Z-Wave Plus & 800 series
Z-Wave Plus is the certification badge for devices built on the 500-series chip or later; the current 800-series silicon brings longer range, multi-year battery life, mandatory S2 security and SmartStart, and support for Z-Wave Long Range. Newer series matter for range and battery, but every generation remains backward compatible on the same network.
Z-Wave’s chip generations — 300, 500 (Z-Wave Plus, 2013), 700 (Z-Wave Plus v2, 2019), 800 (2021 onward) — are a cleaner upgrade story than most protocols manage: each generation interoperates, so a 15-year-old switch still joins an 800-series controller’s network. From the 700 series on, S2 security and SmartStart inclusion are mandatory for certification rather than optional.
The 800 series substantially extends the 700 series’ radio link budget (Silicon Labs quotes well past 100 m line of sight in mesh mode) and cuts sleep-current draw enough for up-to-10-year coin-cell battery claims. When comparing two similar devices, the chip series is a genuinely useful tiebreaker — an 800-series sensor will typically hold a link where a 500-series one drops off the mesh edge.