Z-Wave has spent the Matter era quietly holding its ground as the reliability incumbent — and in September 2026 it made one of its boldest plays yet. Rently, the resident lifecycle management platform for single-family and multifamily operators, unveiled a new line of Z-Wave Long Range smart home products at Rently Summit 2026 in Santa Monica, designed to make smart home deployment practical across hundreds or thousands of apartment units.
The lineup
Announced September 22, 2026, the lineup includes three products: the Rently Hub 4 Long Range, the Rently Smart Bolt Armor MDL smart deadbolt, and the Rently Long Range Thermostat. Together they address the three challenges that make smart home deployment difficult at multifamily scale: per-unit hardware costs, multifamily lock requirements, and network reliability across large buildings.
The centerpiece is the Hub 4 Long Range, a gateway certified for Z-Wave Long Range that connects and manages smart home devices across an entire floor from a single install point. Rently says one hub can support up to 25 units, and estimates the approach reduces upfront capital expenditures by approximately 30%. The hub includes cellular connectivity with Wi-Fi fallback and battery backup, and it is backward compatible with standard Z-Wave devices operating at standard range.
Why Long Range changes the economics
Z-Wave Long Range offers stronger wall penetration than Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, so one hub can cover an entire floor rather than requiring a hub in every unit. With fewer devices installed per property, installation runs shorter and there is less hardware to monitor and maintain. “Smart home technology has already proven its value in multifamily. The challenge has been making the economics and the deployment model work across hundreds or thousands of units,” said Merrick Lackner, CEO of Rently. “With Long Range, we can reduce the amount of hardware operators need to deploy and maintain and create a more reliable foundation for the smart home.”
The single-network reach of Z-Wave Long Range now extends past a mile with capacity for up to 4,000 nodes — numbers that make the “one hub per floor” model credible rather than aspirational. For property operators, the math is compelling: fewer gateways, fewer truck rolls, fewer points of failure.
The lock built for old buildings
The Smart Bolt Armor MDL deserves attention beyond the multifamily niche. It is a clutch-based smart deadbolt designed for retrofit installations, with a manually driven latch intended to accommodate warped door frames in older buildings — exactly where motor-driven deadbolts struggle to fully extend. The lock is ADA compliant, carries a UL fire rating of up to three hours, and has an estimated two-year battery life. Those are the unglamorous specifications that determine whether a smart lock actually survives in a 1960s apartment building.
Z-Wave’s 2026 position
The Rently launch illustrates where Z-Wave fits in the 2026 landscape. It is not trying to out-Matter Matter on interoperability; it is playing to its structural advantages — sub-GHz range, wall penetration, and a mature certification regime — in the segments where those advantages decide purchases. Long-range and perimeter placements (gate sensors, distant outbuildings, driveways, and now entire apartment floors) remain Z-Wave Long Range territory, bridged into Matter through a hub for unified control.
One caveat: Z-Wave Long Range remains US-only for now, a function of sub-GHz spectrum regulation differing by region. European multifamily operators will be watching for a regional variant.
Timeline
The products were unveiled as Rently marked its 15th year, with a beta program beginning in January 2027. For the broader market, the signal is clear: the economics of smart home deployment at building scale are finally getting serious engineering attention — and the protocol making it possible is the one many had written off.