Smart thermostats are a simple upgrade that every home needs. Using your home’s existing WiFi, smart thermostats from Honeywell, Ecobee, and others, make a great addition to any home bringing savings on heating and cooling help to make a home more energy efficient. There’s so much value that smart thermostats other than setting the temperature; they can learn your schedule, adjust the climate based on occupancy, or even allow you to control them from your mobile phone.
Since there’s so much feature variation between thermostats, we’re going to help you decide which smart thermostat is right for you.
First things first: Compatibility
Before spending money on a smart thermostat, there are two factors to be aware of. The first is ensuring your home has a “c-wire” also known as a “common wire”. The second is confirming your home has a compatible HVAC system. Luckily, most homes built after the ’80s have both of these as a standard.
Each brand has their own specialty:
What else does it work with?
The majority of thermostats will work with Alexa and Google Assistant, and occasionally, HomeKit. One of the reasons we created the Brilliant Smart Home System was to help integrate all smart home products into one user experience. Now, with Brilliant, not only does your smart thermostat work with your smart assistants, but it also works with lights, locks, and other devices to unify your entire home.
The biggest question: PRICE
Generic smart thermostats like WYZE can cost as low as $50 but may lack integration with a wide range of other smart home products. More premium smart thermostats like Honeywell, Ecobee, and others have a higher price point but also bring the benefit of more robust features, and work with a vast variety of third-party integrations.
So, which one should I choose?
As the leader in smart home, we stay brand agnostic so that you can pick and choose which products to use in your home and are not confined to only using one brand. Currently, we work with Honeywell and Ecobee thermostats. A home with one of these thermostats and a Brilliant Control are able to manage their entire home and all of it’s smart home devices from anywhere. You can create scenes that adjust your thermostat, have your home’s climate adjust automatically based off of the sunrise or sunset, and overall live a more connected life. Not to mention the energy savings that come from having energy efficient products within.