

What was announced

The tester programme

Aqara’s forum post of September 24 offered 60 tester units of each of the floor lamp and the two outdoor sets, one per person, in the US, Canada, the EU and the UK. Sign-ups closed on October 7, testers were picked on October 9, and Aqara says units ship from mid-October with most arriving in late October. Aqara is explicit that the trial prices are not what these will cost at launch, so I’m not treating them as a price signal.

Aqara also launched Aqara Builder, which its release describes as a global content-sharing community platform for enthusiasts, developers, installers and integrators, with AI-assisted support. It is a community platform, not a device, and it changes nothing about how any of this hardware works.

For context on the gap between an announcement and a purchase: Aqara’s US Smart Lighting collection on October 14 lists the LED Bulb T2 in E26 and GU10 from $21.99, the Ceiling Light T1M at $149.99, and the LED Strip T1-6.5FT at $49.99. None of the five new products is there.

What stays local, and what I can’t tell yet

The Thread road

A Matter-over-Thread light joins Home Assistant through the Matter integration, which Home Assistant classes as Local Push, so state arrives without polling and without a vendor cloud. You need a Thread border router near the light. Home Assistant’s docs name a Nest Hub (2nd gen), Nest Wi-Fi Pro, a HomePod mini or v2, an Apple TV 4K, or Home Assistant itself running the OpenThread Border Router with a radio such as the Connect ZBT-2 stick.

No Aqara hub sits in that path. That matches what Aqara already says about its current dual-radio bulb, whose product page puts it plainly: Thread mode allows direct integration with Matter-enabled ecosystems, while Zigbee mode is where the Aqara-exclusive features live, reached through an Aqara hub such as the Aqara Hub M3.

The Zigbee road

The second radio could let these lights pair to a Zigbee coordinator you already own, which is the path that has historically exposed more of a light than Matter does. I couldn’t find anywhere that says these five will work with a non-Aqara coordinator; Matter Alpha describes the Zigbee mode as connecting through an Aqara hub. On Aqara’s current bulb, the Zigbee2MQTT request for a device definition was closed as not planned, and the person who filed it reported that an autogenerated definition gave on, off, colour and brightness while power readings and power-on behaviour stayed broken.

There is a second catch on this road. Aqara’s other dual-radio devices arrive set to one radio and have to be told to use the other in the Aqara app; the Zigbee2MQTT thread on the bulb says the same about switching it to Zigbee. I couldn’t find anywhere that says which mode these five ship in.

The zones are the whole question

An 18-zone strip is only an 18-zone strip if something can address the zones.

• Over Matter, Home Assistant’s docs say the connection “only provides the basic controls over lights” and points at the Hue integration as the example of what vendor features you give up. Hueblog, writing about Hue’s own gradient strips, puts the underlying limit bluntly: “Matter does not yet support color gradients.”
• Over Zigbee, the previous-generation Aqara LED Strip T1 got per-segment control only after someone wrote it. A community converter added individual colour control for each 20 cm segment, and the Aqara forum thread says it was merged into Zigbee2MQTT for the 2.7.2 January release.

So the likely shape, if these ship as described, is that Matter gets you a very good plain light and Zigbee2MQTT may eventually get you the zones. I couldn’t find anywhere that says this about the T2 strip specifically, and I would want to see it in someone’s Zigbee2MQTT before paying for zones.

Buy, wait or ignore

Home Assistant house. Ignore for now, and check back when there is a retail price. There is no decision to make about a product with no launch price and no ship date. If you want an Aqara strip this month, the T1 is the one on sale, and its per-segment converter has already been written and merged.

Apple or Google Home house. Same answer, with one thing worth watching. Aqara’s IFA page lists Apple Adaptive Lighting for the series, and if that arrives over Matter rather than through the Aqara app it would make the downlight interesting for a house with no hub at all. No source I read says which way that works.

Budget buyer. Wait. Trial prices that Aqara itself says are not final tell you little, and the downlight and the strip have no price of any kind. The Aqara LED Bulb T2 at $21.99-$23.99 remains the cheap way into a dual-radio Aqara light. That product card is the existing bulb, not one of the five announced at IFA.

Does this change my picks?

Not today, and not until something has a retail price.

• Matter over Thread bulbs. The Aqara LED Bulb T2 stays where it is. None of the five new products is a bulb, so this roundup is untouched either way.
• Matter devices worth buying. Worth a second look once the downlight and the strip ship, because the only light on that list is a bulb. A light I cannot price and cannot buy does not belong on a shortlist.
• No catalog page changes. The catalog has no Aqara strip, downlight or outdoor light to supersede, and the LED Strip T1 is still on sale at $49.99, so I’m not marking anything discontinued on the strength of an announcement.