Is the Xiaomi Core Gateway worth buying? Unable to bring a Zigbee sensor, it saved the day the network was cut off that night

the Bluetooth thermo-hygrometer on the balcony has gone down again, the third time in a month. Last year, I wrote a complaining about router Bluetooth gateways. At the time, I concluded that the Bluetooth gateway on the Pro speaker in the living room was powerless when separated by just one wall. This time, I made up my mind to buy a standalone gateway. The shopping cart originally had a multi-mode gateway, but after seeing the Xiaomi hub gateway during a big sale, I impulsively switched orders. In 2022, it crowdfunded 309 yuan and retailed for 349 yuan. Such a small square box was a cold shower on the very first day I got it.

pour cold water on the situation: it doesn't have Zigbee at all, and half of my sensors can't handle it

unboxed and flipped through the manual, then flipped through the device detail page in the Mijia app upside down—there was no sign of Zigbee. The central gateway only recognizes two protocols: Bluetooth and Bluetooth Mesh. It claims to have 200 Bluetooth Mesh devices plus 100 Bluetooth devices. The numbers sound impressive, but my home has human body sensors, door and window sensors, curtain motors, and water leak detectors—all ZigbeeZigbee s. I've written about that set before, and not a single one can get into the hub's door.

my first reaction was to be misled by the word "hub"—this is just a Bluetooth gateway with a larger size. Later, I understood the division of labor: it's not a "protocol gateway," but rather Mijia's "brain." Packed into a palm-sized box with a quad-core chip and 4GB of storage, it's like how whole-house automation can run without relying on the cloud. Protocol access is such a dirty job, relying on other gateways to do it.

the central hub acts as the brain, multi-mode downgrading acts as the slave gateway, and the CP combination of two units is the complete

already has a multi-mode gateway at home, with all twenty-eight Zigbee sensors mounted on it. I've counted how these 28 sensors were calculated, . When the central gateway is plugged in and connected to WiFi, the Mijia app automatically becomes the 'main hub' of the home. The multi-mode gateway and living room speaker Pro automatically downgrade to slave gateways, so you don't need to set them up manually.

this master-slave mechanism is quite interesting: the Bluetooth Mesh device controls whoever has the best signal. The hub comes with a built-in Bluetooth signal amplifier. The official claim covers 120 square meters, but my home has 89 square meters, and most Bluetooth devices are directly taken over by it; If the signal is weak from a distance, it is sent to the relay from the gateway for reporting. After moving the balcony thermo-hygrometer to the central system, the disconnection issue hasn't recurred for over a month.

The real benefits of

CP are yet to come: when multi-mode gateways go solo, the Zigbee sensors linked under its name only run a handful of simple local scenarios; Once the hub has entered this home, the linkage of sub-devices under the gateway is unified under the brain's unified scheduling. My "human body sensor triggers night light at midnight," with Zigbee as the trigger and Bluetooth Mesh as the executor, separated by two gateways. Even when the external network is cut off, it still runs — this cross-network linkage is a treatment only after the hub arrives. To verify which linkage is local, here's a simple method: disconnect from the external network and click to manually execute; most instant responses are local, two or three seconds in circles before activating, and most likely still looping in the cloud.

a tip you must check before buying: the central gateway only recognizes the mainland Mijia server, so overseas shopping doesn't match your home account, and gray market buyers are discouraged from buying.

Half an hour of broadband unplugging: which collaborations work, which still fail

half of the reason I bought it was to personally verify the slogan of "automatic operation when offline is disconnected." I chose a Friday night when my kid was sound asleep. I unplugged the optical modem and kept my data on my phone watching the Mi Home app—note that at this time the phone was still connected to home WiFi, just no external network and LAN connected, which was the only way to confirm the "local" quality. All home devices are gray and online status undetectable, so I manually triggered each one by one. Tested for half an hour:

pattern is clear: both trigger and execute are sub-devices (Bluetooth or Zigbee), logic runs locally in the hub, and you don't need to touch a single external network cable; On one end is connected to WiFi devices, or the conditions depend on cloud calculations, so even if the external network is cut off, it still stays idle. The official documentation is straightforward: the door lock and some lighting fixtures currently do not support localization, so don't expect that. By comparison, speakers only have local response capabilities when the external network is disconnected, the hub really extends the time "this home still has brains" by a significant margin.

Who is

200 capacity reserved for? Signal is easier to calculate

capacity is really not enough for our family. There are about thirty Mijia devices inside and out, far from the 200 markings. This number belongs to the "I can use it, but you can't do without it" — only large flats and villa enthusiasts can handle it. What truly matters is the signal—the gateway is like a router: location matters more than specs.

it has an RJ45 port on the back and supports dual-band WiFi of 2.4G and 5G. I originally wanted a direct network cable connection for stability, but then I thought, no: the network port is reserved for the weak current box deployment area. My weak current box is in the corner of the balcony, and once the metal box door closes, the signal can't come out. Putting it in is basically a waste. I simply placed it right in the center of the living room TV cabinet, with WiFi connecting to the main router, not far from any room's sensor. Dual-band is rare among these types of gateways—most smart devices only recognize 2.4G, but it even recognizes 5G backhaul, so there's no need to compete with 2.4G. I've already said how crowded 2.4G is.

routers already come with hubs, so why do people still buy just the hub

Xiaomi has packed the hub directly into the router in the past two years. Mid-to-high-end models like the BE6500 Pro come with a hub and Bluetooth Mesh, the expensive ones have a share of the . Isn't buying just the gateway unnecessary to buy? I realized it was a matter of location: routers are mostly locked in weak current boxes or entry weak voltage points, while gateways have to be placed in the middle of the device stack. One manages the whole family's network, the other controls the device's signal—the optimal positions for these two are naturally not side by side.

So if you've already bought a hub router, don't make repeated purchases; My router at home is fine, but I just want to give Mi a little more brain. A gateway costing over 200 yuan is much cheaper than replacing a whole router—AX3000T these 100-yuan models don't even have Bluetooth gateways, let alone a central router. By the way, it's also the bridge built between Mijia and Matter. If an iPhone wants to directly control Mijia devices, you have to go through it. Matter I wrote about the details in that article, . Advanced players can also enable Geek mode in the Mi Home app, allowing third-party platforms on the LAN to directly command sub-devices. That's how I connected the Home Assistant on my NAS. process is recorded in the NAS . For ordinary families, Mijia's built-in scene layout is enough, my homecoming mode setup can be copied directly .

four types of people should be treated according to their status, and before buying, they should check the agreement

not every household should have this machine. Whether you spend 309 yuan depends on the composition of your equipment:

order for you: first open the Mi Home app and tap through device details, check whether the connection method is Bluetooth, Zigbee, or WiFi, then decide whether to do this or not; Once you get your hands on it, placement is more important than anything. Pick the center of all your equipment—don't be like me, almost stuffing a weak current box. For the first week when both gateways coexist, it's recommended to keep them under observation until the ownership is stable (each device in the Mi Home app can see which gateway it is under under its name), then consider putting the extra from the gateway into a drawer—my speaker Pro was eventually returned to the bedroom dedicated to playing music, so it no longer had to fight for the Bluetooth gateway work.