Shelly Presence Gen4 US launch: price, specs, and what stays local

Shelly put its Presence Gen4 sensor on sale in the US on 15 October at $84.99, through its own store, with Micro Center, Best Buy, Newegg and Amazon named as carrying it soon. It is a USB-powered mmWave radar sensor, Shelly’s first product in a category I already cover for several other brands. The question I care about is whether it changes what a local-first house should buy for room presence.

Short version: worth watching, not worth buying yet. The headline claim is 10 people across 10 zones, but Shelly’s own specification table on the same page says 6, and six months of European coverage said 6 too, so I’m not treating 10 as settled. What stands out is the radio: a USB-powered mmWave sensor that runs Matter over Wi-Fi or Zigbee (you switch between them, not both at once), with a documented cloud-free local mode. It costs more than the picks I already recommend in this category, though, so price alone won’t make the case. What’s holding me back is that I couldn’t find anywhere that says someone has run the US unit, I couldn’t find anywhere that confirms official Zigbee2MQTT support, and the one hands-on report that exists, from a European unit in April, found presence dropping to “clear” while the tester sat still half a metre away.

What I verified, and what I haven’t. This is written from Shelly’s own spec page, two North American launch write-ups, a March preview, a European hands-on report from six months ago, and Home Assistant’s own docs. I haven’t run this sensor.

Confirmed from those sources: the $84.99 US price, the EUR 69.98 European price from April, the radio list (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Matter over Wi-Fi), that Matter and Zigbee are a switchable either/or rather than both at once, the 10-zone limit, and the coverage figures (up to 650 sq ft wall-mounted, 525 sq ft corner-mounted).
Reported, not confirmed per figure: how many people it tracks. Shelly’s launch materials say 10. Shelly’s own specifications table, on the same knowledge-base page, says 6. Nothing I found reconciles the two.
I couldn’t find anywhere that says: whether Zigbee2MQTT or ZHA officially support this device yet, whether the reliability problems in the April hands-on report are fixed on the firmware shipping now, or an exact date for Micro Center, Best Buy, Newegg or Amazon to start carrying it.

I’ll update this page once someone has run the US retail unit.

What was announced

Product	What it is	Price	Availability
Shelly Presence Gen4	USB-powered mmWave radar presence sensor, up to 10 zones, built-in light sensor	$84.99 (US); EUR 69.98 in Europe since April	On sale now at us.shelly.com; Micro Center, Best Buy, Newegg and Amazon “soon,” no date given

This isn’t a brand-new product. HomeKitNews covered it as upcoming back in March with no price or date, and it has been selling in Europe since around early April. What’s new on 15 October is the US price and the US store listing.

The people-count discrepancy

Shelly’s knowledge-base page for this sensor gives two different numbers in two places. The specifications table lists a maximum of 6 tracked people. A features section higher on the same page claims up to 10 at once. The North American launch write-ups repeat 10 and don’t mention 6. Notebookcheck’s original European coverage, updated as recently as 5 October, ten days before this launch, still said 6. I’m not picking a side; I’m telling you the vendor hasn’t picked one either, and a room-occupancy sensor’s whole job is counting people correctly.

Zones and coverage

Up to 10 customizable detection zones, still detection out to about 3 m, and two mounting modes: wall-mounted gives a 140-degree horizontal field covering up to 650 sq ft, corner-mounted gives 90 degrees covering up to 525 sq ft. It also sits flat on a table or shelf. Shelly’s page says it’s for indoor use only and won’t detect through walls or solid obstructions.

What stays local, what doesn’t

The radio is the real story, and it’s one radio at a time

The Presence Gen4 ships with Matter over Wi-Fi as its default firmware. Press its button five times in quick succession and it switches to Zigbee 3.0 instead. Shelly’s own page doesn’t say you can run both at once, and it doesn’t say whether Wi-Fi and Bluetooth stay active no matter which mode you pick. For other Shelly Gen4 devices, a reply in a Home Assistant community thread says Wi-Fi and Zigbee run together and Bluetooth turns off once Zigbee is on, but that’s about Gen4 relays, not this sensor, so I’m not extending it here without a source that actually says so for the Presence Gen4.

This is a different shape than the mmWave sensors I already recommend. The Aqara FP300 also switches between Zigbee and Matter, but its Matter path runs over Thread and needs a border router; the Presence Gen4’s Matter path needs neither Thread nor a hub. The Aqara FP1E is Zigbee-only and needs a coordinator. The Everything Presence One is Wi-Fi with a native ESPHome integration and nothing else. The Presence Gen4’s pitch is one USB sensor for either a Wi-Fi-first house or a Zigbee one, switched with five button presses instead of buying a different sensor for each.

Home Assistant support is unconfirmed, not denied

Shelly’s own page lists Home Assistant, next to Shelly Cloud and other platforms, as something the device integrates with, but doesn’t say through which path. Home Assistant’s own Shelly integration docs don’t name the Presence Gen4, or any presence sensor, at all; they do say the integration’s IoT class is Local Push with no cloud involved, and that all four Shelly hardware generations are supported in general. The one hands-on account I found, from April on a European retail unit, tried both paths and hit problems in both. In Zigbee mode, Zigbee2MQTT first called the device unsupported, then reported a bare presence true/false, then went to null while the Shelly app still showed someone in the room. In the native Shelly Wi-Fi mode, the device showed up cleanly with its own occupancy and object-count entities and correct illuminance readings, but on that same test run, the tester sat half a metre from the sensor and watched occupancy drop to “clear” after he stopped moving, which is the exact failure mode a presence sensor exists to avoid. I couldn’t find a Zigbee2MQTT listing for this model anywhere, and that report is six months old on firmware that may not match today’s, so I’d call both paths unproven rather than call either one working.

Local control, on paper

The spec page lists a built-in local web interface plus MQTT, UDP, webhooks and scripting, and documents an LED state for being on Wi-Fi without Shelly Cloud. Nothing on the page says Shelly Cloud is required for basic operation. That’s a local-first design on paper, which is why this is worth tracking even though I’m not ready to recommend it.

Buy, wait or ignore

Home Assistant house with a Zigbee coordinator. Wait. There’s no confirmed Zigbee2MQTT listing for this device, and the only report of it in the wild had problems in that mode too. The Aqara FP1E is the proven Zigbee pick today.

Home Assistant house on Wi-Fi, no strong radio preference. Wait too. The native Shelly integration is local push with no cloud step, which is the right shape, but the one report of it running showed the same sensor losing occupancy while someone sat still half a metre away, the exact problem mmWave is supposed to fix. I want someone running the current US firmware before I’d call this a pick.

Apple or Google Home house. Wait as well. The Matter-over-Wi-Fi mode doesn’t need a Thread border router the way the FP300 does, which is a real convenience if you don’t already have one, but the underlying radar is the same one that dropped occupancy in the one hands-on report, and nothing I found says Matter mode judges presence any differently. Hold off until the 6-versus-10 people figure gets settled too; a presence sensor that can’t tell you how many people it’s rated for is one I’d want a firmware release note on first.

Budget buyer. Ignore it for now. At $84.99 it costs more than the Aqara FP300 or the Everything Presence One, and neither of those has the open people-count and Home Assistant reliability questions this one does.

Does this change my picks?

Not yet.

Best mmWave presence sensors for Home Assistant. Gets an Update note pointing here. It stays off the list until someone runs the US unit and the people-count question has an answer, and until there’s a real Zigbee2MQTT or ZHA listing to point to.
Everything Presence One vs. Aqara FP2. Unaffected directly; this is a different sensor, but it’s the comparison page a reader would land on next, so it gets the same Update note.
How to add presence detection to every room. Unaffected. I’d want a working setup, not a spec sheet, before adding a new sensor to a how-to.

Sources

Every fact above comes from these sources, checked Oct 16, 2026. A launch brief is written before hands-on testing; the "what I verified" box says what is confirmed and what is not.

Shelly's Presence Gen4 sensor comes to the US