If you’re thinking of kitting your home out with smart tech, a smart thermostat is one of the best places to start.
Set up correctly, a smart thermostat can help you save money on your energy bills, while also putting the control of your central heating in the palm of your hand, no matter where you are. This means your house will always be warm when you want it to be and not when you don’t. It’s that simple.
Picture this: it’s late, it’s winter and you’re heading home from work on a miserable, cold evening. With a smart thermostat, you can log onto your companion app and boost the heating to ensure a cosy welcome exactly when you need it.
Or perhaps you’ve headed off on holiday (remember those?) and realised at the airport your heating has been left on full. No need to ring round the neighbours to ask a favour, you can just turn it off using your phone, so you don’t spend all your holiday cash heating a home when no one’s in.
Ultimately, a smart thermostat takes the need for setting rigid schedules away (though you can still have those if you wish) and gives you flexibility to change your heating plan on a day-to-day basis if you need to. Some smart thermostat systems even work with connected smart radiator valves, so you can control the temperature in individual rooms. Plus if you tag team it with a compatible smart speaker, your heating can be controlled and adjusted with your voice as part of a wider smart home routine.
Read on for our pick of the best smart thermostats you can buy to help you tech up your central heating system.
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Google Nest Learning Thermostat 3rd Generation
Nest is one of the most well-known names in the smart thermostat game, and it’s not hard to see why. As part of the Google smart home ecosystem, it does the ‘smart’ part of the job very well indeed, learning about your house and heating habits and automatically adjusting its settings to suit. It’ll take about a week of use to kick in, but it’s always learning, so the longer you have it, the better it’ll get. Its built-in sensors can even work with the location tools in your phone (if you opt in) to know when you’ve left the house, and adjust the heating accordingly.
If you’ve got a separate hot water tank, Nest now includes a hot water scheduler for you to control from you phone. The in-depth app helps you to understand when you most use the heating and gives you tips on how you can use less. That’s supported by a little leaf on the thermostat’s display, to help you save energy at a glance.
You’ll want to get a professional to install it correctly, but once it’s in, it’s as easy to use as you’d expect from a Google product. It works brilliantly with other smart home products too, including Nest’s very own ecosystem of smart cameras and doorbells, and looks nice to boot, with several finishes to choose from.
We love the Farsight feature, which turns the Learning into something of a wall clock when you walk by it, lighting up as you pass to show your home temperature as well as the time and weather.
Buy now £178.98, Amazon
Hive Active Heating
Hive is another smart thermostat connected to a big name - it’s owned by British Gas (but you do not need to be a British Gas customer to use it).
While it doesn’t learn your behaviour in the same way that the Nest Learning Thermostat does, it still packs in the features that allow it to work exactly how you need it to. This includes daily heating schedules, a one-touch Holiday Mode, a heating boost button and the ability to use geolocation on your phone (once again, opt in required) so Hive knows when you’ve left the home and when you’re on your way back.
The app is clear of clutter and easy to use, so perfect for the less technologically able among us, while voice commands are supported via the trilogy of Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri.
It does have something that Nest doesn’t - its own range of smart radiator valves that enable you to control the temperature in individual rooms if you wish. These can be installed yourself with a bit of patience, but the Hive system itself is best installed by a pro.
Hive Active Heating is well priced against the competition, and is just one of a number of Hive products in the ecosystem, including door sensors, cameras and smart lighting.
Buy now £95.00, B&Q
tado Smart Thermostat
Like Hive, tado offers you the ability to get much more specific with your smart heating - with separate radiator valves that can help you to set different rooms or zones to different schedules and temperatures as you require.
While tado won’t learn your behaviour to automate its schedule like Nest, it does have the ability to understand the way your home handles heat, to give itself ample time to get to its target temperature. It’ll also take into account the local weather when heating, and can use geofencing data (with your permission) to know when you’re home. It will remind you if the heating is on but you’ve opened a window and can even alert you to any potential issues with your heating system if it feels something is off.
To look at, it’s not quite a swish as some of the competition, but its minimalistic aesthetic means it blends in with most home decor very well indeed.
It’s hugely compatible, working with all three major voice assistants and around 95 per cent of boilers on the market. So whether you have a combi or conventional boiler, separate hot water system or heated floors, it’s likely that tado will have you covered.
Buy now £209.00, Amazon
Honeywell Evohome
Released back in 2014, Evohome was one of the first multi-zone heating systems you could buy, but while that shows a little in its more functional design, it also shows in just how solid a system it is.
Evohome can control up to 12 individual heating zones using the company’s range of radiator valves, underfloor heating controls and individual room thermostats, though some of the more advanced smart features, like geofencing are missing.
It will play nice with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa though, as well as IFTTT for building its functionality into smart home routines. If you’re looking for Apple Homekit compatibility, you’ll need to look to the company’s T6 Smart Thermostat instead.
It might not have all the bells and whistles of some of the competition, but for a straightforward yet in-depth system that just works, the Honeywell Evohome is a great option to consider.
Buy now £191.16, Amazon
Nest Thermostat E
If you don’t need the full list of fancy features in the Nest Learning Thermostat, the Nest Thermostat E offers most of what’s so great about it but with a slightly lower price tag.
One of the most noticeable differences is the design. With just a white plastic housing as standard, the E drops the premium choice of metallic finishes, plus has a noticeably lower resolution display too.
However, from a user’s perspective, a lot of Nest’s USPs stand. That means that, despite not having it in the name, the Thermostat E still learns your behaviour over time to help it heat your home smarter, just like its more expensive sibling. You can still control it remotely via the extensive app, still use Google Assistant or Alexa for voice control and can use your geolocation data to know when you’re out or when you’re home.
Nest reckons you can install the E by yourself, so no professional help is required. However it is worth noting that the E isn’t quite as compatible with as wide a range of systems as Learning is. It’ll still support an impressive 85 per cent of home setups, but you’ll just want to check that yours will work ok before you choose it.
Buy now £145.99, Amazon
Verdict
The stylish design and automated smarts of the Nest Learning Thermostat make it a great option for those looking to tech up their heating with minimal effort. For those looking for more control, Hive Active Heating gives you the ability to better fine tune your heating, as well as all the benefits of the wider Hive Home ecosystem.
