Since its first release in 1999, Z-Wave has continued to be developed at an exciting pace with massive leaps to the core technology. All this has culminated in the first version of Z-Wave Plus: Z-Wave 500 series.
June 2019 update. Since 2013, when we first published this article explaining the benefits of 500 series Z-Wave Plus, newer versions of the standard have been released. Follow either of these links to learn more and compare 500 series Z-Wave to 700 series and the newer 800 series.
500 series Z-Wave has been developed as an upgrade to both the 300 series and 400 series chips and Atrim team has been engineering with it since the chip’s release in 2013. Such products, using Z-Wave Plus chips and modules, have a number of advantages over their predecessors. These include improvements in 4 key areas.
The 500 series chip has a 67% broader wireless communication range.
The 500 series chip has a 250% quicker data rate.
The 500 series chip has 400% more on-chip memory, meaning that Atrim can now build more features into its Z-Wave products than ever before.
The 500 series chip offers a 50% reduction in the Z-Wave chip's power consumption. That means a lower costs of using Z-Wave and also a greater battery life for battery-powered Atrim products.
| Z-Wave feature | 300 series | 500 series |
|---|---|---|
| Over-The-Air (OTA) firmware updates | Optional, 5.0x SDK | Always |
| Security: AES-128 encryption | – | Always |
| Security: Application level sample code | Yes | Yes |
| Security: man-in-middle and brute force hacking avoidance | – | Always in S2 |
| Security: Elliptic curve Diffie–Hellman (ECDH) anonymous key exchange | – | Always in S2 |
| Explorer Frames | Yes | Yes |
| Network Wide Inclusion | Yes | Yes |
| Remove reduced SUC functionality (Full replication only) | Yes | Yes |
| Random number generation | Yes | Yes |
| Advanced route diversity calculation | – | Yes |
| Frequently Listening Routing Slave (FliRS) | – | Yes |
| Beam wake-up | Yes (5.0x SDK only) | Yes |
| 100kbps wireless channel | – | Yes |
| Concurrent listening on 9.6/40kbps and 100kbps channels | – | Yes |
| Concurrently listening on three 100kbps channels | – | Yes |
| External power amplifier support | – | Yes |
| USB VCP support | – | Yes |
| IR learning | – | Yes |
| IR generation | – | Yes |
| Advanced wireless range | – | Yes |
| Decreased power consumption | – | Yes |
| Improved communication speed | – | Yes |
| Improved memory capacity | – | Yes |
| Improved output power | – | Yes, +2.5dBM |