With technology growing every day, and every aspect of our lives becoming integrated and smart, it is only natural to have our thermostats follow suit. The major reason to automate your heating and cooling systems in your home is to save energy and in turn save money. It just does not make sense to have your furnace running while nobody is at home and literally wasting money every month. While we all want to save money, most of us are not wearing jackets in our homes and want our homes warm when we are at home, but coming home to a freezing cold house is never nice.
Most smart thermostats today have some form of home and away modes to automatically know if we are home and when to turn the heat on. Whether they use motion sensors or Geo fencing, we never have to worry about heating an empty house or coming home to an ice box ever again. To read more about how your Smart Thermostat can integrate into the rest of your home, read our Guide to Building The Ultimate Smart Home
Nest Learning Thermostat
The Nest Learning Thermostat was created by former Apple engineers Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers in 2010. In 2014 they were bought by Google for $3.2 billion and have easily become a leader in smart home products. The Nest Thermostat sets the benchmark for most thermostats on the market.
Boasting a clean and robust radial dial, there is little to be confused by when approaching the thermostat. The most impressive feature, out of its long list of many, is the self-learning algorithm that adapts to you coming and going from your home and what temperatures you like at certain times of day. The more you use the thermostat, the more it learns your ways and self-programs itself accordingly.
Nest also integrates with your Lutron home system which can use geo Fencing to also know your location and whether you are home or not, allowing you to shut off your lights automatically when nobody is home, turn on the lights in the event of a fire alarm, and enable the Smart Away function, which randomly cycles Lutron controlled lights throughout the house between 6pm and 11pm to simulate people int he house.
Nest will send you monthly energy reports based on your usage and has a leaf system to make it easy to understand how much energy you are saving. Nest claims the thermostat will pay itself off in as little as two years after purchase and start “repaying” you money thereafter. There have been a lot of changes with Nest and Google leaving a lot of people with questions. We cleared up all the confusion and answer all the questions in our post about Whats Happening With Nest and Google?
Works with: Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, IFTTT, Lutron and Smart Things
Nest Thermostat E
The Nest Thermostat E is an entry level smart thermostat and the cheaper version of the Nest Thermostat. You get almost all the same features offered with the original learning thermostat, but with a few exceptions. The biggest feature missing is Far Site which allows the thermostat to sense when you are looking at its display and automatically show you the weather, time or temperature. The E also uses plastic hardware and components rather then the glass and metal used in the more expensive version. Although the design and functions are generally the same, the E thermostat lacks the capability to control more complex heating and cooling systems that are not generally found in standard homes.
Works with: Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, IFTTT, Lutron and Smart Things
EcoBee 4
The EcoBee 4 is the closest competition to the industry leading Nest Learning Thermostat. Ecobee boasts the same self-learning technology and vacancy sensors to assist in energy savings. The major difference is this model has a built in Alexa speaker, this means you can use it as a voice control hub in your home as well as to control the thermostat. The EcoBee 4 falls short on customizable display features, not allowing for a feature like Far Site to display different user specified information.
Works with: Amazon Alexa, Apple Homekit, IFTTT, Smart Things and Wink
Honeywell Lyric Thermostat
The Honeywell Lyric Thermostat was developed to compete directly with the Nest and EcoBee4 smart thermostats. Rather then relying on motion sensors and self-learning algorithms like the other two players, Lyric relies mainly on Geo fencing to know when you have come and gone. The user can set the distance of the Geo Fence from a 500 foot radius to a 7 mile radius, and when your phone leaves that area, the thermostat will know you are not home and turn down your temperature and set itself to away mode. When you enter back into that radius, the thermostat will turn your heating system back on and ensure you home is warm and toasty for when you return. There is one major downfall with using Geo Fencing rather them motion sensors for Home and Away modes. If you are out of the house all day, but still within that radius, the thermostat believes you are still home and will continue to heat. The other downfall is that not everyone in the home may want to leave there location services on all the time, so if you are the only one linked to the thermostat, the heating may shut off when others are still home.
Works with: Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings
Mysa Smart Thermostat
The Mysa thermostat was designed specifically to fill a void in the smart thermostat market. Mysa is the first and one of the very few Smart Thermostats able to control line voltage electric heating. All the other products on this list are designed to work with forced air furnaces and boilers. Mysa is the only one that will work with electric baseboard heating. They are a very proud Canadian company base out of New Foundland, and true to their Canadian roots, offer some of the best customer service in the industry. Mysa can be programmed using their easy scheduling wizard, programmed manually or recently through Geo Fencing. Mysa integrates with a host of other developers to ensure your smart home stays connected.
Works With: Amazon, Google, HomeKit, and IFTTT
Emerson Sensi
If all the bells and whistles are not what you are looking for and energy savings (and saving money) are your primary motives, then the Emerson Sensi is the right product for you. Being the most cost effective product out of the line up, what it lacks in sophistication, it makes up for in savings. Overall, the Sensi works well. It can be programmed for when you are at work and turn on when you are at home. It does not have self-learning algorithms, motion or vacancy sensors and geo fencing options. But it does work with all the major virtual assistants and will help save you money on your monthly utility bills.
Works with: Amazon, Google, HomeKit, IFTTT, and Wink
NVent NuHeat Signature Wifi
When it comes to in floor electric radiant heating, there really is only one top manufacturer in the industry. NuHeat is the largest manufacturer of in floor heating mats and cables and has held the market share for more then a decade. The Signature Wifi enabled thermostat is the first of its kind in North America. Other products come and go in the market, but NuHeat has out lasted them all and continues to be the number one spec’d item by designers today. The NuHeat Signature Wifi thermostat is a smart thermostat that allows smart control of your in-floor heating as well as integration wit your Nest thermostat. By taking advantage of the Nest developers, your in-floor heating will be able to piggy back off Nest’s Home and Away assist.
Works With: Amazon Alexa, Google assistant, Nest, IFTTT
For a Complete list of EVERYTHING Smart Home, read our post on The Ultimate Guide To Everything Home Automation.
