OK I just did a conversion from an Early 2023 to a 2026, and it seems to have worked.
- Enabled backup on 2023, ensure online backups create cleanly
- USB tool to create local backup of 2023, then power 2023 down again for now
- USB tool to update 2026 - only upgrade firmware
- USB tool to restore local backup from 2023 to 2026 - got stuck on Verifying
- USB tool to restore again - this time it worked
- Power 2026 up - can’t connect. Dammit forgot to adjust Unifi firewall rules - fix that
Everything was there. Zigbee is on channel 25, I think it was on 20 before ? I can’t find the post-it note where I wrote that down
Samsung soundbar wasn’t available, had to redo the SmartThings generate token process, now it seems to be working fine.
Ram is at 4GB, so that’s good 
I thought storage was increased, but checking around it’s the same same 8GB for 2023 and 2026 models. But mine thinks it’s a lot less - only 2.66GB ? Yah, that seems typical.
So all in all, after all the horror stories, especially about Zigbee, this went smoothly. I have no ZWave devices, only Zigbee, Matter and plain Wifi. I have to check everything but the spot-checks are so far all good.
